And this time it has to do with the killing of a mass murderer (an interesting editorial piece, I’m paraphrasing most of this).
Damned if you do, I always say. For years Germans sardonically reproached George W. Bush for not being able to capture the mastermind behind the 9/11 attacks. Now that Osama bin Laden has been located and killed during an attempt to capture him, that was wrong too.
Here are just a few popular and very predictable politically correct party line reactions to the killing as presented by the German state media:
“Bin Laden was simply bumped off.”
“What kind of a country is this that could cheer at such an execution?”
“He was a 54-year-old father of a family.”
“German law professors go on record as saying that the US commando action violated international law.”
And of course the admonition cannot lack that “Obama only did this to get re-elected.” Other possible reasons for the killing of the man who was responsible for the most terrible attacks upon the United States since Pearl Harbor are apparently not imaginable for those in charge at German state television (WDR, Jörg Schönenborn).
More to follow here very soon I’m sure.
Und warum nur fällt es in diesem Land so schwer, eine sehr einfache Erkenntnis zu formulieren: Diese Welt ist ohne den Massenmörder aus Saudi-Arabien eine bessere. Darauf wird man sich doch wenigstens einigen können.
Observing Hermann 
This is one of those days when I really, really hate Germans and Germany. I’ve just finished a spin around the various German media outlets and my blood is boiling. I’m sitting here in New York. I was here on 9/11 and saw everything. And today I read this:
Die USA haben eine historische Chance verpasst. So viel lässt sich heute schon sagen – ganz gleich, ob die Operation in Abbottabad von Anfang an als kill mission geplant war, oder ob die Einsatzrealität am Ende keine andere Option zuließ. Die Tötung Osama bin Ladens war kein moralisches Vergehen, sondern ein strategischer Fehler.
To any German, I say FUCK YOU, ASSHOLES!
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Now if someone would only check their freezers at home for human heads, we might get some kind of insight into the reasoning behind all this Besserwisser crapola.
I feel your pain, Jeffrey, but I can honestly say that I have reached the point where typical German reactions like this, being so predictable as they are, don’t really even phase me much anymore (should I be worried?). It’s kind of like, I dunno, zen or something. I’ve transcended this experience and watch with calm from some other astral plane.
And, in their defense, I also get the feeling that it’s all automated somehow, don’t you? You know, as if they have been programed or something and these things just come out of their mouths mechanically and they can’t really help it.
Hey, what do you want? In the end they are all just plain old unhappy and cynical and want everyone else to be the same. That’s quite human really. So maybe they’re not automations after all.
It’s more or less like a rabbit in a lab getting his enphedimine pellet. I know it’s conditioned into them, but I ran out of pity for them a long time ago.
Hermann Observer,
Usually I’m more like you and just laugh at the constant griping and complaining and prognostications of the ever-imminent demise of America that flows out of the German press on a daily basis. You put it well. It’s automatic, the default mode. There’s very little thinking done among the German press.
But today — I’m sure you still have a few days like mine today — after reading around twenty different German articles shitting on Americans, I just had to vent a bit. I haven’t reached your astral level just yet.
Here are a few clips of what I read and my terse responses:
Politisch ist die Mission zwar ein Erfolg. Aber durften die das? Hat Altkanzler Helmut Schmidt recht, wenn er die Operation als völkerrechtswidrig abkanzelt? Oder hat der Jurist Barack Obama eine plausible Rechtfertigung?
Hau ab.
The United States must engage in critical self-examination to answer the question of whether the fixation on terror and wars has not tended to paralyze the nation and restrict it in its development.
Fuck off.
Americans are celebrating, but there are serious doubts about whether the targeted killing was legal under international law and the laws of war.
Shove it.
The strangest thing to me is that 99.9% of Americans have no idea just how virulently anti-American the German press is. Americans could really give a fuck about Germans and we don’t care what the hell they think, but if they knew just how conflicted with envy and anger the Germans are they would just shake their head at these sad fucks known as Germans. They were Nazis in the Dad’s generation and today they’re just another species of fuckhead. Same old same.
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My German son got up and left the room during one of the TV diatribes against the US this week. He finds it disgusting. As an Ami, I do, too. What most Germans don’t realize is the extreme irony of a country that historically has been associated with criminals (Täter) reflexively devoting so much loving attention to criminals. As my German wife said this morning in denglish: “We love our Täter.” You won’t get a laugh if you point this out to an average German, though. This is “beer serious” (Bierernst), and it doesn’t get any more serious than that.
When I read all that crap in the German media, it enrages me. In a country where the tongue is the main weapon since 1949, where the big mouth talker and Besserwisser orate on every theme on God´s earth as apostels of knowledge, one can only expect more and more WORDS, useless WORDS of Gutmenschen and moral-high-flying ultra socialists, who as Europeans do nothing for freedom on this planet but talk. Their doing is the daily blown-away-forgotten-wind-speak of nothingness and their role in the world is dissolving rapidly. Forget these Heuchler(consummate hypocrites) to the butchers of freedom.
Every further word I hear, just makes me more happy that Obama was served what he earned. Took a while, but less than half as long as a German road would need to get done. Thanks USA!
A.K.,
In a country where the tongue is the main weapon since 1949, where the big mouth talker and Besserwisser orate on every theme on God´s earth as apostels of knowledge, one can only expect more and more WORDS, useless WORDS of Gutmenschen and moral-high-flying ultra socialists, who as Europeans do nothing for freedom on this planet but talk.
Damn. I wish I had written that.
I didn’t vote for Obama and I still think he’s something of a phony, but on the decision to go in with special forces instead of slinging a couple bunker-busters, I’m going to give him props. Now, it’s possible that Bin Laden was conveniently killed so that Obama wouldn’t have to deal with the issue of a trial before the next election cycle. I don’t really care. I’m just glad an American bullet ripped through his brain.
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