By Stefan Sasse
Oeffinger the free thinkers, there are now more than four years. Many issues have already been discussed several times in different posts, so that the author often seems unnecessary to explain certain allusions or settings in more detail. Since 2006, the readership, however, has increased substantially, and for those who have joined new, may not always be immediately clear what writes Oeffinger freethinkers. The new series "Something fundamental ..." is this Ripple, in which will see a summary given to specific topics. This episode deals with the Bundeswehr
The abolition of compulsory military service by Defense Guttenberg that his indisputable greatest political power is -. No matter how even the factual issue is - has a number of anxieties and fears aroused. For better or for worse, Germany will now only have a professional army. About all the constantly hovers the threatening shadow of Weimar, where the professional army projecting itself as a "state within a state" and largely to blame for the instability and the final fall of the Republic. Many see this Weimar ghost now with a professional army "army" on the horizon lightning. It is grouped with the hyper-inflation may well be the two largest mental relics from the Weimar period. How great is this threat? And what direction would the army take in the future?
Conscription seemed to be an unavoidable fact in the creation of the Bundeswehr in the early 1950s. The potential millions of potential enemy armies in the East inevitably require a substantial conventional army, they wanted to at least get close to balance upright. This was to lift only with the military service, their introduction in 1955, just ten years after the end of World War II, the first major political protest movement in Germany led: in the so-called "Without me" movement, tens of thousands protested against the introduction of compulsory military service. As the new officers were almost exclusively of old army personnel, the fear of a continuity with the military of the Third Reich was anything but baseless.
For this reason, in addition to military service, of which one is a composition of the army from all layers and thus - in contrast to Weimar - the prevention of a socially homogeneous society against hostile group hoped, the guiding principle of "internal Leadership. "Output, the self image of the Bundeswehr was different from this" internal management "of the self-image of armies of earlier days: they should be used only for defensive purposes and disasters, its members were regarded as" citizens in uniform "and were active through this and stand for election and a uniformed freedom in security and military issues far more cohesive in democracy than they were in Weimar had been the case where select soldiers and not allowed to be selected.
This noble principle had to face, of course, the practical test. The everyday life of the army requires a degree of subordination and discipline and renunciation some fundamental rights as they can with the liberal-democratic claim actually hardly agree. Rarely was the force in the public spotlight, so that crude practices and rituals were always long Hinga to go before we came to them by chance on the ropes. There is little doubt that the sentiments of the majority of professional soldiers is related significantly to the right of center - the majority still within the democratic spectrum, no doubt, but partisans of the SPD, Greens and even Left will be found in its ranks no. The FDP would have it difficult.
fell after the end of the Cold War, the Bundeswehr into a legitimization hole. The great enemy against whom they first established had been no longer existed. Instead, began a new tradition: participation in international missions with the legitimacy of humanistic intervention that enjoyed in the NATO countries since elimination of the communist threat in the developing world of rising popularity. Was the subject in 1993 in Somalia still as credible as the mid-1990s in securing Bosnia, so already the Kosovo war came in 1999 in a bad reputation. No later than the participation in the Afghan war is proving to be a great ordeal of the Bundeswehr, the stakes are completely aimless, largely hated by the population, expensive and dangerous, without any tangible success was in sight.
For the soldiers involved in particular and the institution in general, the Bundeswehr is all a huge problem you dar. must live with the problem of fighting a war at home will be rejected and denounced as once the GIs in Vietnam as a baby murderer. This experience is new for soldiers, and it must be said: the policy it has been shamefully left out in the lurch. The eggs around the concept of finding war, the Abwiegelung and presentation of the operation as an armed Brunnebohren THW - all this must be for those who have their base camp actually only heavily armored and can always rely on guard contribute infinitely frustrating. Accordingly, the soldiers, largely by politics and the media left alone, actually only recourse to a professional ethos for meaning extraction. Professional soldiering without any other context but do not ask for the meaning of the act, but merely a job. Professional soldiering this way will the principles of leadership development ad absurdum.
Paradoxically it is precisely the denial of a spasmodic "normalization" of the view of the Bundeswehr, which produces for its internal constitution hazards. There are discussions as to whether it bravery medals and memorials to fallen and needs to be done with strange sentiment. If I were a soldier, I would probably happen to me quite verscheißert: one hand, I risk life or at least physical and mental integrity and on the other hand, discussed it at home about whether I really do, and whether a piece of metal bestanztes this state somehow affected.
That is not to be misunderstood: I am totally against the mission in Afghanistan, and now also against the war in Kosovo (broke as I was for a political opinion still too young). But the fact remains that the soldiers do their job there. You are not responsible for it, and it is not take a denial to some extent in prison whip properly. With not like it that they are there, but they're - that they need Bravery medals and places of memory, for that we owe them. If the company denies it and regarded as lepers, although this contempt actually rather those due to renew every year without reflection and prospects of success, the mandate - how can you expect then that they are more than "citizens in uniform" feel and committed to see the "inner leadership"? The risk of Weimar states, ie, one is to be a soldier professionals comprehending professional army, with the "dirty politics" will have nothing to do and is very proud to have an independent ethos, much larger fact that one of the new realities not recognizes as the fact that one distributed bravery medals.
Because really offer the transformation of the Bundeswehr into an army career opportunities that will be discussed at all at present. That one already discussed, it is open and low-skilled foreigners to always only consider the potential dangers. Thus, the Bundeswehr just such people provide a solid education, teach them skills that they can after the end of their service in civilian life to do something (which the army is doing already, but its scope can be extended significantly). Language Courses, theoretical knowledge from existing curricula, training of professionals of truck driving on the medical staff to mechatronics and studies at the Bundeswehr universities are possible. Of course, these are colored military indoctrination, and not before the appropriate safe. If the Bundeswehr a detached "parallel society, this approach to the democratically constituted community would be deadly.
fact, it is also possible to give the army a permanent Republican face. There is only a short window of time for it, and it is the only drawback of the current affair of Guttenberg, that this will probably remain unused (although the chance was negligible before). It is necessary that the army as a parliamentary army, but to understand a democracy and the Republic committed army. France and the U.S. have for decades, professional armies, without it being assumed that ever a danger to the Republic. They have their armies, always sworn in the democratic political system, and American soldiers still serve in the world always in the consciousness of defending the freedom (even if they do not always do it). German soldiers are serving in the consciousness that just do their duty. His duty but you can do when you enjoy the shoot some time in the home demonstrations - the freedom not defend. Even if it is often hypocritical enough, though it is often of dubious legitimacy to maneuver the current history of German missions abroad shows that it takes no freedom propaganda to exploit soldiers - misused. A solid anchor in a democratic community that expresses symbolically and medals commemorating his appreciation prevented, certainly not wrong in foreign countries. It is difficult but clearly the injustice in their own country.
0 comments:
Post a Comment