Anger at Evidence of American Power

For years, countless German terrorism and Middle East experts, enjoying the support of most Germans, have made great efforts to explain that Osama bin Laden still plays a role in al-Qaida. This role was said to be ideological at best; it was by no means an operational role. Accordingly, there has been regret over the United States hunting down that preacher of extreme mass extermination and giving joy and relief to all freedom-loving people. Since then, the mission has been decried as an unnecessary and detrimental symbol, creating new martyrs and even more terrorism. It contradicts the constitutional, moral European culture and ultimately feeds the need for revenge of the Americans, who remain in a state of backwardness. World-class global strategists and intellectuals in Germany like the almost-forgotten ex-minister Herta Däubler-Gmelin, the former correspondent Ulrich Kienzle and the moral philosopher Richard David Precht are of a very similar opinion. On Sunday, they had the chance to give the United States a telling-off on the German television program “Anne Will”, saying they should have arrested bin Laden in accordance with the law and used police rather than military in the war on terror.

Experts constantly claim that al-Qaida has not been a centrally-controlled organization for a long time, that it is a patchwork of small, independently-run groups and individuals who have resorted to bombings here and there whenever they felt like it. Thus, it is an anarchic, spontaneous movement that can never be defeated using crude and uncreative means such as a military war.

These fantasies fitted in beautifully with the post-modern conceptual clichés, popular since the 1980’s, that came from the madhouse of “post-structuralism.” The idea is that in all socio-political matters, we are dealing with free-floating, nomadic and self-generating decentralized structures, but never with clearly identifiable cause-and-effect relationships triggered by active subjects. This mystifying distortion of the real situation was best suited to the pseudo-theoretical underpinning of that unworldly hyper-morality, which is now becoming a kind of state religion in Germany. According to this religion, no one can be allowed to be too severely punished, especially not when it concerns a terrorist pensioner who serves a merely ‘symbolic’ role and who has been portrayed as ‘the enemy’ by the war-ready Americans who organized this manhunt. The “imperialist” West, and the United States in particular, are becoming the great exception within this obscurantist world-view: always, and from the outset, they have been to blame for everything that is found to be evil in the world.

The theory of an amorphous al-Qaida is a romantic transfiguration

The idea that al-Qaida was a bodiless, amorphous entity drifting in the airwaves has now pathetically collapsed due to the documents that were kept safe in bin Laden’s compound. The simple fact has been proven that up to his death, bin Laden was evidently the commander-in-chief of the terrorist organization that he created. The fact that he could follow his murderous rabbles undisturbed in the middle of Pakistan points to another altogether obvious reality: terrorism on a large scale cannot occur if it is not supported or covered up by countries or if it does not get support or systematic acceptance from at least parts of the state apparatus. To believe that terrorism is a homeless, limitless, self-generating vagabond who is detached from the ground, hanging in the balance, has no interests and is only committed to its own matters is a romantic transfiguration at best. At worst, it defends persistent propaganda.

However, our German schoolmasters, who specialize in criminal and international law, have yet another argument in the pipeline concerning the killing of bin Laden. The argument is that this mission has by no means strengthened the position of the United States in the Middle East and the world. Al-Qaida is basically just yesterday’s news and has nothing to do with the complex, complicated challenges emerging in light of recent upheavals in the Arab world.

However, not only are German critics of the United States once again fully mistaken with this argument, the argument also allows detailed insight into their true motives. Our tireless re-educators enjoy and almost firmly believe in the fact that the United States can no longer afford its role as the number one world power. From Europe’s point of view, the United States has fallen, and it now needs to ruefully seek their advice and encouragement. The precisely planned and perfectly executed elimination of bin Laden now impressively demonstrates the opposite: if the United States acts in a concentrated, purposeful and resolute manner, then it can still do without unreliable partners if necessary. In this case, nobody can seriously prevent America’s actions. The effect of this message can hardly be overestimated . Not only has the United States chopped off al-Qaida’s head and robbed it of the myth of its leader’s invincibility, they have also sent a clear signal to all other authoritarian and totalitarian America-haters: none of them will be forgotten if they go too far with their aggression against the super power, even if it sometimes takes a little longer until it is their turn to be hunted down.

This type of announcement, however, has an effect on megalomaniac wannabe world-dominators that, by itself, can only slightly slow down criminals. Those who had presumed that the United States is just a paper tiger in unstoppable decline and Barack Obama a naïve weakling not to be taken seriously have now suddenly had to accept that they were wrong.

Obama whistles at the wagging finger of German busybodies

The United States has once again gained respect as a global operational leader due to the spectacular mission in Pakistan. By doing so, if nothing else, it has instantly reminded people that it is a major player in the upcoming reorganization of the Middle East. However, that is exactly what rankles our moralizing critics in Germany so much. Since Obama’s election, they had entertained the illusion that the United States has finally gone soft after constant warnings from Germany for decades about the fact that a global power should behave in a morally acceptable manner. They also thought the United States would stick strictly to the rules stipulated by columnists like journalists Jakob Augstein or Heribert Prantl, who are successful graduates of German re-education, so to speak. They saw hope for the future in Obama, who phased out the crude United States demand for dominance and appeared to bend to Old Europe’s wish for Americans, who are obsessed with morals but have a poor sense of them, to engage in unconditional diplomatic dialogue. They did indeed see the new U.S. president hurrying helplessly around the world, following the example of glorious EU foreign ministers, respectfully requesting meetings with dictators and mass murderers because he firmly believed that they could talk about all of this once more in peace.

All the more unbelievable is their disappointment about the man in the White House who, in a historically decisive situation, proved to be a dignified and resolute defender of freedom. Or rather, he, according to another moral mummy from the mausoleum of German eco-pacifism, has stepped into the “trail of blood, which many other U.S. presidents have outlined for him.” The anger towards Obama not being phased by hypocritical German busybodies and history being unaffected by the overpoweringly constant depiction of its nagging honesty explains why anti-American sentiment once again rose to crazy heights over and above their normal extent in Germany following bin Laden’s death.