Why be soft on the Pope?
<blockquote>The young Ratzinger served briefly and unenthusiastically with the Hitler Youth and later with a German army anti-aircraft unit guarding the BMW factory in Munich. He says he never fired a shot.
Ratzinger has defended himself from criticism of his war record by claiming - not strictly truthfully - that he could not have avoided military service in the circumstances. Others did and maybe he could have used his training in a seminary to dodge the call-up. (Stephen Bates and John Hooper, "From Hitler Youth to the Vatican," The Guardian, April 20, 2005, <http://www.guardian.co.uk/pope/story/0,12272,1463902,00.html>)</blockquote>
On 6/1/06, Chris Doss <lookoverhere1 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Actually I think he's right (if not for the right
> reasons). The German Cult of Mitschuldigkeit is
> largely self-flaggelating ritual masochism. Given that
> most Germans weren't even alive at the time makes it
> even more lame. It's fake guiltCrippling for the
> national psyche actually.
This is a case of arriving at the correct conclusion despite the wrong premise, but as long as Ahmadinejad holds onto that premise, he ends up helping those who market stories like the fraudulent one of the religious minority dress code in Iran.
On 6/1/06, Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
>
> On Jun 1, 2006, at 11:37 AM, Chris Doss wrote:
>
> > Actually I think he's right (if not for the right
> > reasons). The German Cult of Mitschuldigkeit is
> > largely self-flaggelating ritual masochism.
>
> It'd be nice if the U.S. went through a few guilt rituals for slavery
> and Indian genocide. What you call guilt-tripping has kept Germany on
> pretty good behavior for the last 60 years.
Not any longer. Hating Serbs -- who btw were on the right side of history during WW2 -- definitively removed any lingering guilt-inspired pacifism:
<blockquote>True, unlike the CDU, Schroeder opposed the Iraq war, enabling him to squeak through the election of 2002: East German voters, who made the difference, overwhelmingly opposed the war. But he took active part in the Balkan Wars and in Afghanistan. Peter Struck, his defense minister, made official policy very clear: In the past fifteen years, "the entire world has become the field of operations for the Bundeswehr [the German armed forces]." (Victor Grossman, "In Berlin -- New Faces with Old Policies?" <http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/grossman141005.html>)</blockquote> -- Yoshie <http://montages.blogspot.com/> <http://mrzine.org> <http://monthlyreview.org/>