UPDATE - Ed Morrissey over at HotAir has terrific coverage, including a YouTube video of President Reagan giving one of the most impassioned speeches ever delivered by an American President. There are other videos also. Go to this website immediately! That President Obama (or even Vice-President Biden) are not participating in the commemoration is, in Morrissey's words, "disgraceful"!
-Original post) - I posted previously concerning Prsident Obama's failure to appear in Berlin to mark the occasion. Now I would like to simply record Bill Bennett's remarks on the significance of the Berlin wall's collapse:
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. But even that phrase doesn’t do the story justice: The wall did not fall—it was pushed. I’m currently writing a history of the past 20 years, and have a good deal about the Berlin Wall in that book—here is some of what will be published:
In 1961, the East German government erected a physical Iron Curtain, an ugly combination of cement and electrified fencing with armed guards, an internal barricade that separated the two nations and their brethren on each side. But at midnight, 9 November 1989, the government of East Germany finally gave permission to its citizens to peaceably pass through the gates of the Berlin Wall. East Germans “surged through, cheering and shouting, and were be met by jubilant West Berliners on the other side. Ecstatic crowds immediately began to
clamber on top of the Wall and hack large chunks out of the 28-mile barrier.” For some years, I have described something I call “the gates test.” Someone can judge a country by which direction people run when the country erects gates: Do they flee in, or do they risk life and limb to get out? (Over the course of some four decades until 1989, some 2.5 million people had fled East Germany and many were shot trying to flee.) There was no better symbol of the gates test than the Berlin Wall.
Two years prior, President Reagan had gone to Berlin and described it as “a gash of barbed wire, concrete, dog runs, and guard towers.” Perhaps the most famous words of Reagan’s presidency were those he uttered that summer day in 1987: “General Secretary Gorbachev, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate! Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!” And now, within hours of the granting of travel by the East German government, the German citizens were, themselves, taking pickaxes to the scar.
I give you the words of two German Chancellors: Helmut Kohl and Angela Merkel. When the wall came down, Helmut Kohl told President George HW Bush: “Without the U.S., this day would not have been possible. Tell your people that.” And last week, Angela Merkel said this:I think of John F. Kennedy, who won the hearts of the Berliners, when, during his visit in 1961, after the wall had been built, he reached out to the desperate citizens of Berlin by saying, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” I think of Ronald Reagan, who, far earlier than most, clearly saw the sign of the times and, standing in front of the Brandenburg Gate, already in 1987, called out, “Mr. Gorbachev, open this gate. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall.” This appeal shall remain forever in my heart.
I thank George Herbert Walker Bush for the trust he placed in Germany and then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl, offering something of immeasurable value to us Germans already in May 1989: partnership in leadership. What a generous offer 40 years after the end of the Second World War.
“Forever in her heart,” “partnership.” “leadership.” “Immeasurable value.” “Generosity.” That is what the United States of America stands for, that is what this country dedicated to a proposition stands for. That is what our men and women in uniform fight for.