What's most interesting is that this is Germany, where the use of military force has been contentious throughout the post-WWII era. See WSJ, "German Foreign Minister Takes Hit for Libya Stance."
Westerwelle is a leader for the Free Democratic Party, a center-right party most famous for having Hans-Dietrich Genscher serve as foreign minister during the crucial years at the end of the Cold War. But the FDP is internationalist and has a reputation of angering Israel back in the day (the Munich Olympics in 1972). But again, I'm just fascinated by the debate on the deployment of German military force. It's an amazing thing that after 65 years German military power is far from normalized. It's true of Europe generally, that the continent tends to rely on the U.S. for major military operations, but these things don't last forever. And Germany's the one strong economy in a sea of Euro-gloom. Maybe folks ought to step up a bit over there and provide some leadership in foreign policy. This is pretty ridiculous.
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