Obama's Berlin Moment

American Thinker ^ | July 23, 2008 | James Lewis

[Kaslin]

Obama's Premature Inauguration Syndrome is still giving him trouble, witness the mass Obama rally scheduled for Berlin's SiegessSaeule or Victory Column, to celebrate his penetrating insight in foreign affairs. Google's top listing of this Ueberphallic Prussian monument has to be seen to be believed: It is a favorite Berlin gay newspaper, as you can see. You have to admit those Germans have a sense of humor.

What superficial American tourists never understand, of course, is that just about  all those magnificent European monuments stand for historical massacres. Even the big cathedrals symbolize the religious wars of the Reformation, which killed more people than anything before Napoleon and the World Wars. The Arc de Triomphe in Paris commemorates Napoleon's imperial invasions of just about all of Europe (with 41 million dead). The Prussian Victory Column in Berlin, before it became a gay icon, was a proud celebration of Prussian victory against Napoleon's invasion of Germany, Spain, Russia, the Low Countries,  Sweden, and Egypt. It reminds Germans of the Prussian victory over Napoleon at Waterloo (with Lord Wellington playing a minor role), plus the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and of course World War I. It all adds up to tens of millions of dead people.

Just like one of those embarrassing American tourists, Obama insenitively reminds Europeans of past massacres and the war propaganda and hysteria that marked the Prussian rise to dominance. The German crowds probably won't chant "Hoch! Hoch!" at Obama, as they used to when der Kaiser's Prussian troops went marching by on the way to the killing fields of World War I. But what will they chant? Or is chanting forbidden, along with banners?

As a German politician remarked,

"The Siegessaeule in Berlin was moved from the Reichstag (German parliament) to its current position by Adolf Hitler," Rainer Bruederle, deputy chairman of the opposition Liberal Party, FDP, said in an interview with Bild am Sonntag. He said he questioned, "if Barack Obama has been well advised to use it as the site of a speech outlining his vision of a world of cooperation."

Yes, well. Good taste is not exactly the mark of Obama's rallies so far. The Germans are lucky that Obama isn't opening with the Decemberist rock band playing the Soviet National Anthem, as they are wont to do, the same way his famous "75,000 person rally" opened  in Portland, when he beat Hillary in the Oregon Primary. The real Decemberists were secret Russian revolutionaries, whose movement ultimately led to the mass murder of some 100 million unfortunate people during the reign of Marxist regimes in Europe.   That ended with the crumbling of the Berlin Wall in the late 1980s, at the urging of Ronald Reagan. But Obamanistas wouldn't know about that.

The history of Europe is all glorified blood, blood, and more blood. Today, Eurosocialists claim to be all about peace. But in fact socialism has been a classic European imperialist movement -- what do you think the Soviet Union was all about? Today Eurosocialism is limited to peaceful imperialism, but not a few decades ago it taught agitators like Pol Pot how to kill, and sent him off to Cambodia to murder three million of his people. As long as the massacres happened far away, European socialists were happy. They still are.

In fact, Eurosocialism still contains all the seeds of classic European imperialism: The endless sense of Europe's superiority over the rest of the world, the preachiness of how the rest of the world must live, the constant efforts to impose global carbon taxes, poverty taxes, and UN rules on subject nations (like the US) for the greater glory of Germany-France-Spain-Britain -- all the classic European imperial powers look at the US with green imperialism envy.

Imperialism never stopped in Europe. It just stopped being violent for a while, because America beat European imperial powers in WWI, WWII, and the Cold War. And don't think they don't know it. Why do you think Europeans loved to hate America over the overthrow of Saddam? Saddam's Baathist Party was modeled after Europe's fascist parties, after all.

As Roger Cohen just wrote in the New York Times, itself the very home and soapbox of Eurosocialism in America,

"Barack Obama has already won the U.S. election by a landslide. In Europe, that is. Polls show the French putting the first African-American in the White House with 86 percent backing. Obamania is about as intense in Germany and Britain, the two other European countries the Senator will visit this week."   

Welcome back to Europe, Senator Obama. They will recognize you there, although they might be just a little bit nervous about those screaming mass rallies on their home grounds. That hasn't really happened a lot since you-know-who.

[Inyokern]

Can you imagine the reaction in the liberal press if a white Republican candidate had chosen to hold a big public rally in Berlin?

Why not just hold it in Nuremburg?

[Cicero]

Excellent, except for that snide and rather pointless remark about Waterloo. Wellington had more than a little to do with the allied victory over Napoleon.

[cricket]

There are MO's far more noteworthy than the 'accidental American tourist' in foreign countries NOT speaking the language.

Bravo to Obama for exhibiting an arrogance; a hubris; and just a gross ignorance on our behalf. All to say Obama's actions speak far louder than the 'merci beauceaup' he lamented in our name.

[Lizavetta]

B. Hussein: "Ich bin ein Beginner."

[Kaslin]

exactly

[Minn]

Is there any precedent for US presidential candidates holding rallies in other countries?

[Kaslin]

There was a cartoon the other day in Townhall.com with exactly that

[Lizavetta]

I cannot tell a lie.......that's where I got it.

Feel free to pass it around to as many people as you can.

[expatpat]

Even the big cathedrals symbolize the religious wars of the Reformation, which killed more people...

Nonsense. The cathedrals were built around the 12th century, long before the Reformation.

[expatpat]

Perhaps he was making fun of the tendency of European nations (and Russia and the US, for that matter) to hype their national contributions.

[Cicero]

Yes, I noticed that, too, about the Cathedrals, and then I focused on the Wellington business, because I have read several accounts of the Battle of Waterloo—and of the earlier Peninsular Campaign—and there’s not much doubt that Wellington was the guy responsible for those victories.

[Atchafalaya]

I took it as sarcasm, perhaps understated.

[expatpat]

But those books were not written by Germans....

Actually, though Wellington was clearly the most important figure on the Allied side against France, he and Napoleon had fought to a standstill, and Blucher tipped the balance. Of course, he should have been there earlier....

[Don Corleone]

Obambi goes to Berlin to get first hand knowledge on how to set up a National Police Force.

[hosepipe]

Borat Obamas's, "ich bin und Marxist", moment..
delivered as a honkified Kingfish with Wil Smith ears..

[maro]

Will he cross his arms after particularly good lines like Adolph did?

[Arthur McGowan]

You sure catch onto sarcasm quick!

[kabar]

Obama appearance: Berlin authorities say that as many as a million people could attend. Four TV stations are broadcasting the entire speech, and the rest are scrambling to secure prime locations at the site.

[SolidWood]

What superficial American tourists never understand, of course, is that just about all those magnificent European monuments stand for historical massacres. (...) It reminds Germans of the Prussian victory over Napoleon at Waterloo (with Lord Wellington playing a minor role), plus the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, and of course World War I.

False. It reminds Europeans of nothing. Americans often are more aware of the significance of historical places than the Europeans living there. Germans (and many French) are frighteningly superficial and ignorant to their own history. A very large number of Americans (okay at this part I'll say that I hate generalizations, and speak from my own experience in Europe and with American tourists I know) visiting Germany or France visit the concentration camps, know about the Berlin Wall, visit US military cemetaries in France, is aware of the Battle fields etc.

Germans, I encountered, with few exceptions, don't care about their own history (I guess they simply want some sort of closure and distance from their past). I bet a single digit percentage of Berliners know the story of the Victory column or the Reichstag. When I visited Normandy in 2004, during the commemoration of DDay, I saw almost exclusively Americans, Brits and Canadians there. Some French also. There were a group of German tourists near Caen aswell. Somehow we got into a chat and I asked whether they'll visit the WW2 locations as well. They shrugged in disbelief and responded something along the lines of "who cares about that old sh*t".