Germany: Opposition builds up over Afghanistan

German writers and philosophers have begun to condemn military intervention in Afghanistan as an "invasion", a "mistake", and a "delusion". In an essay titled 'Cowardice before our own people' last week in Der Spiegel weekly, philosopher and writer Richard David Precht ridiculed the argument of defence minister Franz Joseph Jung that the military mission in Afghanistan was not "a war". The German government calls the military mission "a stabilisation operation." Precht said this wording deserves "a place of honour in the dictionary of stultification." The government's language, he says, is a symptom of "cowardice before its own people." Precht's article appeared six weeks before the German parliamentary elections due in September. German military intervention in Afghanistan is debated in the media daily, but political parties, with the sole exception of the Left, are refusing to make it a campaign issue. Precht's essay, and other recent publications criticising the German military mission in Afghanistan, breaks this coalition of silence about the war.