Neither A Kennedy Nor A Reagan
By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Thursday, July 24, 2008 4:20 PM PT http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501 <http://www.ibdeditorials.com/IBDArticles.aspx?secid=1501&status=article&id= 301792502289651&secure=1&show=1&rss=1> &status=article&id=301792502289651&secure=1&show=1&rss=1 Campaign '08: Presidents Kennedy and Reagan both visited Berlin to champion freedom against its 20th century enemies. Barack Obama just showed Berliners no understanding of the 21st century's threats to liberty. _____ Read More: Election <http://www.ibdeditorials.com/FeaturedCategories.aspx?sid=1823&cid=1803> 2008 | Europe <http://www.ibdeditorials.com/FeaturedCategories.aspx?sid=1821&cid=1818> & Central Asia _____ At nearly 3,000 words, the most hyped speech in the long history of American political campaigns, delivered by Sen. Obama before Berlin's Victory Column on Thursday evening, was longer than both John F. Kennedy's and Ronald Reagan's Berlin speeches. Yet in content and import it was almost meaningless by comparison. "I speak to you not as a candidate for president, but as a citizen," Obama claimed to the massive crowds. Yet if that were true, why was his every word in English? Both JFK and Reagan found a few moments to speak to Berliners in their language. "Lass' sie nach Berlin kommen," the young Democrat memorably declared in June of 1963. And in June of 1987, the Great Communicator reminded his German audience that "there were a few things the Soviets didn't count on - Berliner Herz, Berliner Humor, ja, und Berliner Schnauze" - the Berliners' strong-heartedness, sense of humor and their sharp-witted tongue. More importantly, unlike Obama, neither JFK nor Reagan went to Berlin to call on the world to join hands in some giant peace chain. Kennedy's brief speech was incendiary in its anti-communism (even if his policies were less so, most obviously his toleration of the wall's construction in 1961). "There are some who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists - let them come to Berlin," he declared. Standing before the Brandenburg Gate," Reagan asserted that "every man is a Berliner, forced to look upon a scar." And he told a Europe distrustful of America's commitment to destroy communism that "we must remember a crucial fact: East and West do not mistrust each other because we are armed; we are armed because we mistrust each other." Less than 2 1/2 years after Reagan stood there and demanded that Mikhail Gorbachev "tear down this wall!" that scar of totalitarianism did indeed fall, pulled and ripped down by ordinary East and West Berliners after almost three decades of suffering a divided city. But there was nothing concrete about Obama in Berlin. The walls he spoke of were cliched, figurative ones - "walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic . . . walls between the countries with the most and those with the least . . . the walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew . . . ." Obama did provide a bit of bluster against the free world's far-from-figurative enemies of today, saying "we must defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it." But the Cold War analogy he gave was deceptive: "If we could create NATO to face down the Soviet Union," Obama contended, "we can join in a new and global partnership to dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London and Bali; in Washington and New York." The proposed anti-terror "partnership" of which he speaks has a lot less in common with the generals at NATO than with the feckless diplomats of the United Nations - an institution that, curiously, went unmentioned in the speech that Obama was supposedly giving to the world - not just to U.S. voters skeptical of the U.N. and diplomacy as a weapon against terrorism. Both Reagan and Kennedy came to Berlin to condemn Russia's Communist empire, and their words shaped the history that followed, eventually liberating East Germany. Yet without mentioning either president, Obama besmirched their memories before throngs of Berliners with a platitude suggesting U.S.-Soviet moral equivalence. "The two superpowers that faced each other across the wall of this city came too close too often to destroying all we have built and all that we love," he said - as if "we" (presumably freedom-loving people) were not on America's side. No wonder Obama reportedly cancelled a planned Friday visit to our Ramstein and Landstuhl military bases in southwest Germany. His were words to elicit cheers from Europeans who resent America, not from GIs who fight for her. (F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976. The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." 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