The Germans are the Key

Submitted by Lee D. Cary (United States), Feb 13, 2006 at 12:17

I was born in 1946. The 1946 document Daniel Pipes refers to is remarkable. One sentence stands out for me: "Thus a terrific internal pressure is building up in their collective thinking." All my lifetime, the pressure has been building.

Cold War polarity kept the lid on this pressure cooker. I ducked-&-covered--got caught up in a heated episode of the Cold War. Everything shifted and I missed the shift. Was not the watershed event the Iranian Revolution coupled with the fall of the Berlin wall? Since then, we've seen a gradual escalation in violence. Now, on the verge of a nuclear-armed Iran, the "terrible pressure" is approaching the tipping point. (Sure, Pakistan has nukes, but they're counter-balanced by India and a less-strident hostility, for now anyway.)

In the "boiling frog" theory, the notion is that people can miss the approach of dramatic change if it comes on incrementally. A frog put into a pan of water slowly brought to a boil will slowly die. But a frog thrown into a pan that's already boiling will jump out. Although some have watched the frog heat up for 60 years, popular Western culture will eventually, after we get over being PC, react like the Fast Boiling Frog. The "jump" stimulus is stacking up to be this outspoken Iranian President who threatens to destoy Israel with nukes.

I propose this thesis: The primary check to the "terrific internal pressure" is not the US, but Europe, that can only be led by Germany. Western Europe, and especially the Germans, have a deep, moral obligation to guarantee the survival of Israel, for obvious reasons. Germany has a once-in-a-millennium opportunity to redeem its guilt and restore its collective honor, tarnished by the horror it brought to Jews during the Third Reich. If the US, and maybe the Brits, have to confront Iran largely alone, things will get very ugly, and then worse, for all concerned.

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