The case of the photos of German troops in Afghanistan has aroused conflicting judgements in the German press. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (26/10) comments as follows: “ The shock aroused by the photos is so great also because they are incompatible with the image that the Germans and their politicians have (and want to have) of the army. The limited willingness to send troops abroad depended on the implicit presupposition that German soldiers would remain exemplary citizens in uniform even in areas of crisis in the world, soldiers whose example would also rub off on other combatants. But the war and constant familiarity with death, violence and horror have also had an effect on the soldiers. That cannot excuse perversities like those that have emerged. But it’s nothing new that things turn out differently on the front than they do in the barracks or during training. This too is something the government and the Bundestag should bear in mind when they send the army for a so-called mission of peace”. An editorial in the Süddeutsche Zeitung comments: “ These photographs may shock the world… but the world is prepared for this kind of photos… it knows that sooner or later they will emerge. For in Afghanistan, in spite of all the assurances to the contrary, a war is being fought: and every war brings with it countless unimaginable horrors“. […] “ It is understandable that the politicians should be enraged by the abuses perpetrated by German soldiers. They must do all in their power to stop such events. But the real coming to terms with the army’s missions abroad has yet to start: because Germany wanted to help. But instead we stumbled into a war“. “Reinforcing the role of Parliaments in Europe” is the title of a political analysis by Patrick Martin-Genier, professor at the Jean-Moulin University in Lyon, published in the French Catholic daily LA CROIX (25/10). Taking his cue from the “debate on the creation of a 6th Republic in France, revived” in recent days, the author underlines “the need to revalue the role of Parliament” in the EU countries “by restoring to it the means to work and exercise its own control over the executive”. According to Martin-Grenier, “ in the countries that surround France the executive concentrates the maximum power in its own hands”. “The powers of the British Prime Minister – he points out – have nothing to envy those of the President of the French Republic”; in Great Britain “the executive fully exercises its own authority with an iron hand”. In Germany “the absolute majority confers similar power on the Chancellor” and “the parliamentary opposition has no margin for manoeuvre”. To “ reinforce the role of the Parliaments through which the representation of the population is expressed“, says Martin-Genier, it would be desirable “ to create a genuinely presidential regime and suppress the role of the prime minister”, or “adopt the proportional system, making way for wider coalitions more representative of society”. The violent street demonstrations in Hungary on the 50th anniversary of the uprising of 23 October 1956 are commented on in an editorial in the French daily LE MONDE (25/10). They are the consequence of the exasperation caused by the measures adopted by the government to re-order the state finances, and in particular the discovery that “the Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany had deliberately concealed from citizens the sacrifices that awaited them”. The disorders have “fuelled the conflict between the left in power and the right” in opposition, revealing “ a fragile and wounded Hungary, while the European Union had hoped to turn a country, which this year avoided the political alternation frequent in Central Europe, into a centre of stability “, into a “ model of democratic renewal”. A four-year-old boy at the time of the revolt in 1956, the Hungarian Primate and President of the CCEE Cardinal Peter Erdö, interviewed by the Italian Catholic daily AVVENIRE (26/10), says that “ there is a public debt in the moral sense to the populations exploited for forty years” by the Communist regime . A debt that not all Westerners are willing to recognize”. That’s why the EU is asked to show “ compassion “. “ The EU should not reason – warns the cardinal – as if everything were as it is in the West. How can those who have lost all means of production participate in the free market and withstand the competition of the great multinationals? These are questions that need to be tackled with compassion in a spirit of mutual solidarity”. “There can be no victory in Iraq. The only choice is between an honourable exit and a scuttle, an undignified withdrawal”. Hence the need for “a negotiated withdrawal” by the USA and Britain from Iraq, writes Patrick Seale in the British daily THE GUARDIAN ( 24/10), even though, he explains, “few policy makers in Washington and London are yet prepared to accept this gloomy conclusion” and there are “ still those who believe that some form of ‘victory’ can be achieved “. The facts, however, cannot deceive us, argues Seale, convinced that the “USA and the UK ought rapidly to announce the date of their military withdrawal from Iraq” involving “ neighbouring countries like Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and Kuwait in the search for a settlement in the country”.
