Pro-Con: Should President Obama have attended ceremonies commemorating the fall of the Berlin Wall? Yes

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Obama’s failure to go to Berlin is the most telling nonevent of his presidency. Only Obama — with his dismissive view of the Cold War as a relic distorting our thinking and his attenuated commitment to America’s exceptional role in the world — would spurn German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s invitation.

Obama famously made a speech in Berlin during last year’s campaign, but at an event devoted to celebrating himself as the apotheosis of world hopefulness. He said of 1989, “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.”

The line was typical Obama verbal soufflé, soaring but vulnerable to collapse upon the slightest jostling from logic or historical fact. The wall came down only after the free world resolutely stood against the Communist bloc.

But Obama doesn’t think in such antiquated terms. . Given to apologizing for his nation abroad, he resolutely downplays American leadership.

Rich Lowry, RealClearWorld.com

Posted on Mon, Nov. 09, 2009 10:15 PM

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