Christian Democrat MP: German troops should leave Afghanistan

[Charlie Brown]

http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L16595105.htm

BERLIN, Sept 16 (Reuters) - German troops should be recalled from Afghanistan to avoid being sucked into a quagmire, a lawmaker from Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats (CDU) party was quoted as saying in a newspaper interview on Friday.

"Our goal must be to get German troops out of Afghanistan and home as quickly as possible rather than sink in the Afghan swamp," Willy Wimmer, a former junior defence minister, told Saturday's Koelner Stadt Anzeiger, according to an advance summary.

Germany's CDU and its Bavarian sister party, the CSU, has so far backed the deployment of German peacekeepers abroad. The party's election manifesto says, however, foreign peacekeeping should not come at the expense of domestic security.

[enigma000]

1. Afghanistan? I thought that was the good war? n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

2. No, no. WWII was the Good War

Ssh!

[enigma000]

4. Then what was the Good Police Action? n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Korea, maybe

[enigma000]

6. Nice.

And the Good Star Wars?

oh yeah....The Empire Strikes Back

[Centered]

7. People like you are what's wrong with this country

Nothing beats episode 4 sheeeeesh


sorry about the subject line... I couldn't resist :)

[DavidDvorkin]

11. "Good Star Wars" is an oxymoron!

[Bok_Tukalo]

3. NATO invoked Article 5 of that organization's charter

If Germany wants to withdraw from Afghanistan, it needs to withdraw from NATO.

[Oerdin]

8. The CDP

Has a problem in that they're way behind in the polls so they're flailing around at the last minute attempting to find anything to pick their numbers up.

[Kellanved]

9. ?

Sorry Sir, but the Christian Union is ahead in the polls. Which is bad news indeed.

[reorg]

10. Willy Wimmer

seems to be one of a few rather decent guys in the CDU (one of those liberal Catholics from Northrhine Westfalia).

His criticism of out-of-area NATO as well as other US military interventions is consistent, well-informed, principled, and real. He voted against the NATO interventions in Yugoslavia and Afghanistan, and - other than most of his party colleagues - opposed the Iraq war from the start. He is frequently interviewed and occasionally writes articles in the German left-wing weekly "Freitag", e.g. http://www.freitag.de/2003/42/03420601.php (only available in German).

So - while I tend to agree that the CDU are desperately trying to pick up their numbers - and their official party line is to kiss up to the US much more than the current government does: Wimmer is indeed part of the informal anti-war faction in the Bundestag, which consists of only a handful of representatives from all parties combined. (But there is hope: in this election, the new left "Linkspartei" will become the third largest group in the Bundestag. They are reliably antiwar, too.)