Germans Enthralled At Obama’s Arrival
Posted on July 25, 2008
In a highly unusual move for an American presidential candidate, Barack Obama staged a foreign policy speech before a huge overseas audience, implicitly criticizing President Bush and calling for renewed transatlantic cooperation to rein in Iran , fight religious extremism and terrorism, and address global warming and poverty.
“People of Berlin , people of the world, this is our moment, this is our time,” the Democratic hopeful told an enthusiastic outdoor crowd, which local authorities estimated at more than 200,000.
Turning a critical eye on the United States with phrasing he uses on the stump at home to humanize himself, Obama said, “I know my country has not perfected itself” and “we’ve made our share of mistakes and there are times when our actions around the world have not lived up to our best intentions.”
The Europeans roared with approval.
Speaking before sunset at the Victory Column in Berlin’s Tiergarten, to a crowd that stretched close to a mile back to the Brandenburg Gate, the 46-year-old first-term senator, who is extremely popular in Western Europe , recalled the celebration after the 1989 fall of the Berlin Wall.
He warned that today “the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.”
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