Rumsfeld family tie is first victim of war
The American defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has been disowned by his anti-war relatives in north Germany, reports Tony Paterson
By Tony Paterson for The Telegraph.
The Rumsfelds of Weyhe-Sudweyhe, an unremarkable red-brick suburb of Bremen, were once proud of their long-lost cousin, America’s secretary of state for defence – but no longer.
Like many Germans, they are appalled by Donald Rumsfeld’s hawkish attitude to military action against Saddam Hussein. About 18,000 anti-war demonstrators marched through Munich yesterday to protest at his presence at an international security conference – chanting slogans such as “No room for Rumsfeld!”
“We think it is dreadful that Donald Rumsfeld is out there pushing for a war against Iraq,” Karin Cecere (nee Rumsfeld), 59, said from her two-up, two-down home last week. “We are embarrassed to be related to him,” she told The Telegraph.
Margarete Rumsfeld, her 85-year-old mother, was equally dismissive: “We don’t have much to do with him anymore. Nowadays he’s just the American defence secretary to us, but for God’s sake, he’d better not start a war,” she added.
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Sunday 9 February 2003
Rumsfeld family tie is first victim of war
By Tony Paterson
(Filed: 09/02/2003)
The American defence chief Donald Rumsfeld has been disowned by his anti-war relatives in north Germany, reports Tony Paterson
The Rumsfelds of Weyhe-Sudweyhe, an unremarkable red-brick suburb of Bremen, were once proud of their long-lost cousin, America’s secretary of state for defence – but no longer.
Like many Germans, they are appalled by Donald Rumsfeld’s hawkish attitude to military action against Saddam Hussein. About 18,000 anti-war demonstrators marched through Munich yesterday to protest at his presence at an international security conference – chanting slogans such as “No room for Rumsfeld!”
“We think it is dreadful that Donald Rumsfeld is out there pushing for a war against Iraq,” Karin Cecere (nee Rumsfeld), 59, said from her two-up, two-down home last week. “We are embarrassed to be related to him,” she told The Telegraph.
Margarete Rumsfeld, her 85-year-old mother, was equally dismissive: “We don’t have much to do with him anymore. Nowadays he’s just the American defence secretary to us, but for God’s sake, he’d better not start a war,” she added.
They used to feel differently. Twenty-five years ago, the German Rumsfelds were thrilled to welcome Mr Rumsfeld – then the United States ambassador to Nato stationed in Brussels – into their extended family.
Like many Americans keen to trace their European antecedents, Mr Rumsfeld had made contact with the Weyhe-Sudweyhe Rumsfelds, a branch of the family with whom his near relations had lost touch since his great-great-grandfather, Heinrich, emigrated to America during the 19th century.
Mr Rumsfeld paid three visits to Dietrich Rumsfeld, a bricklayer, and his wife Margarete in their small artisan’s cottage. On the last occasion, they greeted him with chicken soup and roast pork for lunch “It was a really pleasant family gathering, almost like a wedding,” said Mrs Cecere last week. “Mr Rumsfeld seemed a genuinely nice man. It is such a shame about his war ambitions.”
She had grown up, she said, during the Second World War and her instincts were to search for a solution to the deadlock with Saddam that did not involve military action. “I was born in the war and saw its aftermath, and my mother went through it,” she said. “There must be a peaceful way of solving the Iraq problem.”
This change of heart over their Rumsfeld cousin reflects the mood in Germany. More than 60 per cent of Germans oppose a war and the US defence secretary has become a hate figure for the country’s peace movement.
His desire to topple Saddam by force is at odds with the Social Democrat-led government of Chancellor Gerhard Schr
I wonder how Mr. Rumsfeld relatives (and the German people) feel about the 100,000+ victims of Saddam Hussein own poeple, not to mention the war with Iran, were hundreds of thousands more were killed? How easy they forget that he used chemical agents on the Kurds, killing thousands of men, women and children. Not to mention the mass graves they have found, all victims of this brutal dictator, the torture chambers, the public mutilation of Iraqi’s. We (the USA, Brits, and the 36 other countries who had the guts and contributed to getting rid of this tyrant, have nothing to to be ashamed of, or to apologize for. As the English poet Erasmus Darwin once said “He who allows oppression shares the crime”!
I wonder how Mr. Rumsfeld relatives (and the German people) feel about the 100,000+ victims of Saddam Hussein own poeple, not to mention the war with Iran, were hundreds of thousands more were killed? How easy they forget that he used chemical agents on the Kurds, killing thousands of men, women and children. Not to mention the mass graves they have found, all victims of this brutal dictator, the torture chambers, the public mutilation of Iraqi’s. We (the USA, Brits, and the 36 other countries who had the guts to contribut to getting rid of this tyrant, have nothing to to be ashamed of, or to apologize for. As the English poet Erasmus Darwin once said “He who allows oppression shares the crime”!