Germany’s Leftist Hypocrisy

by Stephen Brown
Old habits die hard for European leftists, especially when it comes to criticising America.
The online edition of Germany’s leftist mainstream publication Der Spiegel (The Mirror) prominently displayed on Monday an account critical of the American drone campaign in Pakistan. The basis of the writer’s dislike for one of the most effective anti-terrorism weapons in the civilized world’s arsenal against al-Qaeda and the Taliban is that the drones are killing civilians. Naturally, in keeping with the story’s anti-American angle, both the Pakistani and American governments are accused of misleading people about the true number of innocent non-combatants who have succumbed to drone attacks in North and South Waziristan.
If it concerned only a small, fringe publication, then one could simply overlook the story’s grave shortcomings and blatant bias. But Der Spiegel is one of Europe’s largest and most influential weekly news magazines with a circulation of more than one million. It is so respected that its English-language edition is the only foreign publication linked to the New York Times website’s international news section where the story can be found.
Accompanying the article were photos taken by its one and only source, Noor Behram, a local employee of al-Jazeera, the Arab language news service. Behram stated in the account he had to first ask tribal elders and Taliban leaders for permission to take the photos. The story’s author, Hasnain Kazim, said it couldn’t be guaranteed that the pictures were genuine, since journalists can’t move about freely in North Waziristan. But the snapshots allegedly concur with the dates and locations of drone attacks.
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