The German magazine Der Spiegel had a recent article where Joschka Fischer, the German foreign minister and a leader in the Green party, has come out proposing a re-armament of Germany AND the abolition of the draft. Yet I understand that the big problem the government faces is unemployment while 100,000 Germans are drafted every year. They claim that they could afford to pay for 30,000 professional soldiers with the same money.

Somehow, I just can\'t jive all these positions together with any sort of coherence. The Greens are supposed to be a bunch of enviro-peaceniks yet call for a more powerful military. To do so they will have to release 70,000 people into the workforce when unemployment is a critical issue.

I suspect that Bush is not taking the German government too seriously these days since they are shooting themselves in the foot right and left. They can\'t be long in power and they\'ll lose it from their own political blundering.

Perhaps some of our European observers could explain this to us Americans.

Here\'s the article:
http://www.spiegel.de/spiegel/english/0,1518,242828,00.html