10 October 2001
German justice minister Herta Daeubler-Gmelin (and pretty much the whole ruling coalition in Germany) became the bete noir of the American right when she claimed that Bush was going to war in Iraq to help distract attention from domestic issues.
(Some interesting tidbits you don't usually see in the domestic news: the Red/Green coalition which recently won reelection was flagging at the polls until they introduced criticism of Bush's Iraq policy into their platform, then their numbers started climbing. The Greens -- to the left of the Social Democrats and generally more critical of the US -- won seats at the expense of their coalition partners. But I digress.)
She was duly sacked for her indiscretion. Bluntness and honesty are dangerous traits for a politician to possess.
But Daeubler-Gmelin's analogy was more apropos than she at first thought. Hitler, desperate for some quick successes during a period when battle victories were few and far between, also attacked the USSR after the war on his western front started going badly (England was proving significantly tougher an opponent then his strategists had expected).
That, of course, created a two-front war that eventually sealed the fate of the Reich. Military historians typically point to that decision as Hitler's greatest blunder.
And what is Bush doing now that the search for Osama is turning out badly (Where is he, anyway? Whatever happened to "Hunt 'em down, smoke 'em out?"), and Afghanistan is once again a patchwork of bickering warlord's feifdoms that is starting to make Afghans feel nostalgic for the Taliban?
Trying to start a war with Iraq, apparently in the hopes of getting some quick successes to trumpet back home! Wherever he is, Osama must be delighted to hear this news.