On Jul 24, 12:23=EF=BF=BDpm, James Of Tucson <james0tuc...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
wrote=
:
> There's no need to talk about what you "think" Obama said.
> It's not as though it was given in secrecy. =EF=BF=BDFor those
right-wing=
ers
> who can read at the sixth-grade level needed to understand one
> of these speeches, we have the wonderful tool of Obama's own
> words. =EF=BF=BDAsk a Republican to read this and tell us specifically =
=EF=BF=BD what
> he disagrees with.
>
> Thank you to the citizens of Berlin and to the people of Germany. Let
> me thank Chancellor Merkel and Foreign Minister Steinmeier for
> welcoming me earlier today. Thank you Mayor Wowereit, the Berlin
> Senate, the police, and most of all thank you for this welcome.
>
> I come to Berlin as so many of my countrymen have come before.
> Tonight, I speak to you not as a candidate for President, but as a
> citizen - a proud citizen of the United States, and a fellow citizen
> of the world.
>
> I know that I don't look like the Americans who've previously spoken
> in this great city. The journey that led me here is improbable. My
> mother was born in the heartland of America, but my father grew up
> herding goats in Kenya. His father - my grandfather - was a cook, a
> domestic servant to the British.
>
> At the height of the Cold War, my father decided, like so many others
> in the forgotten corners of the world, that his yearning - his dream -
> required the freedom and op****tunity promised by the West. And so he
> wrote letter after letter to universities all across America until
> somebody, somewhere answered his prayer for a better life.
>
> That is why I'm here. And you are here because you too know that
> yearning. This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom. And
> you know that the only reason we stand here tonight is because men and
> women from both of our nations came together to work, and struggle,
> and sacrifice for that better life.
>
> Ours is a partner****p that truly began sixty years ago this summer, on
> the day when the first American plane touched down at Templehof.
>
> On that day, much of this continent still lay in ruin. The rubble of
> this city had yet to be built into a wall. The Soviet shadow had swept
> across Eastern Europe, while in the West, America, Britain, and France
> took stock of their losses, and pondered how the world might be
> remade.
>
> This is where the two sides met. And on the twenty-fourth of June,
> 1948, the Communists chose to blockade the western part of the city.
> They cut off food and supplies to more than two million Germans in an
> effort to extinguish the last flame of freedom in Berlin.
>
> The size of our forces was no match for the much larger Soviet Army.
> And yet retreat would have allowed Communism to march across Europe.
> Where the last war had ended, another World War could have easily
> begun. All that stood in the way was Berlin.
>
> And that's when the airlift began - when the largest and most unlikely
> rescue in history brought food and hope to the people of this city.
>
> The odds were stacked against success. In the winter, a heavy fog
> filled the sky above, and many planes were forced to turn back without
> dropping off the needed supplies. The streets where we stand were
> filled with hungry families who had no comfort from the cold.
>
> But in the darkest hours, the people of Berlin kept the flame of hope
> burning. The people of Berlin refused to give up. And on one fall day,
> hundreds of thousands of Berliners came here, to the Tiergarten, and
> heard the city's mayor implore the world not to give up on freedom.
> "There is only one possibility," he said. "For us to stand together
> united until this battle is won...The people of Berlin have spoken. We
> have done our duty, and we will keep on doing our duty. People of the
> world: now do your duty...People of the world, look at Berlin!"
>
> People of the world - look at Berlin!
>
> Look at Berlin, where Germans and Americans learned to work together
> and trust each other less than three years after facing each other on
> the field of battle.
>
> Look at Berlin, where the determination of a people met the generosity
> of the Marshall Plan and created a German miracle; where a victory
> over tyranny gave rise to NATO, the greatest alliance ever formed to
> defend our common security.
>
> Look at Berlin, where the bullet holes in the buildings and the somber
> stones and pillars near the Brandenburg Gate insist that we never
> forget our common humanity.
>
> People of the world - look at Berlin, where 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.
>
> Sixty years after the airlift, we are called upon again. History has
> led us to a new crossroad, with new promise and new peril. When you,
> the German people, tore down that wall - a wall that divided East and
> West; freedom and tyranny; fear and hope - walls came tumbling down
> around the world. From Kiev to Cape Town, prison camps were closed,
> and the doors of democracy were opened. Markets opened too, and the
> spread of information and technology reduced barriers to op****tunity
> and prosperity. While the 20th century taught us that we share a
> common destiny, the 21st has revealed a world more intertwined than at
> any time in human history.
>
> The fall of the Berlin Wall brought new hope. But that very closeness
> has given rise to new dangers - dangers that cannot be contained
> within the borders of a country or by the distance of an ocean.
>
> The terrorists of September 11th plotted in Hamburg and trained in
> Kandahar and Karachi before killing thousands from all over the globe
> on American soil.
>
> As we speak, cars in Boston and factories in Beijing are melting the
> ice caps in the Arctic, shrinking coastlines in the Atlantic, and
> bringing drought to farms from Kansas to Kenya.
>
> Poorly secured nuclear material in the former Soviet Union, or secrets
> from a scientist in Pakistan could help build a bomb that detonates in
> Paris. The poppies in Afghanistan become the heroin in Berlin. The
> poverty and violence in Somalia breeds the terror of tomorrow. The
> genocide in Darfur shames the conscience of us all.
>
> In this new world, such dangerous currents have swept along faster
> than our efforts to contain them. That is why we cannot afford to be
> divided. No one nation, no matter how large or powerful, can defeat
> such challenges alone. None of us can deny these threats, or escape
> responsibility in meeting them. Yet, in the absence of Soviet tanks
> and a terrible wall, it has become easy to forget this truth. And if
> we're honest with each other, we know that sometimes, on both sides of
> the Atlantic, we have drifted apart, and forgotten our shared destiny.
>
> In Europe, the view that America is part of what has gone wrong in our
> world, rather than a force to help make it right, has become all too
> common. In America, there are voices that deride and deny the
> im****tance of Europe's role in our security and our future. Both views
> miss the truth - that Europeans today are bearing new burdens and
> taking more responsibility in critical parts of the world; and that
> just as American bases built in the last century still help to defend
> the security of this continent, so does our country still sacrifice
> greatly for freedom around the globe.
>
> Yes, there have been differences between America and Europe. No doubt,
> there will be differences in the future. But the burdens of global
> citizen****p continue to bind us together. A change of leader****p in
> Wa****ngton will not lift this burden. In this new century, Americans
> and Europeans alike will be required to do more - not less.
> Partner****p and cooperation among nations is not a choice; it is the
> one way, the only way, to protect our common security and advance our
> common humanity.
>
> That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide
> us from one another.
>
> The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot
> stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with
> the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives
> and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now
> are the walls we must tear down.
>
> We know they have fallen before. After centuries of strife, the people
> of Europe have formed a Union of promise and prosperity. Here, at the
> base of a column built to mark victory in war, we meet in the center
> of a Europe at peace. Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but
> they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a
> way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance
> ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South
> Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.
>
> So history reminds us that walls can be torn down. But the task is
> never easy. True partner****p and true progress requires constant work
> and sustained sacrifice. They require sharing the burdens of
> development and diplomacy; of progress and peace. They require allies
> who will listen to each other, learn from each other and, most of all,
> trust each other.
>
> That is why America cannot turn inward. That is why Europe cannot turn
> inward. America has no better partner than Europe. Now is the time to
> build new bridges across the globe as strong as the one that bound us
> across the Atlantic. Now is the time to join together, through
> constant cooperation, strong institutions, shared sacrifice, and a
> global commitment to progress, to meet the challenges of the 21st
> century. It was this spirit that led airlift planes to appear in the
> sky above our heads, and people to assemble where we stand today. And
> this is the moment when our nations - and all nations - must summon
> that spirit anew.
>
> This is the moment when we must defeat terror and dry up the well of
> extremism that sup****ts it. This threat is real and we cannot shrink
> from our responsibility to combat it. If we could create NATO to face
> down the Soviet Union, we can join in a new and global partner****p to
> dismantle the networks that have struck in Madrid and Amman; in London
> and Bali; in Wa****ngton and New York. If we could win a battle of
> ideas against the communists, we can stand with the vast ...
>
> read more =EF=BF=BD
And Obama is going to do all of that ?????? uh huh ...
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