Paderborn Initiative against the War

We Protest
against the Military Parade
of the British armed forces in Paderborn’s inner city. Starting from Florian Street, 300 soldiers in uniform will be marching through Western Street to the City Hall.

We remember the year 2001, when soldiers from the Bundeswehr took their oath on the square of that same City Hall. Today, as then, we are apparently expected to regard such military displays as something normal, treating them like some innocuous piece of folklore.

We won’t let ourselves be toyed with. Many in this city, along with us, know very well: Wherever the army stands, you can be sure there is war beneath its feet.

After World War II people said, “Never again war!”. Today, supported by public cultivation of the military’s image, war preparations are praised as an obvious foreign-policy measure, as the so-called “securing of the peace”.

In the case of Iraq, every news broadcast shows the bloody reality.  The record-keepers estimate some 100.000 Iraqi dead. On the side of the “victor” too, the number of fatalities steadily mounts. And every close look at Afghanistan and Kosovo reveals that here too no peaceful solution is in sight. 

Two nationally-known opponents of war from Paderborn, in response to today’s parade,

have found clear words against such militarism:

Eugen Drewermann
We must oppose war, because war consists in preparing people for murder. In the framework of the military and war, what people can do to people – indeed, are expected to do to people – that is the horror of it. What our own leaders make out of us, in order to get us to the point that we are ready to kill – that is the evil.

Right down to the core of its being, war entails the destruction and cancellation of all human laws. I repeat therefore: It is all the more ludicrous and monstrous to justify war, or exploit it, as a means for achieving supposedly humanitarian goals. That is precisely what war cannot do. One cannot summon the dove of peace through a sea of blood.

Arno Klönne

Hunger stalks the poverty-stricken zones of the world – and huge sums are squandered on weapons-production for preparing and making war. Nowhere do military incursions bring a solution to global problems. What is the function of army parades? They camouflage the bloody reality of war as it is. Since the time of Kaiser Wilhelm, such processions have served to seduce people into agreeing with militarism. Protest, in such a case, is a necessary method of enlightenment.