Die Linke says: No to military intervention

Die Linke anti-war protesters

Thomas Kachel from Die Linke, the German Left Party, spoke recently at Stop the War’s ‘Ten Years On’ conference. He brought greetings from the party’s grass roots working group on peace and international affairs – the link between the party and the peace movement in Germany.

“The greetings from my side are all the more heartfelt since I was here in London on 15 February and witnessed personally the magic of the day, and marveled at the scale of what you as the British peace movement had achieved.

In Germany, the organisational work of our party was crucial to achieving the success of 350,000 people in the streets of Berlin demonstrating against the war that day  – given that the size of Berlin is a third of that of London also an overwhelming success for our movement. Our rallies across Europe were the decisive step towards the delegitimation of the governments of the so-called ‘coalition of the willing’ – the collaboration of the peace movements on that day – a piece of ‘European integration’ that we all can fully endorse!

Today the Party of the Left is the only party in the German Parliament that has consistently opposed the push of successive federal governments for military interventionism, their longing to be ‘grown up’ again, back in the club with the ‘big boys’, the US, the UK and France.

Actually, we reject this analogy. Being grown up means to reject posturing with military muscle, and to face up to one’s own responsibility. After all, we are the nation that initiated two catastrophic world wars and the one that, today, is the third largest weapons exporter in the world.

This new military appetite brings forth the most exquisite irony if the federal government wants to explain what can’t be explained.  They say they are ‘ashamed’ about ‘not helping’ in the intervention in Libya, so we should help in Mali. Hold on, didn’t the upheavals in Mali come about as a direct consequence of the upheavals following the Libya intervention? So we are intervening to stop the consequences of intervening. Where is the logic in that?

That’s why our party has been consistent all along in arguing that the German basic law does not allow for German forces to be deployed in foreign interventions.

In the run-up to the general elections this year, this stance incurs the wrath of all other parties, especially from the Social Democrats – their wrath is the wrath of the newly converted. Together with the German Greens, they have signed up to the ideology of human interventionism.

As I said, there is huge pressure now piling on us, also from a streamlined bourgeois media, in the run-up to the General elections

But I can tell you today from our first discussions of the party election manifesto already it is clear that we will fight this election with a clear commitment to non-interventionism, and the pledge to withdraw all German troops from foreign missions unilaterally.

Let me say one last word about February 2003:

When people say well, so many people and still the war was fought: At the very least, friends, we have made fighting the next one much harder for them. I am convinced that one of the prime reasons that they have so far shirked from attacking Iran is the fear to become as delegitimised by us as they were over Iraq.

We hope to continue building a strong alliance with you, to develop a culture of peace across Europe, so that we can count on each other to recreate a strong cross-European movement for peace. We are with you in Solidarity.”