Johannes
Fischer Drops the Anti-War Rhetoric of The Past
By Eckart Lohse
BERLIN. When German Foreign Minister Joseph Fischer was asked about his past this week while standing next to his U.S. counterpart, Colin Powell, the pecking order soon became clear.
For a couple of seconds Mr. Fischer's face reflected the uncertainty of a boy who has just been reminded of his misdeeds and who knows he is standing in the company of the personification of adulthood. It was up to Mr. Powell, who in his entire life has not experienced anything that could be recognized as an irresponsible phase, to forgive Mr. Fischer his past errors of judgment. He did it because he knew perfectly well that the days of Mr. Fischer's immaturity have long since passed.
But there was a time when Mr. Powell's earnestness in action born of responsibility and Mr. Fischer's ease of argumentation born of not having to bear responsibility came very close to one another. Those were the days when Mr. Powell, exercising his powers as chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, waged the Persian Gulf War and Mr. Fischer, exercising his powers as leader of the parliamentary group of the Green Party in Hesse, argued against this war.
That was 10 years ago, in early 1991. At the time, an international alliance under U.S. leadership drove Iraqi forces from Kuwait. In Germany, the Greens, a party that had, in part, grown out of the peace movement, were particularly opposed to this war. And Mr. Fischer did what some Greens obviously still expect him to do when the United States attacks Iraq even now that he is foreign minister. He screamed bloody murder.
Referring to the -- indirect -- participation of the German armed forces in the war and the role of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, he told the Frankfurter Rundschau newspaper, that if "Mr. Kohl carries on like that he will not go down in history as the chancellor of reunification, but as the chancellor who for the first time since World War II sent German soldiers to die on distant battlefields."
Mr. Fischer rejected the Gulf War, using the kind of strong language that can be used by a regional politician but not a foreign minister. His reaction to the deployment of German soldiers to Turkey on the border with Iraq was to recommend "conscientious objection" on a grand scale. Mr. Fischer took part in demonstrations against the Gulf War and said it had to be made clear to U.S. President George Bush and the German chancellor that there was "no majority for warmongering" in Germany.
But Mr. Fischer also said other things in those days that, if studied closely, showed that in an internal party dispute, he had started to realize that foreign policy had something to do with weighing facts and taking responsibility. In mid-January 1991, Mr. Fischer made a statement that was unusual for the Greens of the day. He said one should condemn not only the attack against Iraq but also the Iraqi attacks on Israel. A few days later, he took part in a demonstration organized by Frankfurt Jews to protest the attacks against Israel.
At the time, the Greens were by no means united in their opinion about how the attacks against Iraq and those made by Iraq against Israel should be weighted. That was made clear by a conflict waged over statements made by Hans-Christian Ströbele, a party leader. During a visit to Israel together with other Greens, he told The Jerusalem Post that the attacks against Israel were the result of Israeli policies toward the Palestinians and the Arab states, including Iraq.
Most Israelis who had been scheduled to meet Mr. Ströbele canceled their appointments. Members of the Green executive committee demanded Mr. Ströbele return to Germany. The man whose comments had attracted such media attention said there had been a misunderstanding and condemned the attacks against Israel as a "wicked crime."
The Green party in Hesse, to which Mr. Fischer belonged, was especially critical of Mr. Ströbele. In contrast to the national executive, the Hessian Greens approved the delivery of defensive weapons to Israel. Mr. Fischer reprimanded Mr. Ströbele, saying he was horrified about his comments and even called him a slave of the Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein.
Mr. Fischer said Mr. Ströbele had caused great harm to the party and was alone in the party with his opinion. A short time later, Mr. Fischer demanded the peace movement issue a sharp condemnation of the anti-Israeli attacks, saying nobody should question Israel's right to existence. He obviously did not see that as a contradiction to his demand for an immediate end to the Gulf War.
At the end of January 1991, the argument among the Hessian Greens about Israel reached a climax at a conference of the regional party in Neu-Isenburg. While the demand for an immediate cease-fire in the Gulf was more or less unanimous, the stance taken above all by Mr. Fischer that Israel had a right to support in defending itself against the attacks only found a majority after a fierce debate.
Even then, other Greens accused Mr. Fischer of following the "logic of war." He has been repeatedly subjected to this criticism, especially when -- by this time he was already foreign minister -- he defended NATO's war over Kosovo.
The current wrangling among the Greens about Mr. Fischer's comments in Washington concerning the U.S.-British attacks on Iraq is only a late reflex compared with the disputes at the time of the Gulf War. Those who object do so mostly for personal rather than ideological reasons.
At the same time, the internal party desert storm in a teacup is a late reminder of the more substantial controversy about the matter among the Greens that is not all that far back in the past. Maybe Mr. Powell was so lenient with Mr. Fischer and let the past be the past because he knows Mr. Fischer accepted the historical relativity of current affairs sooner than the other Greens.