Ex-Defense Minister now ex-Employment Minister too

So I think it goes like this: After a German officer called in a “reconstruction and peacekeeping” airstrike on fuel trucks stolen by the Taliban in a non-war they are taking part in in northern Afghanistan, no civilians at all were killed. Then later, of course, they were.

As long as this isn’t a war, things like this are bound to keep on happening. Further resignations and German-speak like this, I mean.

“Politicians have consistently failed to convince Germans that there is a clear and sound strategy in place for the Nato mission.

Even as militants stepped up attacks on German soldiers in northern Afghanistan ministers refused to refer to what was happening there as a ‘war’

They continued to fall back on the more sanitised line that German troops were involved in a  ‘reconstruction and peacekeeping’ mission.”

“But two-thirds of the German public want German troops out of Afghanistan. And following September’s airstrike in Kunduz, the calls for the soldiers to be pulled out have grown even louder.”

Herman who?

No, not our Hermann, this new guy. Typical Europe. Or typical EU, I should say. No one has ever heard of the new  European Council President Herman Van Rompuy or European “Foreign Minister” Catherine Ashton (these are way cool and newly created first time ever held positions, by the way).

These “nobodies”, as one news organ here put it, are now supposed to lead Europe? Or as another paper put it, a bit more diplomatically – and accurately: “Europe will continue to talk with itself instead of getting listened to.”

I couldn’t find much dirt on Ms. Ashton, unfortunatley, but the British are quite a secretive lot after all. I did find something on Mr. Van Rompuy, however. Do you realize for instance that his name is an anagram for “roman vampyre hun”? Makes one stop and think, doesn’t it?

“Europa will weiter nur mit sich selber reden, statt gehört zu werden.”

A reconsidering of principles?

In principle, I guess. But actually, well, not really.

“At issue are how long opposition in Germany will allow its troops to stay and fight, and whether they will be given leeway from their strict rules of engagement to pursue the kind of counterinsurgency being advocated by American generals. The question now is whether the Americans will ultimately fight one kind of war and their allies another.”

“The Germans may not have gone to war, but now the war has come to them. In part, NATO and German officials say, that is evidence of the political astuteness of Taliban and Qaeda leaders, who are aware of the opposition in Germany to the war. They hope to exploit it and force the withdrawal of German soldiers — splintering the NATO alliance in the process — through attacks on German personnel in Afghanistan and through video and audio threats of terrorist attacks on the home front before the German elections last month.”

“American officials have argued that an emphasis on reconstruction, peacekeeping and the avoidance of violence may have given the Taliban a foothold to return to the north.”

“Germany’s combat troops are caught in the middle.”

“They shoot at us and we shoot back.”

Munich applies for the 2018 Winter Olympics, asks Obama not to help

Organizers in Munich have officially launched the city’s bid to host the 2018 Winter Olympics.

City officials sent a letter informing the International Olympic Committee of the bid yesterday.

They also sent a really nice letter to US-American President Barack Obama, who they still admire deeply and wholeheartedly, honest, in which they expressly expressed that he should not take any time off whatsoever to help them in their efforts in any way, should he have been planning to do so, which they personally doubt, being that Munich is a German city after all and he is so busy and everything all the time, which they understand and respect perfectly and completely, but they just wanted to let him know, just in case.

“Well, congratulations to president Obama and first lady Michelle. They celebrated their 17th wedding anniversary this week. Well, at first, they couldn’t agree where they should celebrate. He wanted to go to Chicago, she voted for Rio.”

Deutsche debate dull, dubious, drab and dead

And it was auf Deutsch too.

“Twenty million people watched the TV debate, hoping to see a clear winner emerge after 90 minutes. But there was no real heated political debate from the two partners in Germany’s four-year-old grand coalition.”

Will the weakest link soon become the missing one?

“With the jihadi chatter against Berlin intensifying less than three weeks before general elections, the fear is that Islamists bent on driving NATO forces out of Afghanistan will  attack the supposedly weakest link in the chain of Western nations.”

“Skepticism about the deployment runs deep within Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens, and calls for a reduction in German troop levels could increase if these parties join the Left in opposition after the election, as some polls suggest.”

“This is in retaliation for Germany always pointing the finger at other nations.”

Steinmeier to win with the worst election results since 1955

Getting creamed just as bad as/even worse than their rival grand coalition counterparts CDU in three German regional elections held yesterday, Germany’s Social Democrats (SPD) now expect to clean up big time at the big time national election to be held here on September 27.

His party losing votes even more convincingly than usual, this time in Saarland, Saxony and Thuringia, SPD chancellor candidate Frank-Walter Steinmeier is said to be absolutely thrilled to death already and just made a phone call to ex-boss ex-Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s not-yet-ex-wife Doris Schröder-Köpf to ask her about how best to re-drape the Chancellery.

“A comedian for chancellor? Why not, Germans think.”

German campaign’s lack of substance not anything like Obama’s was

“German politicians are drawing on the lessons of the U.S. presidential campaign by embracing the Internet and experimenting with townhall meetings, but what worked for Barack Obama seems to be backfiring here.”

“Both candidates are using chatrooms, blogs and Twitter to woo voters and have used U.S-style townhall formats in television appearances.”

But…”You can’t copy and paste Obama because that would be the wrong thing to do and it can quickly turn out to be embarrassing,”

“The trouble for the campaign managers, analysts say, is that no amount of innovative tactics can compensate for a lack of substance.”

Huh? I thought that is how Obama got elected in the first place. Whatever.

“Just last year, former SPD General Secretary Hubertus Heil was ridiculed after he tried to get party conference delegates to chant ‘Yes, we can!’ only to be met with a deafening silence.”

Steinmeier falls off the wagen

Off the election bandwagon, that is.

Polls indicate that practically nobody believes much of anything he or the SPD are promising them anymore (the elections are now just seven weeks away). Of course they don’t believe anything the other parties have to say either, but still.

„Ich hätte nichts dagegen, wenn wir dieselbe Feier am 27. September wiederholen.“