I would normally not read William Safire’s editorials because he doesn’t ever seem to contribute anything to my understanding of world affairs - he just says inflammatory stuff that ticks me off. But seeing as I have a personal interest in Germany and I was writing about Germany myself just a few days ago, I clicked on The German Problem (login: wrreaders), read it and, naturally, got all riled up. I have four things to say about it.

1) I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again: I am sick to death of hearing that when a country doesn’t just blindly go along with anything and everything America decides to do, this country is "thumbing its nose at America." For pity’s sake - it’s an independent country! With its own government! With its own policies and problems and ideas! Why is this always treated as some sort of deeply personal insult to America? Why is it always hailed as the "rise of anti-Americanism"? Why is it treated as a given that when America snaps its fingers, everyone else should jump?

And in this case in particular (Schroeder’s refusal to get involved in an attack on Iraq), Safire completely misses the point. He latches on to some pretty dodgy comments by Rudolf Scharping (a discredited politician anyway, as Safire himself points out) about the Jewish lobby’s influence on Bush being the reason Schroeder doesn’t want to ship the German army to the Middle East. Safire seems to have a critical lack of understanding of, amongst other things, the deep-seated, uniquely German issues that Germany is always faced with when confronting the prospect of sending German troops into battle - particularly into a pre-emptive battle. Germany doesn’t do stuff like that lightly - for good reason.

2) William Safire must be completely ignorant on the subject of German politics if he can write in all seriousness that Edmund Stoiber is "semi-conservative". Semi-conservative! I almost fell out of my chair reading that. Edmund Stoiber is probably the most extremely conservative major politician in Germany. Of course, labeling Stoiber as only semi-conservative says reams about Safire’s own political leanings - and that’s rather frightening.

3) Referring to Saddam Hussein as "the Hitler of the Persian Gulf"… Don’t. Just don’t go there.

4) Um, equating "American superpower hegemony" with "German book-publishing hegemony"? Huh? German companies "gaining a stranglehold on U.S. books"? The "unilateral cultural imperialism by literary tycoons in the Fatherland" which is resented by "every red-blooded American author"? For crying out loud. This is the random (supposedly humorous?) stuff that leaves me shaking my head in disbelief. I can’t for the life of me figure out how the fact that Bertelsmann owns Random House has anything at all to do with Gerhard Schroeder not wanting to send German troops to invade Iraq, but then, my mind obviously does not work the way William Safire’s does.

Which went without saying long before I ever read this silly editorial.

Further reading…