No Substitute for Victory


By William Kristol, The New York Times
July 25, 2008

Article Excerpt:

I'll go out on a limb and say that Barack Obama will be well received when he speaks in Berlin on July 24.

O.K., it's not exactly a limb. A recent poll shows that the German public prefers Obama to John McCain by 67 percent to 6 percent.

But there is angst in Germany. Chancellor Angela Merkel was reportedly not happy about the idea of a Ronald Reagan reprise in front of the Brandenburg Gate. So the Obama campaign has arranged for its man to speak at the Siegessaule-- the Victory Column-- in the heart of the city.

The Siegessaule is an impressive structure (especially if you have a militaristic bent). It's a large fluted sandstone column on a base of polished red granite, topped by a golden statue of winged Victory. Completed in 1873, it commemorates Prussia's victories in the previous decade over Denmark, Austria and France. The column was lengthened and relocated to its present site in 1939.

We're an awfully long way from the European wars of the 19th century, and from the National Socialist regime of the 20th. Nonetheless, as the newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported Sunday in its online edition, some German politicians are concerned about the location of Obama's speech. The deputy leader of the Free Democrats worries "whether Barack Obama was advised correctly in his choice of the Siegessaule as the site to hold a speech on his vision for a more cooperative world." One Christian Democrat allows that speaking in front of a monument to a victory over neighbors who are today friends and allies "is a problematic symbol."

I share every civilized person's disdain for Prussian militarism and loathing for National Socialism. But I'm choosing to take the location of Obama's speech as a hopeful sign.

I'm hoping it means that Obama in Berlin will go beyond the anodyne message his campaign advertised Sunday-- a discussion of the "historic U.S.-German partnership" and strengthening trans-Atlantic relations. I'm wondering if Obama chose the Victory Column as his speech venue because he intends to make the case for ... victory.

There's a precedent for this. As Obama knows, he's been widely compared, especially in Europe, to another young, charismatic Democrat-- John F. Kennedy. Perhaps Obama will choose to follow in Kennedy's footsteps in Berlin.

When President Kennedy spoke to a huge crowd in front of West Berlin's city hall in June 1963, victory in the cold war seemed a distant hope. The Soviets had crushed the East German uprising of 1953 and the Hungarian rebellion of 1956. Castro had taken power in 1959. The Berlin Wall had gone up in 1961. The Cuban Missile Crisis had brought the world to the brink of war less than a year before. There were many, in Europe and elsewhere, who wanted to find a way out of the struggle.

Speaking on behalf of "the world of freedom," Kennedy challenged the anti-anti-Communists and the peaceniks. He chastised the "many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world." He rebuked those "who say in Europe and elsewhere we can work with the Communists." To all of them, Kennedy memorably said: "Let them come to Berlin."

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