War of Words

At the beginning there was censorship, which manipulated our view of the battlefield. That encouraged our imaginations. Some thought they saw the Third World War and a climate catastrophe heading our way; others discovered in the war the continuation of democratic politics by other means. We can hardly remember, perhaps, how angrily they debated with each other at the beginning of 1990, the bellicists and the pacifists. For the general public these debates are already almost forgotten. The television landscape now offers other experts on different subjects, and only the emcees and anchors are complaining about how difficult it has become to stir up a political discussion in which fists really fly. During the Gulf War everything was different. It began with discomfort. Everyone was surprised not because of the war in the Gulf, for which the media had been preparing us for weeks, but because of the power of the peace movement that marched into German streets. The peace movement: almost everyone, even its own protagonists, had believed it dead and buried since 1982 and 1983. Emerging out of the nuclear stalemate between West and East, the peace movement lost direction and support in the wake of Gorbachev's perestroika and Reagan's willingness to disarm. Nevertheless, the peace movement, secure in its determination to oppose a nuclear holocaust, had left behind a heritage: a norm of absolute peacefulness that guarantees survival. Only a few people with good memories can still hear the false tones audible even in the early 1980s. A kind of unified German will to peace brought together the German peace movements in East and West and created the delicate bonds between

Ancient history · Gulf war · History · Intelligence, Security, War Strategy