In today's feuilletons - Pro-Washington stance of the Ossis as a knee-jerk reaction to their communist past?

In a full-page interview in the Süddeutsche Zeitung on conflicting political models in the USA and Europe, British historian Tony Judt has absolutely nothing good to say about either the USA or Britain.
And as for the new German government which is seeking reconciliation with the USA, he comments: "I think Angela Merkel distorts the picture because she's an Ossi. It makes no difference whether you take the daughter of an East German pastor, a Polish intellectual like Adam Michnik or the son of the Czech bourgeoisie like Vaclav Havel – they all have the same instinct, and this is basically the reversal of the old communist instinct. It was clearly observable in the Iraq War. In the East, there is this instinctive desire to believe in the good in Washington and to presume that anyone who is critical of Washington has dishonourable motives. The argumentation is always that if you believe in human rights and freedom, you have to be for the invasion of Iraq. Havel insisted that it was an inseparable unity, he had to support the overthrow of dictators as a matter of principle, otherwise he would be betraying Prague's own past."
I hope the Social Democrat part of our government will withstand the old reflexes of the East. I like the "Old Europe" approach of former chancellor Gerhard Schröder who had the courage to brave the US concerning the war on Iraq. Until the US policy will not change, Germany foreign policy should not change as well. Not a bit.