FACEBOOK
TWITTER
German troops in Afghanistan call on Angela Merkel to explain why they’re at war
Under pressure: German troops are calling on Chancellor Angela Merkel to tell them why they’re at war in Afghanistan
By Daily Mail Foreign Service (UK)
German soldiers are wearing their hearts on their sleeves – in the form of a badge that protests their country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan.
Some troops have taken to wearing the cloth accessory that states – ironically – ‘I fight for Merkel’ in a bid to persuade the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to explain exactly what they are fighting and dying for.
Four more troops were killed, and five badly injured, in Afghanistan last week.
Seven soldiers have died there so far this month, bringing the total to 43 in all since they were first deployed eight years ago.
Unable to engage the Taliban directly on the ground, frustrated by their government’s inability to acknowledge they are even engaged in a war and angered by the lack of popular support for their mission, the badges are a low-key mutiny that has sent shock waves through the top brass of the Bundeswehr.
Soldiers were warned this week that it is illegal to sew the cloth patches on to their uniforms.
But that hasn’t stopped them from buying the badges in their hundreds, in desert beige or NATO green, at the ISAF camp at Mazar-e-Sharif.
‘They want the Chancellor, their ultimate boss, to finally find the clear words to put the war against the Taliban into black and white,’ Bild Zeitung, Germany’s biggest daily paper, said today.
Chancellor Merkel is to make a statement to parliament tomorrow. Her spokesman said she wants to make clear her ‘high-esteem’ for the work of the German soldiers in Afghanistan in the light of the recent casualties.
But she will be speaking in the Reichstag after being put under pressure from U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who arrived in Germany today with a brief from the White House to get the Germans to do more in Afghanistan.
Germany has the third largest presence in Afghanistan after the U.S. and Britain. The German parliament approved the dispatch of a further 850 soldiers in February when it extended the mandate for the military mission.
Yet the political will for German troops to engage the enemy head-on remains lacking.
Cracks are growing in the parties that supported their engagement there up until now.
Ottmar Schreiner, a left-wing member of the opposition Social Democratic Party (SPD), said his party has ‘growing doubts’ about German involvement in Afghanistan.
He said: ‘If things haven’t improved in Afghanistan by next year then I don’t see where a majority for a new extension of the mandate is going to come from.’
The trouble for Mrs Merkel is that German involvement is deeply unpopular with some 80 per cent of the public, who want the troops to come home. Germany’s disastrous wars of the last century have left its public with a deep pacifistic streak.
The German press has been swift to condemn the government for its indecisiveness.
The Financial Times Deutschland said: ‘With every dead German soldier in Afghanistan, the calls for an immediate withdrawal grow louder. This reflex shows that the German public is still not clear about the character of the mission.
‘The politicians are largely to blame. Since the beginning of the mission eight years ago they suppressed a realistic description of the situation… Deaths, injuries, battles and heavy weaponry — none of these suit the picture that was painted back then.’
The left-wing Berliner Zeitung said: ‘Why are German soldiers in Afghanistan at all? As the chancellor and her government are still sticking to the military mission there it is their duty to explain it. But she has failed to do so.
‘This can be explained by her basic attitude – it is only worth talking about problems when they become virulent.
‘In the case of Afghanistan this is particularly catastrophic. Because the government has failed to make its case in what is the biggest foreign policy and security policy challenge in the history of the Federal Republic of Germany
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1267802/German-troops-Afghanistan-Angela-Merkel-explain-theyre-war.html#ixzz0lqGVJe6L
Short URL: http://www.veteranstoday.com/?p=28131
Posted by Gordon Duff on Apr 22 2010, With 0 Reads, Filed under AfPak, WarZone. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. Both comments and pings are currently closed.
COMMENTS
To post, we ask that you login using Facebook, Yahoo, AOL, or Hotmail in the box below.Don't have a social network account? Register and Login direct with VT and post.
Before you post, read our Comment Policy - Feedback
[...] original post here: German troops in Afghanistan call on Angela Merkel to explain why … Share and [...]
[...] the original article at Veterans Today var addthis_pub = ''; var addthis_language = 'en';var addthis_options = 'email, favorites, digg, [...]
i sure wish there was a way to get this info out there to the rest of the warring troops. i applaud the german troops.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Bless RVets, Veterans Today. Veterans Today said: Veterans Today: German troops in Afghanistan call on Angela Merkel to explain why they're at war http://bit.ly/c64MPx [...]
I don’t believe that Otto von Bismark, the founder of modern Germany, a national German hero, if he was alive,would approve of the presence of German troops in Afghanistan. He cautioned the German King at that time not to engage in militarism and to encourage the military officer corps to remain moderate and circumspect with regard to foreign affairs. The German military remembers how that sage advice was not followed both in W.W. I and W.W. II with the result that political, social, cultural, and military disaster was brought to the German nation, the German people, and the German military. The assertiveness of the German military in steadfastly opposing this illegal, aggressive, and criminal war is both to be understood and highly commended given the aforementioned.
http://www.his-forever.com/angela_merkel_and_adolph_hitler.htm
Who knows maybe it just runs in the family.
Why? to fight against Bin Laden. You know, the same BL that was all over the Germans last Fall, threatening dire consequences if they voted Merkel’s party back into power.
Yes, that BL. Luckily he showed up to issue those warnings, since Merkel’s party was in danger of losing seats and their grip on power.
Bin Laden and Merkel, working together to make Germany stronger???
Oh and don’t question German historians stat counters or you go to prison in that great democracy we helped set up. This great democracy was close to mandating swine flu vaccine that is causing adults and children to keel over worldwide. It is made by big pharma and it contains squalene shark liver, one million times more mercury as well as aluminum which is a poison.
The german army said no thanks we are not taking the shot, next move. I don’t doubt the german army is questioning what is going on with these quislings in power in Germany.
This site was brought down but there is a mirror site.
http://theflucase.com/
http://www.reddit.com/domain/theflucase.com
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=aTo3LbhcA75I
Social comments and analytics for this post…
This post was mentioned on Twitter by veteranstoday: Veterans Today: German troops in Afghanistan call on Angela Merkel to explain why they’re at war http://bit.ly/c64MPx...
In a broader way I would like ask why is it we Americans are in Muslim Asia at all? Last night on Fox news of all places I heard an answer that shocked me. A Fox reporter asked a Syrian what he thought of Iran and it alleged nukes. He said he thought Iran could through it`s status and power stop radical Islam. My next question is this. Why not?
My question is this. American´s stopping radical Islam. Why does the west in this case America seem to think anything they say is going to be understood as fact in the Muslim world.
It seems a little like the psychotic brother of a wife beater trying to be marriage counselor in his brothers troubled marriage. I think it is time for Amwereicans to get a grip on what most of the world thinks about us. That´s about the best analogy I have at this time.
They are at war because Dubya put the Vulcan mind meld on her when he gave her that goose the whole world saw.
Good for Heinie!