By Matt Hawes
Via the UK’s Daily Mail:
German soldiers are wearing their hearts on their sleeves – in the form of a badge that protests their country’s involvement in the war in Afghanistan.
Some troops have taken to wearing the cloth accessory that states – ironically – ‘I fight for Merkel’ in a bid to persuade the German Chancellor Angela Merkel to explain exactly what they are fighting and dying for.
Yet, as the Germans question what their friends and family are giving up their lives for, the U.S. is asking them to deepen their commitments.
Chancellor Merkel is to make a statement to parliament tomorrow. Her spokesman said she wants to make clear her ‘high-esteem’ for the work of the German soldiers in Afghanistan in the light of the recent casualties.
But she will be speaking in the Reichstag after being put under pressure from U.S. General Stanley McChrystal, who arrived in Germany today with a brief from the White House to get the Germans to do more in Afghanistan.
With the rise in U.S. pressure to further engage, the German people are sending their own message to their leaders.
The trouble for Mrs Merkel is that German involvement is deeply unpopular with some 80 per cent of the public, who want the troops to come home. Germany’s disastrous wars of the last century have left its public with a deep pacifistic streak.
The German press has been swift to condemn the government for its indecisiveness.
The Financial Times Deutschland said: ‘With every dead German soldier in Afghanistan, the calls for an immediate withdrawal grow louder. This reflex shows that the German public is still not clear about the character of the mission.
Or, perhaps Germany’s citizens indeed clearly see the mission for what it is: a seemingly never-ending effort to nation-build that continues to cost more lives each day.