Now, as defense minister, he is getting to know the downside of fame.
Germany's most popular politician, admired as much for his youthful good looks as for his straight-talking style, Guttenberg is at the center of a widening scandal over a Sept. 4 NATO air strike in Afghanistan. A German commander called in the strike against two fuel trucks that had allegedly been hijacked by Taliban fighters. It killed an estimated 142 people, including dozens of civilians, and ignited a searing controversy for a country deeply uncomfortable with being engaged in warfare.
Michael Kappeler, AFP / Getty Images
German Defense Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, pictured left on a flight to Kabul, last month fired Germany's top soldier, Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, right, over a controversial airstrike in Afghanistan.
parliamentary committee has been set up to investigate whether the German government – in particular Chancellor Angela Merkel and her young defense minister – lied to the public about the events that led up to the deadly air strike in the northern Afghan province of Kunduz. As fresh details emerge almost daily, opposition parties have dubbed the affair "Kunduzgate" and called for Guttenberg's resignation.
While such an outcome is far from certain, Guttenberg's squeaky-clean image has been tarnished. Having first declared the military's actions "appropriate," three weeks ago he switched tacks and termed it "inappropriate," citing new information.
Now that several other heads have rolled, the dispute has become increasingly centered on Guttenberg himself, whose apparently unshakable self-confidence seems to infuriate his enemies. In the Bundestag today Guttenberg excoriated the opposition for engaging in "domestic skirmishes" while German soldiers are at threat. Rainer Arnold of the opposition Social Democrats responded, "We haven't heard here the minister of defense, but rather the minister of self-defense."
Guttenberg comes by his confidence naturally. At 37, he is Germany's youngest defense minister ever. He comes from a noble Bavarian family that furnished a long line of military officers, including one who was executed for his participation in the 1944 plot to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Guttenberg is married to Stephanie von Bismarck-Schönhausen, a descendant of Otto von Bismarck, who forged the German Empire in the late 19th century.
Yet Guttenberg was largely unknown to the general public before Merkel appointed him economics minister in February. In that post he quickly made an impression on voters during the tense talks over whether to provide German aid to carmaker Opel, a unit of General Motors Corp. While Merkel and other political leaders were pressing for the provision of $1.5 billion in state aid, Guttenberg had the nerve to say out loud what millions of Germans watching the news at home were quietly thinking: Maybe it would be better to let Opel file for insolvency than to throw good money after bad.
After Germany's federal election in September -- and after the first inklings of a scandal over the Kunduz bombing -- Merkel moved Guttenberg to the Defense Ministry. There for the first time he acknowledged that Germany's 4,300 troops in Afghanistan -- the third-largest NATO contingent after those of the U.S. and Britain -- were not part of an international aid mission, but were in a "warlike situation" against the Taliban. Although dozens of German soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, Guttenberg's predecessor, Franz Josef Jung, refused to say they had fallen in combat, angering the troops and misleading the public about the nature of Germany's role in Afghanistan.
That question is at the heart of the debate over what happened in Kunduz on Sept. 4, when Col. Georg Klein called in NATO bombers to launch an airstrike. The original story was that Taliban fighters had stolen the fuel trucks to use them as rolling bombs in an attack against German troops stationed nearby. Klein, it was believed, ordered the airstrike against the trucks, which were stuck in the sandy bottom of the Kunduz River, to prevent such an attack. Guttenberg initially came out in support of his officers, calling the airstrike an "appropriate" response to the threat.
But according to a classified NATO document cited in the German press, Klein ordered the strike to kill a group of Taliban as well as to destroy the trucks. Initially, Jung withheld the fact that dozens of civilians, including children, were among the dead. On Nov. 25, Guttenberg fired Inspector General Wolfgang Schneiderhan, the highest-ranking officer in the Bundeswehr, and Peter Wichert, a senior Defense Ministry official, for allegedly withholding crucial information about the airstrike, which he then deemed "inappropriate."
Schneiderhan has strongly denied holding information back from Guttenberg, and he told the weekly newspaper Die Zeit that Guttenberg was "not telling the truth" about the circumstances surrounding the dismissals.
Beyond the familiar question of who knew what when, the government is now under pressure to explain how the targeted killing of Taliban, and the incidental killing of civilians, conforms to the parliamentary mandate given to Germany's troops in Afghanistan. The question will likely dominate German politics well into the new year.
Yet if he survives the scandal, Guttenberg is all but assured a bright political future. He is considered a shoo-in to become governor of Bavaria should Horst Seehofer, the current, unpopular governor, step down before the next Bavarian election. In the short span of 10 months, Guttenberg has become one of the most promising of Germany's young politicians.
During the run-up to Germany's federal election in September, Guttenberg also showed his playful side. At one campaign event he dutifully had a brass band play the Bavarian and German anthems. Then he called out a cover band for his favorite rock group – AC/DC – and pulled a T-shirt with the band's logo over his dress shirt as the musicians charged into the high-energy "Highway to Hell."
He'll now be doing all he can to ensure that "Kunduzgate" doesn't make that the soundtrack to his political career.
Filed under: World
Source:sphere.com/
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