So Obama gave this speech in Berlin… here’s exactly what I thought when reading through it… you won’t get a clearer picture in to my mind than this folks…
I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before. Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a citizen – a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen of the world.
YO, Germans! Don’t worry, I’m not a hard-core American Exceptionalist… we’re cooo… and I totally would have made this speech even if I weren’t a candidate for president… nobody would have came to hear me… but I totally would have done it… my candidacy had absolutely NOTHING to do with it. Just a normal citizen… making a speech… right up.
I know that I don’t look like the Americans who’ve previously spoken in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up herding goats in Kenya. His father – my grandfather – was a cook, a domestic servant to the British.
By the way, I’m black (didn’t know if you knew that, so I thought I’d mention it)… and I’ve got European blood in my family… sort of… fyi.
At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning – his dream – required the freedom and opportunity promised by the West. And so he wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.
That is why I’m here.
Well, actually, I’m kind of hear for campaign purposes… to prove I’m no newbie on foreign policy…
And you are here because you too know that yearning.
Or maybe because the 2 most popular German Bands gave free shows… but I’ll just assume you would have came anyway… I AM Barack Obama, after all. I’m a rock Staaarrr!
This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle, and sacrifice for that better life.
I’m not too kean on Americans and Iraqi’s struggling to accomplish the same dream though… It’s just so not-cool anymore.
Ours is a partnership that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof…
This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June, 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city…
The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army. And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe. Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.
All this talk though about radical Islam taking over the Middle East and Europe…. OVERRATED.
**editors note** Obama, you IDOT… you don’t see the same threat Radical Islam posed and the incredible DANGER posed by retreating from Iraq??? How on earth can you use this analogy without grave self-reflection on YOUR Iraq policy positions–policies which would have left Iraq and the Middle East in the very thralls of it’s OWN civil war???? You think retreat from Berlin would have been a disaster but from Iraq would have been the RIGHT THING???? You’re KIDDING me, right!???
And that’s when the airlift began – when the largest and most unlikely rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.
The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without dropping off the needed supplies…
But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope burning.
It wasn’t the 300 tons of food and supplies flown into the country EVERY DAY by British and American servicemen that kept the flame of hope burning… no, it was the people of Berlin–flaming that flame of hope with their own scrap wood they burned to stay warm….
The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day, hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and heard the city’s mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom. “There is only one possibility,” he said. “For us to stand together united until this battle is won… The people of Berlin have spoken.
Pope John Paul the Second? President Regan’s economic and military buildup plan and his “tear down this wall” speech? Pleeeassee… those people were barely involved with the fall of the Berlin wall! ANY historian will tell you it was the people and Mayor of Berlin that caused the wall to fall.
We have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the world: now do your duty…People of the world, look at Berlin
Don’t look at Iraq though… or America for OUR role in “keeping the flame of hope burning”…whatever you do… DON’T LOOK. Because when all is said and done… America just is far more flawed than Germany on these important issues of human freedom…
Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on the field of battle.
Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to defend our common security.
Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never forget our common humanity.
(*thinks to himself*) Except if that Humanity is Arabic…
People of the world – look at Berlin, where a wall came down, a continent came together, and history proved that there is no challenge too great for a world that stands as one.
Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you, the German people, tore down that wall – a wall that divided East and West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope – walls came tumbling down around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed, and the doors of democracy were opened.
**editors note*** YOU THINK??? and who has been responsible for all this freedom and market stuff??? MAYBE IRAQ MIGHT BE one example of this????
Markets opened too, and the spread of information and technology reduced barriers to opportunity and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at any time in human history.
The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness has given rise to new dangers – dangers that cannot be contained within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.
The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe on American soil.
As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
**editors note** REALLY! cars in boston are causing droughts in Kansas… huh, Obama must have taken more science classes than I!
Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.
What? Did you say the genocide against the Kurds in Northen Iraq after the first Gulf War… ooo, that wasn’t GENOCIDE, that was just… ooo… a military operation… or something…
In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if we’re honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.
In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the importance of Europe’s role in our security and our future. Both views miss the truth – that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice greatly for freedom around the globe.
**Editor’s Note** try supporting it when we DO make these sacrifices around the globe… put your money where your mouth is.
Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt, there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global citizenship continue to bind us together. A change of leadership in Washington will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans and Europeans alike will be required to do more – not less. Partnership and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our common humanity.
** where’s the nuance here? it’s your way or the highway??? you’re kidding me?!
That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.
**no… the greatest danger is if YOU ruin the credibility and undermine the power of the ONE thing keeping our common “humanity” safe… the US military.
This is the moment when we must renew our resolve to rout the terrorists who threaten our security in Afghanistan, and the traffickers who sell drugs on your streets. No one welcomes war. I recognize the enormous difficulties in Afghanistan. But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO’s first mission beyond Europe’s borders is a success. For the people of Afghanistan, and for our shared security, the work must be done. America cannot do this alone. The Afghan people need our troops and your troops; our support and your support to defeat the Taliban and al Qaeda, to develop their economy, and to help them rebuild their nation. We have too much at stake to turn back now.
But we can totally turn back from Iraq… I know we’ve invested more like… American DOLLARS into it… but I’m really talking about a political and personal stake my party and I have in Afghanistan.
This is the moment when we must renew the goal of a world without nuclear weapons
Ya, nuclear weapons brought about the end of WWII… and helped end the Cold war (which I just praised both our countries for winning)… but I can’t POSSIBLY imagine how we will ever need a trump card like THAT again…
This is the moment when we must build on the wealth that open markets have created, and share its benefits more equitably.
In other words, i like and want to control the wealth of free markets for my own political advantage…
This is the moment we must help answer the call for a new dawn in the Middle East.
I know my entire primary campaign was based on ignoring the call… but that’s just politics..
I know my country has not perfected itself. At times, we’ve struggled to keep the promise of liberty and equality for all of our people. We’ve made our share of mistakes, and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.
Sure, equality isn’t really an American virtue… it’s really more a socialist virtue… but I think it SHOULD BE an American virtue..
People of Berlin – and people of the world – the scale of our challenge is great. The road ahead will be long. But I come before you to say that we are heirs to a struggle for freedom. We are a people of improbable hope. Let us build on our common history, and seize our common destiny, and once again engage in that noble struggle to bring justice and peace to our world.
WOW… I mean.. this guy… just has NO fundamental beliefs… He’s been against the Iraq War for years, but somehow ended up validating the war in this speech without even knowing it. There’s just nothing turned on upstairs!