Friday, August 21, 2009

Hans Rudolf Merz in the footsteps of Neville Chamberlain

On September 29, 1938, the British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain declared, after having signed together with the French Prime Minister Daladier, an agreement with Hitler and Mussolini in Munich that legitimated the annexation of the Northwestern part of Czechoslovakia (Sudentenland) by Germany:

"Peace is at hand".

A year later, World War II had been started by Nazi Germany.

71 years later, on August 20, 2009, the President of the Swiss Confederation, Federal Councillor Hans Rudolf Merz, flew to Tripoli and signed a declaration of official excuse for the arrest of one of Muammar Ghadafi's sons, Hannibal, in Geneva, two years earlier, for charges brought against him of having beaten his servants.
The Swiss President, by this act of apeasement, was convinced to have restored the hounour and the dignity of the Ghadafi family and to have done no harm to the honour of his own country. Meanwhile it was unclear what had been the fate of the servants that had had the courage to protest against their treatment, and two Swiss citizens were still held as hostages by the regime of Tripoli, as President Merz was on his way home.
Mr Hannibal Ghadafi himself had declared, some days before the arrival of President Merz in Libya, his intent to destroy Switzerland, if only a nuclear bomb had been at hand, thereby opening the question whether his honour could be restored by less violent means than by bombing Switzerland.
The carpet for the Canossa journey of President Merz had been laid out by Swiss sociologist Jean Ziegler, a man to whom the late Cuban-Argentinian revolutionary Che Guevara once had declared that he considered him as "the virus in the brain of the monster" (the monster, according to Che, being Ziegler's country, Switzerland).
In an interview with a Swiss newspaper, the day before the Tripoli agreement, Mr. Ziegler had praised Muammar Ghadafi as one of the most serious anti-imperialist political leaders in the world and expressed his gratitude of having been invited repeatedly by the Libyan leader for personal discussions.

By acting in this way, two prominent Swiss citizens, the President of the Confederation, and a fundamentalist professional critic of the same Confederation, have reproduced two stereotypes often attributed to the Swiss national character:

a) secret admiration for authoritarian and autocratic regimes
b) low self-esteem and an underdevelopped sense of honour

President Merz might take some comfort from the debate in the House of Commons on October 3, 1938, when Prime Minister Chamberlain declared:

"...Before giving a verdict upon this arrangement, we should do well to avoid describing it as a personal or a national triumph for anyone. The real triumph is that it has shown that representatives of four great Powers can find it possible to agree on a way of carrying out a difficult and delicate operation by discussion instead of by force of arms, and thereby they have averted a catastrophe which would have ended civilisation as we have known it. The relief that our escape from this great peril of war has, I think, everywhere been mingled in this country with a profound feeling of sympathy."

[Hon. Members: "Shame".]

"I have nothing to be ashamed of. Let those who have, hang their heads. We must feel profound sympathy for a small and gallant nation in the hour of their national grief and loss."

Mr. Bellenger: "It is an insult to say it."

The Prime Minister:
"I say in the name of this House and of the people of this country that Czechoslovakia has earned our admiration and respect for her restraint, for her dignity, for her magnificent discipline in face of such a trial as few nations have ever been called upon to meet."

Parliamentary Debates, Commons, Vol. 339 (October 3, 1938)

Source: http://www.wwnorton.com/college/history/ralph/workbook/ralprs36.htm

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