Wall Street Journal, 31.1o.2oo6

Germany provided a textbook example of pre-emptive surrender last month when the Deutsche Oper Berlin canceled a production of Mozart's "Idomeneo," fearing that a theatrical decapitation of Muhammad might provoke an Islamic terror attack. The cancelation spurred a fierce nationwide debate about Islam and freedom of speech, culminating in the opera company's about-face Friday, when it announced that it will stage the production before the end of the year.

Now Germany has pioneered what can be called pre-emptive self-denunciation -- accusing itself of a crime against Islam before Islamists even notice. The issue is again a severed head, so to speak. Pictures taken in 2003 or 2004 of German NATO soldiers in Afghanistan posing with a human skull made the front page of Germany's mass circulation Bild last week under the headline, "Shock Pictures" and later "Germany Is Ashamed." The remains were found near the wrecks of Russian-made tanks, and it's unclear what nationality they were.

Journalists have already dubbed the incident "the country's Abu Ghraib," possibly the worst insult the German media can dish out. The analogy is apt as Abu Ghraib, where U.S. guards abused Iraqi inmates, was itself a story hyped to condemn the entire U.S. Army and the Bush Administration for the bad actions of a few soldiers.

It is far from us to excuse the German soldiers. The pictures of the desecration of human remains are obscene and the soldiers involved deserve punishment. Two have already been suspended and others are under investigation. The government's swift apology -- "We find it absolutely unacceptable," said Chancellor Angela Merkel -- was also appropriate. Most Afghans, however, don't seem to care. "What pictures?" the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung quotes an Afghan lawmaker as saying.

But German doomsayers aren't deterred. An article in Spiegel Online, "The Eerie Silence of the Islamists," argues that attacks may still come. It helpfully notes that the Danish cartoon affair also took a few weeks to gather steam. And Bernhard Gertz, chairman of the German Army Association, darkly warns that "such behavior is capable of turning the entire Muslim and Arab world against us."

As with the reaction to the Abu Ghraib scandal, there is something else going on here. The pictures came to light just as parliament is preparing to decide next month whether to extend the German mission in Afghanistan. The "skull scandal" has further soured the country's appetite for military intervention, prompting more calls for bringing the troops home.

What really endangers Germany's security is not tasteless photos of a few soldiers acting irresponsibly but the country's reluctance to play its part in the war on terror. Afghanistan is still seen largely as an American problem and failure there is not considered to be a threat for the German home front. The country's 2,700 troops in Afghanistan are all stationed in the relatively safe north. In an interview Sunday with the weekly magazine Focus, Ms. Merkel reiterated that she won't send troops to the south, where mostly Canadian, British and American NATO troops are fighting resurgent Taliban forces. Now that's something to feel ashamed about.