Hakki
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2001/dec2001/bend-d14_prn.shtml Cohn-Bendit attacks German novelist Günter Grass for opposing Afghan war By Stefan Steinberg 14 December 2001 --------------------------------------------- (...) Cohn-Bendit has found his place in the most belligerent wing of the Greens and has played a leading role in the party’s reorientation, spearheading its support for imperialist militarism. Arguing in a similar manner to Fischer, he regularly evokes the spectre of fascism and the crimes committed at Auschwitz to argue in favour of broad military intervention. In a speech he made at the Hannah Arendt conference in 1995, at a time when most German politicians were arguing for a limited and brief engagement by the military in Yugoslavia, he pleaded for the stationing of troops in Bosnia for a period of “10, 20, 30 years”.
With regard to the US-led war in Afghanistan, Cohn-Bendit has made his views clear in an interview with the German taz newspaper. He declared his preference for an expanded United Nations-led military operation to unseat the “fascistoid, anti-women Taliban government”, with support given to “the liberation struggle of the Afghan opposition, with planes, weapons and soldiers.”
At the recent Green Party conference, which voted emphatically in favour of supporting the war in Afghanistan, Cohn-Bendit managed to stand even further to the right than the party leadership. Together with Ralf Fücks, he introduced a motion which went much further than that favoured by Fischer and the majority of the Greens parliamentary faction. In order to avoid a split with the declining pacifist faction inside the party, Fischer was forced to oppose the Cohn-Bendit/Fücks motion, which called for blanket support for military intervention.
His advocacy of military intervention has not proved an obstacle, however, to his participation in the anti-globalisation and ostensibly pacifist movement Attac. He has been a member of this organisation for the last four years and has spoken at a number of its meetings and conferences.
>From this brief sketch of the career of Daniel Cohn-Bendit it should be
clear that we are dealing with a man who pays little attention to historical
truth or the development of a rounded argument. His claim that opposition by
German intellectuals to the current war in Afghanistan is the same as the
position adopted by France and Britain in 1938 is simply absurd. Despite
their political limitations, those such as Grass are motivated by serious
concerns about the move towards war and the restrictions being made upon
democratic rights in America as well as in Germany, a country which was
primarily responsible for two world wars and the rise of fascism in the
twentieth century.
Cohn-Bendit’s motive in raising the spectre of appeasement proceeds from an entirely opposed standpoint. He demagogically raises the bogey of fascism and “totalitarianism” to stampede impressionistic petty-bourgeois layers into supporting new wars and attacks on democratic rights, enabling German imperialism to forward its own interests on the European and world arena. He likes to pose as a good European, but it would be more correct to describe him as a Euro-chauvinist. His support for the current US-led war is stimulated by the realisation that the only possible way to pursue German interests (and in particular in Europe) is provisionally under Washington’s wing, given America’s present military and economic superiority. He has made it clear, however, that the long-term interests of German and European imperialism are diametrically opposed to those of the US.
In a recent interview with taz headlined, “With a new EU against the USA”, Cohn-Bendit outlined his own view of European developments: “This Europe can only be an alternative to the USA. Basically the neo-liberal project is historically represented by the US, with a Trojan horse in the EU and that is England. We have to strengthen these [European] institutions in such a way that we can deal with this Trojan horse and at the same time define ourselves as a counterbalance to America.”
In response to a question from the taz interviewer, he went onto explain what he regarded as a “good” European and a critic of globalisation: “He must be a radical European. I also want us understand ourselves in a political and cultural sense as a counterbalance to the US.”
In an interview with Der Spiegel magazine, Cohn-Bendit revealed that his version of Europe and the world was one in which German interests played the defining role: “After recognition of the German role in the Balkans and also in the Middle East, German Foreign Policy must now take up the challenge of shaping globalisation.” (...) ---------------------------------------------