The latest STERN-cover (Nr. 44, 23.10.2008) shows President Bush with a little tattered American flag. The title reads “The Ruinator: In only eight years George W. Bush has ruined the most powerful country in the world.”
The editorial alleges that “George W. Bush has led America to the edge of bankruptcy. Economically, morally and politically.”
The article itself is titled “Dishonorably discharged” and gives GWB the blame for everything you can only imagine: The economic crisis, pollution of the environment, etc.
And this is how STERN (page 44) describes the world GWB has created:
It is a new world, in which Abu Ghraib and no longer the Statue of Liberty is the symbol of America. In which the “Axis of Evil” is not made of Iraq, Iran or North-Korea, but of Vice-President Cheney and Bush.
I am not going to translate any more of this. No!
I prefer reading this sarcastic article called “Widening the Gap” by Malte Lehming, Wall Street Journal Europe, Oct 21, 2008:
Once upon a time there was a big, peaceful, democratic country that welcomed immigrants, turned dishwashers into millionaires and selflessly promoted world peace. Then one day, an evil figure named George W. Bush appeared. He stole the presidency, shamelessly exploited the fear of terror after the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, brought the country under his control, established a surveillance system of thought police, prayed to God for the Almighty’s support in his unlawful war against Iraq, broke all international treaties, cared nothing about global climate change, locked people up without rights at Guantanamo, and was a fervent devotee of the death penalty. His reign of terror lasted eight years. But it will soon be over: Whether Barack Obama or John McCain wins next month’s election, everything will be all right once again between the U.S. and Europe.
That, with only a little exaggeration, is the calculus of the average liberal German. For the average liberal German, Mr. Bush was always two things: first, a destroyer of Western values and cause of trans-Atlantic alienation; and second, an ideal screen upon which to project his own fundamental skepticism of America. By becoming the focal point of all of continental Europe’s antipathy — against actual U.S. policies as well as American society and its values — the Texan bad guy now nourishes the German hope that, without him, original sin can be reversed and the doorway back to Paradise found. It can’t get worse: This prophecy for the post-Bush era is shared by all Germans, from left to right.
Unfortunately, it’s an illusion. Whether with Mr. Obama or Mr. McCain, the dissonance between the U.S. and Germany will only increase. (…)