Armed Jews this time around. With an attitude.
You know, I don't have much- okay, ANY faith in the peacekeeping force, but I actually feel a little better knowing there will be Germans there. The collective guilt the German nation feels over the Holocaust would prevent them from doing things in Lebanon (things that other nations...ahem...France...would have no problem doing) that would hurt Israel.
Ah, but the more appropriate headline and story emphasis should have been:
"German Troops to Confront Nazis..... Hezbo-Nazis in Lebanon"
"For the first time in history German armed forces will do what should have been done in 1933 or earlier: confront and crush the illegal armed terror "militia" of depraved Nazi ideologues bent upon world domination and annihilation of the Jews."
THAT would have made for a more interesting angle on the story.... if only we could hope that any of the new, improved UNIFIL forces actually would face down and disarm Hezbollah........ big joke, I'm afraid.
The same goes for all racism: those who are not very racist should not have to be confronted with racism from a group to which they belong; and those who are still racist ought to have that same racism shoved in their faces.
And also for France; if they acknowledge that their country is no longer a great world power, as have the British, Americans would probably be kinder.
Once these people recognize reality, then they can move on.
arson suit.
In 1945 we weren't allies with Japan either; things change.
“We have to do this, not in spite of the Holocaust but because of it,” Werner Sonne, a leading commentator, said on German state television. “If German troops guard Israel’s borders, they are they to protect Jewish lives. Frankly, there has never been a better reason to bring in soldiers in German uniform.”
This is the only positive thing I see in the whole ceasefire. The Germans finally have a chance to prove that after all these years 'They get it.'. I pray that they really do.
It only stands to reason that German troops would be willing to square off against Israeli troops now that Germany has gone Communist.
Dear Germans: Do I really need to explain why this is such a bad idea?
Put a modern German army next to Israel and they will blow your a$$ off the map if you so much as twitch their direction. They are freakin kidding when they said "Never Again" and some of those people manning the guns had grandparent generation relatives in your gas chambers.
Wow, that's a foreboding headline. And very misleading, IMO.
Is this really a problem? I'd be more worried about Frenchies or other Arab troops there. Not Germany.
Does Europe need to 'move on'? I know they need to worry about their own invasion.
Putting anti-semitic euros between Israela and anti-semiti arabs is just retarded.
"peace keepers" in Lebanon?
Good. Don't bring any guns then. Negotiate with the baddies and ask them to give up theirs.
Sonne strikes me as incredibly naive. There is nothing positive that German troops can contribute in Lebanon that would not be spun against them by the world press. While it might be the right thing to do, they would be better off continuing to use their military resources in Afghanistan and in training Iraqi police where the needs are more critical and potentially more rewarding.
Deployment to Lebanon would also not be good for the German national psychic. One only has to look at their heroic successes in Kosovo that were downplayed by the media or the world condemnation of their efforts to rein in Scientology abuses. It led German prosecutors to take less aggressive stands against al-Qaida agents operating in Germany before 9/11.
Germans are still far too sensitive to criticism for this mission. They still need time to mature as a democracy with a foreign policy that allows a "normal" pursuit of key national interests.