Topic: 
“The greatest danger to all of is to allow new walls to divide us.
These are the new walls we must tear down -
history has taught us that walls can be torn down.”
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View Google map of Tiergarten w/viewer submitted pictures mashup
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Barack Obama delivered a major foreign policy speech in 30-minutes to 200,000 enthusiastic onlookers and supporters at the base of the “Victory Column” - the Siegessäule in the middle of a roundabout called the Grosser Stern in the Tiergarten Park - Berlin’s sprawling park in the center of the city. The statue at the top of the Siegessäule was originally in front of the Reichstag building, but the Nazis moved her to the Grosser Stern and raised the column up several more feet to its present height. When a reporter asked the senator if he considered the address a campaign event, he said with a puzzled look: “As opposed to?”
“It’s not a political rally,” he added. “Hopefully, it will be viewed as a substantive, articulation of the relationship I’d like to see between the United States and Europe. I’m hoping to communicate across the Atlantic the value of that relationship and how we need to build on it.”
The entire text (bonus pictures also), added to the Obama Berlin speech transcript- is down loadable at end of this narrative.
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View Google Satellite Image of the Siegessäule (Victory Column) in the Tiergarten (Berlin, Germany)
Barack Obama, the “political pop star” - stated Bild, the German newspaper. Bild newspaper found 72 percent of Germans would vote for Obama over McCain in the Nov. 4 election — if they could. Opinion polls in other European countries also reveal sky-high approval ratings for Barack Obama.
“I know my country has not perfected itself”
Barack Obama by delivering this major foreign policy address in Berlin was speaking to three different audiences - 1) Germans of course & the entire world 2) Americans preparing to choose the next President and 3) any foreign policy doubters - especially McCain supporters, that Obama knows how important foreign policy is in today’s turbulent world, and he knows how to deliver and lead, instead of just talking about it in third person narrative similar to the past 8 years of Bush’s unilateral rhetoric. A focal point of Cold War tensions, West Berlin was kept free during a Soviet blockade six decades ago by a U.S.-led Air Lift. Since then, American leaders from John Kennedy to Ronald Reagan and Bill Clinton have delivered major speeches in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate - German Chancellor Angela Merkel did NOT feel it was appropriate and previously expressed concern that Senator Obama’s speech be held at some other location, than at the Gate.
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“None of us can deny these threats, or escape responsibility in meeting them.”
John McCain, the Republican Presidential nominee, while campaigning in America’s Midwest - saw it fit to criticize Obama for going to Berlin - “I’d love to give a speech in Germany — a political speech or a speech that maybe the German people would be interested in,” he told a crowd in Ohio, “but I’d much prefer to do it as president of the United States rather than as a candidate.” Does John McCain, or does he not get it?
“No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat such challenges alone,” Linking the battle against terrorism to the struggle of the cold war that defined Berlin for decades, Senator Obama spoke directly about the need for more fighting soldiers in Afghanistan, a politically unpopular stance in Germany.
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“Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe,”
Barack Obama’s German popularity is quite large primarily because he is not George W. Bush as well as Obama’s congeniality and intelligence dramatically contrast with what Europeans have come to expect from President Bush, who is extremely unpopular in Germany. Germans embrace Mr. Obama so much also due to Obama’s opposition to the Iraq War. If only the 911 numb American’s got it way back when our major opposition could have potentially reversed the U.S. Congress’ rubber stamp approval leading to America’s invasion of Iraq.
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Obama’s photograph was splashed across the front pages of German newspapers. Fliers with quotes from President John F. Kennedy — who came to this divided city at the height of the Cold War and urged those who did not believe in freedom: “Let them come to Berlin” — were everywhere. “There’s a sense of real doubt in the rest of the world about America,” said Steve Clemons, a foreign policy blogger who writes “The Washington Note” and a policy analyst with the New America Foundation, a D.C. think tank.
Berlin Speech Part1
Berlin Speech Part2
Berlin Speech Part3
“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”
In this speech, Senator Obama addressed the threat of nuclear weapons head on, Iran and the conflict in the Middle East as a difficult challenge, but one everyone must take. There were no new Obama campaign policies offered - but, everyone was forewarned that there would not be. But, Obama did lay out clearly the challenges facing the United States and other leading nations… and that is exactly what Barack Obama told everyone he would do - and so he delivered on his obligation again. Americans aren’t used to that - intelligent clarity or respectful conformance between their present federal government and the American People.
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It has been a most difficult 8 years of hysteric Republican scandals and one corrupt act after another. The U.S. economy upside down in the ditch with all the major U.S. corporations tanking beyond belief… is almost the expected “fiscally conservative” GOP grand finale. Thank god NO Republican is still blaming Jimmy Carter or William Jefferson Clinton’s budget surplus as the excuse for this GOP calamity. Reverse psychology, much like a oxymoron, although they both poetically do very much apply here - are so much more pathetic than remotely funny under these present circumstances.
Text of speech is here