Today, after you view some of the comments coming out of WikiLeaks....you kinda end up scratching your head over anything worth saying. Yes, there was a judgement that Chancellor Merkel was not prone to take any risks, and rarely showed any creativity. Shocking? No. If you asked any German guy in a pub over a beer if Merkel would make a great soccer coach....they'd start laughing because she simply doesn't want to ever take risks, and she wasn't out making new strategies out of old strategies.
Yes, the might analytical power of the US State Department had classified this nature of Merkel as secret, yet most every German would have repeated the same statement.
Then you had the comment on the Foreign Minister Westerwelle.....as incompetent and anti-US. Again, this comes out of a state department analyst. Most Germans in a pub setting....would readily agree that Westerwelle took a job that he doesn't really fit into.....and as for the anti-American comment....it'd be hard to prove or disprove this.
There's probably dozens of messages that provide some moment of analysis over what German leadership said or did.....and some bold interpretation over the situation.
My belief is that a guy who regularly reads my blog probably gets better "intelligence" over Germany....than what the State Department dreams up. Although I admit that food and beer make into my blog a fair bit and the State Department would never....ever....report on things like that.
So the bold shock of WikiLeaks has come and gone. By Tuesday....folks will have forgotten the comments, the secret messages, WikiLeaks, and gone back to study the latest soccer scores.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
The point about this "Cablegate" is (besides being maybe counter-productive to our diplomatic efforts) that it may give many political leader the first honest opinion about them they ever received. It may be still an opinion, but since our diplomats had no gain by lying in these reports, it may reflect the facts quite well (Noone should be offened that it were American diplomats that wrote this. I stongly believe that the results would be the same if you look at the cables of other countries)
Especially Germans should love this bloody honesty since it matches their nature so perfectly to speak out directly what they think (as far as I experienced it)
P.S.: As much as I condemn the way this data was stolen and published, I am also shocked about the efforts of our government spying on allied and UN officials in violation of the agreement we signed. I think even in the war of terror this is far off for (self-proclaimed) "good guys"
I would like to see a list of all the things that didn't show up in a quarter million pages of documents.
Of all the conspiracies, supposedly evil ulterior motives, secret agreements with companies, etc. that the US is constantly accused of, most must have shown up somewhere in so many documents if there was anything to them.
But the worst that they come up with is that Westerwelle was called a beginner behind his back?
don't forget that the "top secret" files are missing here in this leak (only "secret" and "confident" have been leaked so far). If such a conspiracy would exist (what I doubt) you would not find the information in files that so many thousand individuals can access.
But if you are interested in conspiracies, maybe the announced leak of these bank files will be more juicy for you ;)
Post a Comment