"Import Export" column: With the yoga mat against the IS

The times of the big silent marches and peace demonstrations are over.

Today is cross-fronted, what the stuff holds.

Some now carry their dusty peace flag and dove of peace out on lateral thinker marches.

And 99-balloons-Nena is now singing for the Schurbler and drinking moon water (whatever that is supposed to be).

Not only the symbols have remained the same, but also the anti-Semitism and the bottomless self-righteousness.

You think you're on the right side of history.

A few days ago, the Bundestag voted to extend the anti-IS mandate.

Even the Greens agreed.

While Joschka Fischer had paint bags thrown at him at the special party conference of the Greens in 1999 when he spoke out in favor of military intervention in Kosovo, the extension of the IS mandate went through with almost no song.

Tears for War Criminals

Radical pacifist positions have aged about as well as Nena. Pacifism in a nutshell can still be found today with Konstantin Wecker and Margot Käßmann (also turn the other cheek and love of enemies and such) and in parts of the left - just remember how many tears were shed in 2020 when the war criminal Qassem Soleiami was killed by a US drone was killed, including criminal charges against Angela Merkel. Of course, war criminals also have human rights, and a trial for the head of the Al-Quds Brigades would only have been desirable for the purposes of enlightenment. But the numerous victims of Soleimani's years of ruthless terror and expansionist warmongering in the Middle East seem to move little to tears.

The pacifists are right about one thing: war is always wrong.

It always costs innocent lives.

But sometimes staying out is even more wrong.

Radical pacifism doesn't make the world a more peaceful place.

Sometimes a military operation is just morally right, like in 2014, when the so-called "Islamic State" committed genocide against the Yazidis.

Cem Özdemir was right when he said that IS couldn't be stopped with a yoga mat under your arm.

And sometimes military intervention might have been better.

Around 2013, after the Assad regime used nerve gas against civilians, which Obama said crossed a "red line."

He then threatened Assad with a military strike, but this military strike never came.

You could call it failure to provide assistance.

A free pass for Assad,

and then Russia came to his military aid.

At the time, the failed Libyan intervention was often used as an argument, but Libya is not Syria.

And intervention is not the same as intervention.

What happens after an intervention is also important.

And what at what time.

So after the troop withdrawal in Iraq came the IS, in north-eastern Syria the Turkish military with its jihadist mercenaries and in Afghanistan the Taliban.

Hamas, Hizbullah and Assad as neighbors

Pacifism can certainly take on inhumane traits, true to the motto: It may be a war crime or genocide, but the main thing is that you feel a bit like Gandhi and are on the good side of history.

In 2003 Buxtehude and Stuttgart condemned the US war against the Saddam regime.

And not that it was also run for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way, but the general condemnation was that Saddam should be toppled from his pedestal while Iraqis sat in his torture prisons and the Kurds even suffered genocide (Operation seizure).

Pacifism is also inhuman when it comes to the fact that Israel has a military, an iron dome and a few rockets for self-defense.

what should you do

War as the ultima ratio also means not letting the ultima ratio come to pass in the first place.

The anti-IS mandate was only extended for Iraq, but not for Syria.

Recently, IS members broke out of a prison in north-eastern Syria.

800 IS terrorists fled.

They have used civilians as human shields.

The Kurds in north-east Syria have been left alone with thousands of imprisoned IS fighters for years.

In addition, the Turkish military is again bombing targets in north-eastern Syria and Iraq, including the Sinjar region, where IS committed genocide against the Yazidis in 2014.

Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer had already spoken out in favor of an internationally controlled protection zone during the Turkish invasion in 2019, but at the time received a lot of criticism and malice.

I don't know what to do now either.

What diplomatic or military means are now needed to stop these attacks.

There is something between ruthless warmongering and pacifism.

Only allowing Erdogan to continue and leaving the people to his bombs and rockets must not be.

Maybe AKK wasn't so wrong after all.