Article

2003-02-13 Europe

Der Speigel: How the German Intelligencia Perceives Bush and the US.

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Posted by Frank Martin 2003-02-13 12:31 pm|| || Front Page|| [1 views since 2007-05-07] Top

#1 I forgot to add that at the end of this article is a online poll asking if the reader thought it was accurate and informative. 62% of the respondents ( about 8000 votes) said yes.

further on in the article Herr Drewermann said that he didnt think the US was a democracy but a plutocracy, so we were on the same level as Saddam Hussien anyway.

Posted by Frank Martin 2003-02-13 13:14:03|| [varifrank.blogspot.com] 2003-02-13 13:14:03|| Front Page Top

#2 "This victory of the good one cost the life in the Iraq alone more than 200,000 people and made hundred of thousands crippled. The embargo politics pressed more than one million humans into death. How can one intone the word "good" in such a cruel way? ".....

As I read this, he's saying that GulfWar I was a bad thing. Brings to mind the Catholic Church rolling over for "The Leader".

Posted by Dishman 2003-02-13 13:27:00|| 2003-02-13 13:27:00|| Front Page Top

#3 Now, I know nothing about the German media, but one of the few periodical names I do know is Der Spiegel. So this is a real, mainstream, respected German publication, right? And it comes up with this undiluted, cheapjack faux-psychological crap, with nary a blush. And the Europeans are now shocked and bewildered at the anti-Europe sentiment here.

Bah.

Posted by Angie Schultz 2003-02-13 15:00:43|| [darkblogules.blogspot.com] 2003-02-13 15:00:43|| Front Page Top

#4 Der Speigel is like the 'New York Times' of Germany, you can consider it to be the 'newspaper of record' for the germans.

The whole issue is full of of a bunch of real shocking things, of which this article is just a sample. I hesitated putting into Fred's "Open Souce Journalism" because it was so long and I had to get a serious QWERTY bruise banging my head on the keyboard translating german. But I thought it was pretty interesting to get a view inside the heads of these folks.

Posted by Frank Martin 2003-02-13 15:10:15|| [varifrank.blogspot.com] 2003-02-13 15:10:15|| Front Page Top

#5 Angie: If you've ever worked with Euros, you'd know this is pretty typical patter. They just don't seem to follow the rules of logic as we know them. I was in grad school with a bunch and they could not dissect the simplest argument let alone create one. I never cease to be amazed that they are able to keep their countries running. The Brits are the big exception.

Posted by 11A5S 2003-02-13 16:10:46|| 2003-02-13 16:10:46|| Front Page Top

#6 An assessment of anyone's Christian orthodoxy by a modern German theologian is worth as much as my assessment of a Bulgarian textbook on quantum physics. Less than nothing.

Posted by Christopher Johnson 2003-02-13 16:22:46|| [mcj.blogspot.com/] 2003-02-13 16:22:46|| Front Page Top

#7 Ran across this at UPI:

In the current issue of the German newsmagazine, Der Spiegel, the Catholic theologian Eugen Drewermann did just that. Being a psychoanalyst as well, he diagnosed Bush's war plans as a symptom of a neurosis and a socio-psychological delusion rooted in the desire to outdo his father in the martial realm.

As far as we know, Drewermann has never had Bush on his couch. On the other hand, we do know that the Vatican has suspended this theologian from his priestly functions, which makes one wonder why one of Europe's most important publications would use this man in its continuous quest to turn its readers against the United States.

Posted by Anonymous 2003-02-13 17:32:30|| 2003-02-13 17:32:30|| Front Page Top

#8 11A5S, I have worked with Europeans, extensively, and they've never had any trouble with logic when it came to things like quantum physics. I confess that I rarely had political discussions with them.

When I was in Australia we had a German grad student. One of the Australian students made some remark in front of him about Germany munching Poland. I must have looked shocked, because the Aussie said, "Oh, that's OK, he's one of those mellow Germans." I said that all the Germans I'd worked with were mellow Germans, and it's true. So where do these other bastards come from?

Posted by Angie Schultz 2003-02-13 17:40:59|| [darkblogules.blogspot.com] 2003-02-13 17:40:59|| Front Page Top

#9 I think someone forgot to remind the Germans that the Iraqis are Semites. That would clear up any misunderstanding.

Posted by Penguin 2003-02-13 19:12:25|| 2003-02-13 19:12:25|| Front Page Top

#10 Angie:

Quantum physics, yes, they're great. Politics and strategy, weak. I think it has a lot to do with educational philosophy and maybe the games we play as children. Americans are educated to solve big problems (strategy). Europeans are great tacticians (small problems). Once you get away from things like science and math, it becomes hard to measure differences quantitively, so let me give you some historical examples. When the French started building the Panama Canal, they just could never grasp the scale of what they were attempting. As a result, they dug a few hundred meters of canal and quit. The Americans came in and instantly grasped once they were up against. They mobilized accordingly and succeeded. (Source: The Path Between the Seas) In the WWII, the Germans were excellent tacticians, very strong at the operational level of war but awful at strategy. You can blame a lot of that on Hitler, but I have never been able to find any documented cases of when the German General Staff presented a credible strategic alternative.

My experience is that most Euros (there are always outliers) have a hard time when approaching real world business and political problems. They try to apply a "scientific," schematic approach to problems that can't be solved scientifically or schematically. The result is a pseudo-scientific hash like the Der Speigel article. If you understand this, then a lot of their behavior regarding Iraq and the WoT suddenly makes a lot of sense.

Posted by 11A5S 2003-02-13 19:44:37|| 2003-02-13 19:44:37|| Front Page Top

#11 I always thought Freud was a fraud, his psychonalysis looking for root causes, his patients endlessly talking and never actually doing anything. Hm, sounds like the Franco-German position.

Posted by Tresho 2003-02-13 23:37:30|| 2003-02-13 23:37:30|| Front Page Top

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