Sometimes I meet a young pal who is a bit to self-confident and self-centered. It's not really nice to have him around, because all the time he feels a bit like the center of the world, that nothing can happen to him, and he cant come along with others very good (in fact, he doesn't see the need). And i think to myself usually: Boy, you need some more experience. For instance, spending a year or two in the army could do you good. I bet it wouldn't take you long to figure out that it's sometimes best to not have the last word, that it doesn't pay off to be a complete asshole to your roommates, stuff like that. I don't want you to get harmed, boy. You just have to get some more experience.
And sometimes, when i switch on TV, and i see the latest U.S. news coverage, i think by myself, boy, these guys over there could use some experience...
I grew up in a little town right in the middle of Germany. It's a rather old town, couple of years ago our local city beer brewery celebrated its 750th anniversary. Yeah, that's not a typo. In german cities breweries tend to be older than, for instance, universities, you know.
If you visit the town center and look for some old architecture, you will find three little towers and a little bit of remaining walls, this was the city wall in medieval times. Inside that area, in the old city core, you will find nothing. I mean, of course there are buildings, but they all have been built in the last 50 years. What once was the center of my hometown has been wiped out by several british bomber squads.
One of my grandfathers was killed in Spain. Legion Condor, if the name tells you something. One of the brothers of my father died in Stalingrad. His other brother is, as you name it, "missing in action" somewhere in Ukraine. If i look around in the families of my friends, it's all the same. Traces of history.
When i was about ten, i made a trip with my school class to a town nearby, about 20 miles. It's a rather famous city, two of the greatest german poets, Goethe and Schiller, used to live there. It has a great music academy, a even greater theater and is in general considered a place of culture for hundreds of years now. And if you drive out of town, just two or three miles, up a little hill called "Ettersberg", you end at a rather huge iron gate with the inscription "Jedem das Seine" (literal "Each to his own", but a better, non-verbal translation is probably "You get what you deserve"). This is where the fascists killed most of their political enemies, communists, socialists, democrats, in the end they started to kill jewes there as well, because the big destruction camps in Poland where already taken by the red army. Thats Buchenwald, Concentration camp. Inhabitants: about a quarter of a million. Victims: more than 50.000. That's the difference between a Concentration camp like Buchenwald and a Destruction camp like Auschwitz, where millions have been killed. I've seen the ovens, big ones, lots of them. Most of the camp was transformed into a memorial site, but the old crematorium is still there. When Buchenwald was evacuated before american forces could take it, the prisoners where sent to a "death march". Everyone who couldn't walk anymore was shot. Right there on the street. That was when my mother saw them, she was a young girl these days. She was telling me how they looked, skin and bones. How one got killed in front of her. And her eyes where praying "believe me", when she told me "we didn't know". I did.
Cry Havoc and let slip the dogs of war,
That this foul deed shall smell above the earth
With carrion Men, groaning for burial.
I don't like war. I don't believe that wars can solve anything, maybe with the exception of people raising against their oppressor. Most germans of my generation share that believe, i think. Each time before we send some soldiers into the world, big discussions in the parliament start to see the pro's and con's, and i like it that way. We are very aware of the fact that the sight of a german soldier might raise fear and doubt and worse feelings, no matter what his mission is. And i wish others would think so as well.
I don't like the idea of a "chosen race", in fact the idea of a "race" itself is suspicious to me. Men are equal. And if someone pretends, his country and its people are chosen by god, i scratch my head. That idea did kill over 50 million people and created a amount of suffer and grief and pain and desperation that should be enough for a couple of centuries.
I don't like it if the outstanding attribute of a politician is to be a strong person, a leader. In german "Führer" means leader. I'm more interested in his ethics, i want to know where he leads me. A leader without ethics can easily become a dictator, if you let him. Just as capitalism without a democracy easily can become fascism.
Das große Karthago führte drei Kriege. Nach dem ersten war es noch mächtig. Nach dem zweiten war es noch bewohnbar. Nach dem dritten war es nicht mehr zu finden. (Three wars the great Carthage waged. It was still powerful after the first. It was still habitable after the second. And it was impossible to find after the third.)
I was sitting in the office four years ago when a guy came rushing in "quick, switch on TV, a plane has hit the WTC!". I still can remember that day, as if it would be yesterday. I was stunned and shocked. I was crying for the people in these towers. And then i started to realize, from all i knew about that Bush guy, he would go for revenge. And i started to fear what America would do to the world. I could understand when Afghanistan was attacked, i thought it would be a step in the wrong direction and in the end make things worse, but i could understand it. When he attacked Iraq i figured that he maybe was a bit into revenge, but his intentions where different. And i started to wonder why America is so different. Since i can read newspapers, America was at war. Sometimes officially, sometimes a bit hidden. I mean, GWB is a guy to worry about, but he's not my real concern. My concern are the people that elect such a "leader of the free world". Some americans suggested to me, it could be the education, but i doubt that. There are enough germans with a general knowledge like a five-year-old. No, i think the deep reason America votes for such a war monger like Bush is, they have forgotten how it is. It's been hundreds of years since the last real war on american soil. They watch those laser guided bombs on CNN and think, ah, that's war. They celebrate their own supremacy and deeply believe, nothing ever can happen to us. We are Gods own country, they think, how could we be wrong? Of course they could ask a veteran of Vietnam, how war is. But who would listen to him?
Don't get me wrong. I don't want America to be attacked, I wish you all the peace in the world. I just wish I would know how to give you that missing experience.