My friend Joerg Wolf, who runs the superb Atlantic Community site, is starting a campaign to get German citizens to recognize the sacrifices that Bundeswehr soldiers are making in Afghanistan.
Expressing support for the country’s soldiers in Afghanistan may be common in the United States, but can be hard to find in Germany. While most US critics of the war Afghanistan make extra efforts to distinguish between criticism of the strategy/purpose of the wars and the service of the troops, such differentiation usually is not made in Germany. Besides, It is practically unheard of to see a car with the bumper sticker “Support our Troops” in Germany.
The Bundeswehr troops do not get much moral support from citizens, media, celebrities or politicians. Instead many soldiers are concerned about the opinion polls that indicate popular disapproval of the Afghanistan war.
Therefore the Atlantische Initiative has teamed up with Germany’s biggest daily newspaper and started the campaign “Feldpost für unsere Soldaten!”
We encourage our readers and members to write short personal messages of support for the Bundeswehr troops. We will then forward the best ones to the various bases in Afghanistan. Several hundred messages have already been published by our partners at the top-selling periodical, Bild.
While there’s a certain bitter irony in lamenting the lack of fighting spirit in Germany, they are one of our most important allies and 42 of their soldiers have died fighting in Afghanistan, putting them behind only the USA, UK, and Canada. They deserve the thanks of their nation and ours.
