A Disconnection in Berlin-Baghdad Theory

Re “The Berlin-Baghdad Connection,� Commentary, May 25: I am not a great fan of German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but Andres Martinez’s claim that he is “the world leader most responsible for war in Iraq� is either completely cynical or utterly delusional.

We know from former U.S. Treasury Secretary Paul H. O’Neill’s memoirs, a British Cabinet memo confirmed as authentic, and various other rock-solid sources what most people had long suspected: that George Bush had made up his mind to invade Iraq well before Schroeder’s August 2002 statement of firm opposition to a war.

To blame that opposition for the fact that Bush continued with the disastrous plan he had already settled on -- and then use terms like “perfidy� to attack Schroeder’s perfectly legitimate statement of his government’s position -- puts Martinez on a level of illogic, incivility and outright dishonesty that should not only have made you spike the article but should bar Martinez from any future appearances in a reputable newspaper. Surely there are some rules, even on the Op-Ed page.

Kenneth Pomeranz

Irvine

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Contrary to Martinez’s claim, it was the U.S., not Germany, that first staked out “an absolutist position in advance of the United Nations deliberations over Hussein’s fate.�

Has Martinez missed the underreported stories about the meetings between Washington and London in 2002 designed to manufacture reasons to invade Iraq? Martinez’s argument that Schroeder’s opposition to the war makes him “the world leader most responsible for the war in Iraq� is truly Orwellian.

Steven Wyllie

Los Angeles

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Martinez writes nonsense on Germany’s foreign policy throughout the world, and only those still foolish enough to see how profoundly stupid another invasion of Iraq would be (the British were Iraq’s founders and were earlier driven out) could begin to agree with him.

Try reading any history of Iraq (Charles Trip’s “A History of Iraq� will do) and tell us why this Bush-Blair enterprise would succeed -- whatever the constantly changing reasons given.

Martinez is blithely ignorant of the enterprise, German politics and Schroeder’ moral ground. As one who never knew his father, killed in Romania in World War II before he could meet him, and brought up by a floor-scrubbing mother, Schroeder is a giant on the world scene, and Joschka Fischer is a very able foreign minister. We shall see, perhaps, whether Angela Merkel, leader of the opposition Christian Democrats, will have to eat her words of support for Bush-Blair.

Eighty percent of the German population also opposed the invasion, as did the populations of many of the “allies� whose leaders gambled on perks from Bush -- and now wait and wait. That is, those still in office.

John Buchanan

Cambridge, Mass.