For the Next Time Senator Obama Goes to Berlin

I am glad that Barack Obama got to Berlin. It is a great city. I have been there four times, and I am looking forward to my next trip back. But while I am glad Senator Obama was able to go to Berlin, it’s too bad that he spent most of his time making a campaign speech. If he had had a little more time, maybe he could have visited some of my favorite sights in Berlin.

First, there is the Haus am Checkpoint Charlie museum. If he had gone there, he might have learned a little something about the Wall that he kept talking about coming down. He might have seen not how the world came together, but how families were split apart. He might have seen how people tried to go through, under and over the Wall to get out of the prison that was East Berlin and East Germany and how many of them were killed trying.

He might have had the chance to go to Bernauer Strasse to see a section of the Wall that still stands. He could have visited the chapel there that was built on the site of the Church of Reconciliation, a church that was literally trapped between the two walls that constituted the Wall. The church remained trapped and unused until finally the East Germans tore it down in 1985. He might have seen that it was not a world coming together that tore down the Wall. Rather, it was a part of the world, the freedom-loving part of the world, that triumphed over that part of the world that preferred tyranny.

He might have gone to Glienicker Brücke (Glienicke Bridge) and seen where the East and West did come together – to exchange spies.

Most importantly, maybe he could have gone to Tempelhof Airport to see the memorial to the Berlin Airlift. Senator Obama talked about the Berlin Airlift as the world coming together. No, the Berlin Airlift was about the United States and its British allies coming together. They were the ones who flew the planes that supplied Berlin.

The Berlin Airlift was not a triumph of the world. It was a triumph of the Free World. It was a triumph of that part of the Free World that was willing to stand up to do what was right even while others urged withdrawal or worried more about the strain on our troops than the job that needed to be done. And that is all the difference in the world.

Comments

[sue]

You made some excellent comments about what really happened in Berlin. Obama seems to be a revisionist in the worst sense and doesn't understand the history of what happened in Berlin.