Roland
Hartwig
Syria
and Iraq
German
Bundestag, September 26. 2019,
Plenarprotokoll 19/115, p. 14704
[Roland Hartwig is an Alternative für Deutschland
Bundestag member from the western German state of Nordrhein-Westphalen. He is a
lawyer and here responds to the government’s proposal to extend the German military
mission in Iraq and Syria.]
Iraq and Syria were for a
long time stable states. They provided their citizens with a relative standard
of security, education, health care and job opportunities. This changed in Iraq
in 2003 when a so-called coalition of the willing under the leadership of the
USA attacked that country. Most international law experts however are agreed
that this attack was a war of aggression in violation of international law. In
2003, Frau Merkel chimed in as leader of the opposition to the war song of the
U.S. government, thereby positioning herself against the German Federal
government in the Iraq war. Franz Münterfering
at that time spoke of a “defamation of one’s own country” and a “red herring
against the U.S. administration.
Since then Iraq has sunk
into chaos. Over a million people have been killed. Many of the central
treasures of one of the world’s oldest Kultur
nations were destroyed; an irretrievable loss to all mankind.
Syria then took in over one
million Iraqis. This was a decisive element in the destabilization of the
country in the year 2011. During the violation of Syria’s sovereignty,
independence and territorial integrity, an entire series of states supported
various armed groups in Syria which fought against one another and against the
Syrian government. Hundreds of thousands of people thus were killed. Meanwhile,
the Syrian government regained control over a large part of its territory and
announced a general amnesty.
If you really want to be in
a position of improving the lives of people, as you assert in your motion, then
you must work constructively in common with the Syrian government, Russia and
other parties, so that the people who have fled the country can return home and
re-build an existence. Instead, in this motion, you request a blessing for your
plan for German aircraft, without permission of the Syrian government, to enter
Syrian air space and there reconnoiter targets of military action. Here, you
are moving, in the best case, in a legal gray area, though you are probably
acting counter to international law.
Markus Grubel (CDU-CSU): Have you said that yet to the
Russians?
Disregard of the law, a
globalist agenda and the destruction of people’s homelands run like red threads
through Frau Merkel’s years as chancellor, abroad as well as here in Germany.
Henning Otte (CDU-CSU): An impossible speech.
German foreign policy has
in recent years increasingly led our country into isolation. To that, allow us
to put an end, and we today may yet begin.
Many thanks.
[Translated by Todd Martin]
