May 6, 2004

Editorial from Leading German Newspaper: "The Bush regime evades law and responsibility, it avoids control and abhors balance, it creates an atmosphere of lawlessness in which the excesses of Abu Gharib can flourish."

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

Buzz:

Okay, guys, here it is. This editorial is running on the front page of tomorrow's Sueddeutsche Zeitung, the leading newspaper in Germany. I translated the whole thing for you to run if you like. Haven't read anything so spot-on in a newspaper in years. You can check the original at the Sueddeutsche website, www.sueddeutsche.de.

A BuzzFlash Reader

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Süddeutsche Zeitung, Munich, May 6, 2004

Commentary

America violated:
The torture and abuse scandal may constitute a foreign policy meltdown for the Bush Administration because no other example before has confirmed a dark suspicion so clearly: under the Bush Administration, America has lost its values.

When President Bush glances out his White House window, he is surrounded by the icons of American statecraft: monuments to the founding fathers, alters of democracy, shrines of America's essence.

Whether Bush were to seek guidance from Lincoln, Jefferson, Washington or Roosevelt, the message would always be the same. The American immortals always send the same message: we are the USA, a young nation freed from the burdens of a society developed over centuries, we were summoned to guarantee the perfect conditions for a free and civil society.

Unity, freedom, liberalism, democracy -- the pillars of an open and peaceful society -- can best be constructed here, in the USA, in the promised land granted to persecuted immigrants.

State With a Religious Mission

However, America asserted itself not only with the great concept of freedom, it also dared to assert its values. The messianic charge of this state and its institutions was not simply to attract immigrants -- the country also assumed a missionary role.

The USA was the exporter of democracy, the model for freedom and justice -- justice which, notwithstanding all excesses and countercurrents -- was always there to note in awe.

From this concept of the state grew the concept of American Exceptionalism, which stood for uniqueness and distinctiveness, which the country claimed for itself. When the Clinton administration saw the US as the lighthouse of the world, when Madeline Albright claimed, Americans saw further because they stood taller, then the Germans were quaked because they couldn’t understand this national pathos.

More Damage to Reputation than During the War

If Americanism lies low in the world now, then these sentences are proof of arrogance, of hubris. When the Bush Administration adds deeds to such words, when the governing political thinkers in Washington prefer to see everything in black and white rather than in shades of gray and preach in moralizing tones, rather than painstakingly seek compromise, then our discomfort turns into pure anti-Americanism.

Bush would also have to see this, if he were from his perch in the White House to observe the world around him. The reaction to the torture pictures from Iraq is overpowering. The world’s outrage has yet to play itself out; it is probable that in the last few days the US has suffered more serious damage to its reputation than through the entire Iraq war.

This is not the work of a few sadistic soldiers and mercenaries. It is also not to be laid at the feet of a misled military command structure whose interrogation techniques have veered out of control.

America is hypocritical in its claim that it preaches moral values that America as a nation no longer observes. This suspicion dates back to Election Day in 2000, when Bush seized power through the most dubious methods.

And he was reinforced in his political precepts and orientations; he governed by demonstrating his unbending resolve, but he has never demonstrated true moral strength of character.

Repudiation of the Rule of Law

It hardly comes as a surprise that the repudiation of the Rule of Law and traditional order that Bush launched is now reflected in the treatment of these detainees. What has been rumored in Guantánamo for years and now comes before the Supreme Court in Washington -- all this has also transpired in the interrogation rooms of Abu Gharib.

The Bush Administration argues before the Supreme Court, reduced to its essence, that a president in times of war can incarcerate an enemy of the state without any justification and without access to the most basic guarantees of the Rule of Law.

This lack of proportionality, this total repudiation of the Rule of Law, and its consequences are now shockingly captured on a digital camera in a Baghdad prison -- and this utter lawlessness is precisely what the Bush Administration sought to create.

Yet now this Administration seeks to avoid all responsibility for its political deeds, for its efforts to destroy or evade the controls of a free and democratic society. The Bush regime exploits fear of terror and the anxiety of the American people to stabilize and perpetuate its power and to trample the Rule of Law.

Using Terror as a Club to Rob Congress of its Oversight Role

The Bush Administration consciously and with the assistance of the majority in Congress politicized the courts and then it used its patriotism and terrorism-club to rob Congress of its oversight function. Even the conduct of war, the legitimate prerogative of the state, has been bartered away to private contractors and thus removed from Congress’ scrutiny.

The Bush regime evades law and responsibility, it avoids control and abhors balance, it creates an atmosphere of lawlessness in which the excesses of Abu Gharib can flourish. But the price for such misconduct is high: America loses not only its authority and credibility in the world, it loses its values.

A BUZZFLASH NEWS ANALYSIS

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