Remora


Michael Kelly's column on Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, profiles his new left career, from street protests against Vietnam to street protests against the supposed suicide of Ulrike Meinhof. The tone is set by the use of Stern magazine via an article by Paul Berman for the accusation that Fischer beat a policeman -- because, of course, there is no judicial accusation of this act. The tirade was unleashed by Joschka Fischer's reply to Donald Rumsfeld. Here's the beginning graf:

"Excuse me. I am not convinced."
-- German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, lecturing to Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld in Munich last week, after Rumsfeld's argument for war against Iraq.

Mr. Rumsfeld may have convinced the leaders of 18 European nations, but not you, Mr. Fischer. It's personal. This seems to me the right way to look at it. The question of failing to convince must be seen in the context of whom we have failed to convince."

We, in turn, have a question: who is the "we" to whom Kelly is referring? To determine this, let's ask, on a personal level, about Mr. Rumsfeld, who may have convinced the prime minister of Spain, but not 70% of the population; who may have convinced the prime minister of the Netherlands, but not 72% of the population; who may have convinced Tony Blair, but not the 52% that see him as George Bush's poodle ; who may have convinced Berlusconi, but not 72.7% of Italians.

Mr. Kelly's column then references pictures published by Stern that purportedly show Mr. Fischer in various criminal acts:

Sometimes "who" explains "why."Mr. Fischer, who are you?

You are the foreign minister of Germany. You have been that since 1998, when Germany's left-wing Greens party, of which you are a leader, won enough in the polls to force the Social Democratic Party into the so-called Red-Greens coalition government.

But for the formative years of your political life, you were no man in a blue government suit. You were a man in a black motorcycle helmet. That is what you were wearing on that day in April 1973 when you were photographed, to quote the New Left historian Paul Berman, "as a young bully in a street battle in Frankfurt."In 2001, Stern magazine published five photographs of you in action that day. What these pictures depicted was described by Berman in a deeply informed 25,000-word article, "The Passion of Joschka Fischer" (The New Republic, Sept. 3, 2001). The photos showed you, Mr. Fischer, inflicting a "gruesome beating" on a young policeman named Rainer Marx: "Fischer and other people on the attack, the white-helmeted cop going into a crouch; Fischer's black-gloved fist raised as if to punch the crouching cop on the back; Fischer's comrades crowding around; the cop huddled on the ground, Fischer and his comrades appearing to kick him . . ."

Thus, according to Kelly, Mr. Fischer. Well, on the principle that who's lead to why's, perhaps we should find out who Mr. Rumsfeld is, the man who was appointed to be Secretary of Defense after the Supreme Court forced the nation to ignore the popular vote totals in favor of the dubious balloting practices of Florida and elevated George Bush to the Presidency. Let's start with a picture, too. How about this one, of Mr. Rumsfeld as Reagan's "personal envoy" shaking hands with Saddam Hussein in 1983? No black gloved fists are involved. Rather, we see only the oiliest cordiality all the way around. The pic was published by CNN, who interviewed Rumsfeld. 1 Here's how that went:

McIntyre [CNN reporter]: Well, let me take you back to about 20 years ago. The date, I believe, was December 20, 1983. You were meeting with Saddam Hussein, I think we have some video of that meeting. Tell me what was going on during this meeting?

Rumsfeld: Where did you get this video, from the Iraqi television?

McIntyre: This is from the Iraqi television.

Rumsfeld: When did they give it to you, recently or back then?

McIntyre: We dug this out of the CNN library.

Rumsfeld: I see. Isn't that interesting. There I am.

McIntyre: So what was going on here, what were you thinking at the time?

Rumsfeld: Well, Iraq was in a battle, a war, with Iran."

To explain about the who, the Rumsfeld who was being browbeaten, Mr. Kelly has it, by the bullying Mr. Fischer, scum that arose from the very streets, here's a little background from the Washington Post:

"Among the people instrumental in tilting U.S. policy toward Baghdad during the 1980-88 Iran-Iraq war was Donald H. Rumsfeld, now defense secretary, whose December 1983 meeting with Hussein as a special presidential envoy paved the way for normalization of U.S.-Iraqi relations. Declassified documents show that Rumsfeld traveled to Baghdad at a time when Iraq was using chemical weapons on an "almost daily" basis in defiance of international conventions."

Interesting, as Rummy might say. So, shall we add up atrocities so far? On the one hand, we have Mr. Fischer supposedly beating up a policeman and attending a rally in which someone was killed. On the other hand, we have our Defense secretary being wined and dined by Saddam Hussein, whose case he later represented to his boss, President Reagan, while, what was it? 300, 000? 500,000 Iraqi and Iranian casualties were, even at that time, piling up. Interesting.

Ah, and it gets more interesting, doesn't it? Return with us to March 24, 1984. On that day the UN released a report on the Iraqi use of chemical weapons. Does Mr. Kelly find those kind of weapons shocking? Does he find them cause, now, to invade Iraq? Well, on March 24, 1984, Mr. Rumsfeld didn't. No, Mr. Rumsfeld was returning ot Baghdad on that day to resume meetings with Iraqi ministers.

Interesting. And did that meeting have consequences? Oh, yes it did. Here is the chronology from the cooperative research site:

November 26, 1984. The United States Government re-established full diplomatic ties with Baghdad [Gwertzman 11-27-1984] even though it was fully aware that Iraq was using chemical weapons in its war against Iran.


1985. U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz successfully convinced Rep. Howard Berman to drop a House bill that put Iraq back on the State Department's list of states that sponsor terrorism. Shultz argued that the United States was actively engaged in "diplomatic dialogue on this and other sensitive issues," and asserted that "Iraq has effectively distanced itself from international terrorism." The Secretary of State further claimed that if the U.S. discovered any evidence implicating Iraq in the support of terrorist groups, the U.S. Government "would promptly return Iraq to the list." [Jentleson 1994 p. 54]


Here's how Kelly's column ends:

"So, that's who you are, Mr. Fischer, the man we haven't convinced. You are the man for whom Munich wasn't enough, the man who needed Entebbe to convince him that murdering Jews was wrong. You ask to be excused. You have been excused."

And here's how we will end this post: "So that's who you are, Mr. Rumsfeld, the man who wants to convince us now to go to war, but who once found nothing inexcusable in a relationship with a country who was daily using chemical weapons to fight an aggressive war in 1983; the man who, in 1984, acting as a go-between, was instrumental in sealing a "special relationship" between Iraq and the United States which, by happy coincidence, preceded the use of scud missiles against Iran to the extent that perhaps 300 rained down upon Teheran in 1988; the man whose boss, President Bush, was clearly using the jingoistic side of the potential war to defeat the wan opposition in November, 2002; the man who now tells us that war is so urgent that it should be fought in a matter of days, but who once was so careless of the Iraqi use of the weapons of mass destruction that he made it an opportunity for profit on the part of American military contractos. You tell us that the European opposition isn't inexcusable. Well, no, Mr. Rumsfeld, it isn't inexcusable. Your hypocrisy, though, is."