it is a big blow, creating another image

Submitted by myth (Germany), Nov 9, 2009 at 08:01

Yes, it is a big blow the US president is not visible in Berlin. Given that Obama made speech in Berlin before he was even president remembering the days of the Airlift-operation I do not understand this at all. It leaves the younger people without an indication that the US had a part in this at all. Young people in Germany and elsewhere have no memory of the situation when the Berlin-Wall was the last line of defense, the end of the world for us, beyond you had to expect no help no longer, cut off from everything you knew what was right, the end of tolerance, maybe no return back into the west. The east-german army right behind that wall. and together with the soviet forces threatening the west with only minutes of notice should they go for an assault. And those forces also threatened and intimidated the people on the eastern side to stay within the boundaries of what was politically correct beyond the iron curtain.

Obama's absence creates an image in which it was actually the soviets who contributed most to the fall of the wall. As I recall the wall, it was as visible as day and night there was right on one side and wrong on the other. Does the US government still want to make points that clear and strong ?

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