Germany's former Chancellor Schroeder does not express many new ideas in his Spiegel essay (in English), but I found these two statements in the second part fairly interesting:

We need a blunt analysis within the NATO alliance on why efforts to pacify southern Afghanistan have failed. I am convinced that the Bundeswehr's concept, which tends to be militarily conservative and is considerate of the population and civilian facilities, will be more successful in the long run. The disparity between these different strategies in the north and south is a problem, and it also represents a failure on the part of the NATO secretary general.

Gerhard Schroeder is also very critical of President Karzai and wants to motivate the Afghan leadership (whoever that is) by setting a timeframe for troop withdrawals. He mentions that the "Petersberg process," started in November 2001 under the guidance of then Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, led to an Afghanistan agreement in 2006, which I did not know about and therefore want to share it: "On the basis of this agreement, the Afghans gave themselves until 2013 to independently guarantee security, good governance, the rule of law and economic and social development. This temporal horizon is certainly very optimistic."

Interesting quote at the end of the above mentioned A Fistful of Euros post:

Friends don't let friends drink and drive; neither do they help friends get into open-ended two-front wars. Europeans are entirely right to behave as if Iraq and Afghanistan had erased US credibility, and to expect it to be earned back rather than freely given.

Has Gerhard Schroeder ever phrased his opposition to the Iraq war into this "Friends don't let friends drink and drive" theme? I guess, he sort of did when in 2002 he called the planned Iraq war an "adventure" and said that being a friend does not always mean saying "yes."

Chancellor Merkel attacked suggestions that Germany had taken the easy option in Afghanistan: "We're not just digging wells and building houses; we also have a military mission."  Hugh Williamson reports in the Financial Times:

In her most outspoken comments on Afghanistan since Germany came under pressure this month to send more troops, the German chancellor said she had "absolutely no time" for proposals to redeploy Nato troops within Afghanistan.