Germany, for Decades a Pacifist Power, Faces the Need to Play a Military Role

New York Times ^ | January 5, 2013 | NICHOLAS KULISH

[BroJoeK]

Berlin_Freeper: "Enter a Germany thread I post again with the garbage 'they are not our friends', and I will spank you again."

Olog-hai: "They are not our friends—certainly not at the federal level."

I'd be curious to learn what evidence of German "unfriendliness" anyone might cite.
I've certainly never seen it, in over 55 years since the first time I lived there as a boy.

Of course, I can't speak for all 82 million Germans, but I never met an "unfriendly" German, even including the old gentleman who took perverse pride in showing me his pocket-full of Nazi coins.
He had the air of one of our own "unreconstructed rebels", and I felt no more threatened by him than I would by most of them.

The fact is, US military forces remain in Germany, now 69 years later only because they want us.
If Germans, like the French in 1964, ever said "go", we'd be gone, but they don't, because they like us, or at least, they like having us there.
And it's a one-time decision -- once we're gone, we'd be most unlikely to ever return, short of God-knows-what.

So, if there's any "unfriendliness", my guess is it most likely starts with our own doofus government, which may have little understanding and no sympathy for historical circumstances, and may prioritize pushing the "re-set" button with Russia over maintaining good relations with one of our strongest allies.

Yes, I admit, my direct knowledge of Germany and Germans is now, ahem, several years out of date, but I don't imagine the world has changed all that much recently, that anyone would contemplate moving Germany from the "friendly ally" list on to some other, less attractive category.