This is the 20th Anniversary of one of the GREATEST Moments in Human History, the fall of the Wall in Berlin. Where is our President?
Here are the highlights of my thoughts on this issue for today's radio program:
President Obama squeezed in a trip to Copenhagen last month to lobby, unsuccessfully, for Chicago to host the 2016 Summer Olympics. He plans to travel to Oslo next month to accept the Nobel Peace Prize, an award that even Obama has said he does not deserve. And this coming week, he sets out on a weeklong tour of Asia.
But the president does not plan to travel to Germany to attend the 20th anniversary celebration Monday of the fall of the Berlin Wall, drawing heated criticism from those who say he's ignoring a shining triumph of American-inspired democracy.
"A tragedy," is how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich described Obama's absence.
Some question whether the decision not to go was a nod to Russia, with which the Obama administration is trying to mend relations, or just another attempt to play down the perception of the United States as an exceptional superpower.
For its part, the administration is citing a scheduling conflict. The White House says the president simply does not have the time to go, with the trip to Asia starting Wednesday.
"Obviously we have a lot to work on here and we have commitments for an upcoming Asia trip," White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said Tuesday, noting that a "very senior delegation" of U.S. officials would attend.
David Hasselhoff may seem at first an unusual person to be commenting on the fall of the Berlin Wall.
But the American actor and singer has a long association with the wall and the German public. In the summer before the wall fell, Hasselhoff's hit song Looking for Freedom was racing up the charts in West Germany.
'I have about 100 pieces of the wall and I also have one that's really special because it's got all the colours of the German flag, that I just chopped out look at this piece,' he told Reuters.
Hasselhoff was even part of a concert on New Year's Eve 1989 where he sang on top of the partly demolished wall at the Brandenburg Gate.
'I had an opportunity to actually sing behind the Wall before New Years Eve at a kind of a pre-concert. And I drove in 35 minutes into East Berlin and I went to the studio and the studio was magnificent it had the most beautiful lighting and the stage and the cameras, but outside it looked like World War II,' he said.
Now Hasselhoff is back in Berlin for the celebrations marking the 20th anniversary of the fall of the wall.
"We are now moving towards the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall coming down and Germany being reunified after so many painful years," Obama said. "And this is a special moment for Chancellor Merkel, as somebody who grew up in East Germany, who understands what it's like to be under the shadow of a dictatorial regime, and to see how freedom has bloomed in Germany, how it has become the centerpiece for a extraordinarily strong European Union."
But some saw Obama's decision not to travel personally to Berlin as a snub to Merkel, Germany and the history behind the anniversary.
"Barack Is Too Busy," Germany's Der Spiegel magazine declared in a headline last month, writing that Obama had declined Merkel's invitation.
While Obama has traveled to Germany since taking office, he has not as president traveled to Berlin -- the site of his major speech in July 2008 during his overseas campaign tour. During that speech, he acknowledged Berlin's struggle, saying, "This city, of all cities, knows the dream of freedom."
Why then, critics asked, would the U.S. president not revisit that site to mark the culmination of that dream? After all, he has established himself as an intrepid traveler in office, setting off on a slew of overseas trips during his first 10 months on the job.
On several of the stops he has expressed regret for past American behavior, but the Berlin Wall anniversary was seen as an opportunity for the president to honor an American and Western victory for which the U.S. need feel no regret.
"It is a true shame that the president of the United States -- this man who cloaks himself in the rhetoric of hope -- won't be pausing to remember," Gingrich wrote in a column last week in The Washington Examiner.
The National Review's Rich Lowry wrote that the decision speaks to Obama's "dismissive view of the Cold War as a relic distorting our thinking."
"John F. Kennedy famously told Berliners, 'Ich bin ein Berliner.' On the 20th anniversary of the last century's most stirring triumph of freedom, Obama is telling them, 'Ich bin beschaftigt' -- i.e., I'm busy," he wrote. "Obama's failure to go to Berlin is the most telling nonevent of his presidency. It's hard to imagine any other American president eschewing the occasion."
Time line of the fall:
1987
June 12 Speaking in West Berlin at the wall, US President Ronald Reagan says : "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."
1989
February 6 Chris Gueffroy is the last person shot and killed trying to escape. Meanwhile, the Polish government initiates talks with the opposition to defuse social unrest.
April 5 The Roundtable Agreement is signed in Poland, legalizing independent trade unions and calling the first partially democratic elections in June.
May 2 Dismantling of the Iron Curtain – the boundary between Warsaw Pact and NATO countries – begins as Hungary disables the electric alarm system and cuts through barbed wire on its border with Austria.
Aug. 19 The 'Pan-European Picnic' – a peace demonstration at the Hungarian town of Sopron on the Austrian border – turns into an exodus when Hungarian border guards hold their fire as 600 East German citizens flee to the West .
Aug. 24 Tadeusz Mazowiecki is appointed Polish prime minister, becoming the first noncommunist head of state in Eastern Europe in more than 40 years.
Sept. 10 Hungary reopens its border with East Germany, allowing 13,000 East Germans passage to escape through Austria.
Oct. 18 East German leader Erich Honecker is forced to resign.
Nov. 4 One million people rally in East Berlin during weeks of mounting demonstrations.
Nov. 9 The Berlin Wall falls.
Here is a wonderful video tribute to this momentous day:
