For all those who do not know, this weekend was the NATO summit in Strasbourg, France. This was particularly interesting because Strasbourg is only about an hour away from Freiburg, so there was a considerable amount of activity in and around Freiburg. The week began with a very large peace rally that took place in downtown Freiburg. I, along with many other IES people, decided to go down and investigate (hoping against hope that we would see people getting tear-gassed and all that good stuff). The crowd was full of communists, hippies of all sorts, general anti-war people, and a few curious participants who were caught up in the crowd and ended up marching around Freiburg (like me). The chants of “Anti-Capitalismo” “Solidarity” and other various anti-NATO slogans aimed at riling up the crowd. Overall it was a fairly solid peace rally, but not as exciting as I was hoping. I did get to see what a peaceful German protest looks like though and it actually is peaceful.
The next portion of my week involved a vist to a center in Freiburg dedicated to the eradication of small arms exportation. Present at the center was an ex-military guy from America, who had been a guard at Guantanamo Bay and is now a pacifist. He gave a long talk about the evils of military and how it is all a big conspiracy by the rich white people to keep the rest of America down. He actually made a couple interesting points, but the majority was so naive and pathetic that I actually began to get angry. I consider myself a pretty liberal guy, but I am also a realist. It would be awesome if there was a chance to eliminate the military but there is no way it is going to happen. The elimination of our military would not solve anything, and in all likelihood would actually drop the world deeper in to chaos. One of our people actually had to get up and leave, and I began criticizing many of the points that he was making. Primarily because they actually had no back up plan. It was: lets get rid of the military. Well what next? “Um.. we don’t know, we are not experts in that sort of stuff.” !!!!!!!!!!!! I became quite angry at that point. We actually had quite a civilized debate until our Egyptian colleague, Dena, decided that she was going to start ripping on the United States and refering to all of us as naive and unwilling to accept the faults of our country. When you cannot have an argument without getting out of control and outrageously emotional, I will not take the time to try to have a discussion with you. All I can do in that situation is yell back, and to be honest, I do not enjoy pointless screaming matches. It was a fairly interesting experience, but it really made me angry with the idiocy of pacifists.
The coup-de-grace of this whole week was my opportunity to go to the Atlantic Youth Summit in Strasbourg, which allowed me to participate in a forum between 300 students and a good portion of the movers and shakers of NATO. It was an absolutely amazing experience. I had the opportunity to listen to the Secretary General of NATO speak and in fact was sitting within a foot of him before he spoke. I tell you it is an absolutely amazing experience to listen to a man who refers to NATO policy in the first person. He is a brilliant man, and also appears to be a fantastic person as well. I was really impressed with his speech and his overall intelligence. I also heard: the Director of Military Operations, the director of policy for the secretary general, Bernard-Henri Levy a French Philosopher, one of the chief correspondents for the Financial Times, and many many others. The whole discussion revolved around the future of NATO and whether is and would remain justified in its operations. Granted alot of it was propaganda, but it really was interesting. Even more exciting than that is that I was able to go see President Obama speak in his first major public speech in Europe. His whole speech revolved around the concept of a new “Era of Responsibility” in economics, foreign relations, nuclear proliferation, climate, and energy. I was impressed with his speech, but the most amazing part was his ability in answering questions. The man is incredible. He can take a stupid question, make it sound important and interesting, make that person feel important and interesting for asking it, and take it in the direction that he knows everyone wants to hear. It is actually a fairly overwhelming experience.
This whole week was quite an experience, one that very few people get to have, and one that makes me increasingly grateful for the opportunity to study over here. In all honesty this was a once in a life time experience that I will remember for the rest of my life.