Surprise: Obama addresses Berlin on the fall of the Wall

I’m giving you two versions, the unedited BBC transmission and the censored version that ran on Russian state television (which omits the passage about the Declaration of Independence but not, curiously, the one about the Iron Curtain), thus proving that the old Soviet spirit is alive and kicking. Even in a two-and-a-half minute speech about an event as epochal as the fall of the Wall, somehow he finds a way to make it about him:

“Few would have foreseen … that a united Germany would be led by a woman from Brandenburg or that their American ally would be led by a man of African descent. But human destiny is what human beings make of it,” Obama said.

Skip ahead to 4:30 or so of the Russia Today clip to watch Hillary introduce him as “someone who represents the fall of different kinds of walls.” Even here, history is a handmaiden to The One’s grandeur.

Fox News speculated earlier that Obama might have decided against attending in order to avoid annoying his new partners in peace in Moscow. Think they’re wrong? Watch the BBC clip and count the number of times The One names either “Russia” or the “Soviet Union” as the party responsible for the Wall. The closest he gets is the reference to the Iron Curtain; aside from that, all we really learn here is that there was some vague tyrant that used to oppress eastern Europe but has since receded into the mists of history. Ask the Poles and Czechs how they feel about that “recession” in the wake of our new missile defense arrangement.

Be sure to count the number of references to Reagan and Thatcher too.

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