BERLIN – Cheered by an enormous international crowd yesterday, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama summoned Europeans and Americans together to “defeat terror and dry up the well of extremism that supports it” as surely as they conquered communism a generation ago.
JAE C. HONG / Associated Press
Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama arrived yesterday at the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in the heart of Berlin. "People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he said.
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CAROLYN KASTER / Associated Press
Republican presidential candidate John McCain visited a German restaurant yesterday in swing-state Ohio. He said he'd like to deliver a speech in Germany at some point, but as president, not as a candidate.
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Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics as the first-term U.S. senator sought to burnish his international credentials for the fall campaign at home. His remarks before a crowd estimated at more than 200,000 inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.
Now a presidential candidate himself, Obama borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences this year in the likes of Berlin, N.H., as he spoke in one of the great cities of Europe.
“People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time,” he declared.
“The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand,” Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city.
“The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand,” he said.
Obama's speech was the centerpiece of a fast-paced tour through Europe designed to reassure skeptical voters in the United States about his ability to lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new direction after eight years of the Bush administration.
Republicans chafed at the media attention that Obama's campaign-season trip has drawn. Presidential rival John McCain went to a German restaurant in swing-state Ohio, and said he'd like to deliver a speech in Germany, but as president, not candidate.
As Obama spoke in Berlin, McCain said he was focusing his attention this week on economic issues, including soaring food and fuel costs.
In Die Welt, the German publication, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., wrote scathingly of Obama and his views on Iraq and the rest of the world: “No one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological, left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to 'end' the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a 'distraction'? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe's salons?”
Obama met earlier in the day with German Chancellor Angela Merkel for a discussion that ranged across the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, climate change, energy issues and more.
Knots of bystanders waited along Obama's motorcade route for him to pass. One man yelled out in English, “Yes, we can,” the senator's campaign refrain, when he emerged from his car to enter his hotel.
For his speech, Obama drew loud applause as he strode confidently across a large podium erected at the base of the Victory Column in Tiergarten Park in the heart of Berlin.
The crowd spilled away from the column for blocks. Police spokesman Bernhard Schodrowski said there were more than 200,000 people.
Obama drew loud applause when he talked of a world without nuclear weapons and again when he called for steps to counter climate change.
He mentioned Iraq, a war he has opposed from the start, only in passing. But in discussing Afghanistan, he said, “No one welcomes war. . . . But my country and yours have a stake in seeing that NATO's first mission beyond Europe's borders is a success.”
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