If German Special Forces had been the ones to whisk Osama bin Laden from Pakistan – could Germany have reformed him, turning him into a model German citizen? In this tongue-in-cheek skewering of German liberalism, Die Welt columnist Gideon Boss writes that because of those ‘Mickey Mouse’ Americans, we will never know.
For Die Welt, Gideon Boss writes in part:
One might well ask whether things would have been different if an Anti-Conflict Team of Berlin police officers had visited the “terrorist” (or freedom fighter to some) in Pakistan. He would have been amenable to their reasoning and with them, boarded the aircraft. While still in international airspace, he would have agreed to participate in Foreign Minister Westerwelle’s reintegration program for Islamists, and upon landing in Berlin, the political left and Green Party would have rolled out the red carpet.
Presumably, skyscraper critics would most likely have joined the left (after Osama was rejected by the Greens for years of failing to separate his trash and then burning it in his villa’s backyard, which the core of the Green Party could in the end never forgive). After all, he also strongly opposed the war in Afghanistan and for years demanded the withdrawal of Western forces. He could have occupied a seat on the Foreign Citizen Advisory Council. He could have taught adult education classes on video editing and rhetoric, and earned some additional cash doing commercials for beard hair-color products.
Why couldn’t we have integrated Osama into society? True, he used to be a hothead, he attacked a few American cities, okay, but Joschka Fischer once beat up a few policemen, yet later became one of Germany’s favorite politicians. And that would have been precisely the long-range goal: Osama bin Laden, first German foreign minister with a Muslim immigrant background.
The Americans have cheated us out of this happy ending. Now perhaps it will be easier to understand why America’s jubilation was greeted with such outrage here in Germany. You have denied us a good man, you uncultured Mickey Mouse!
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