Obama channels JFK in speech
50th anniversary of JFK’s ‘Ich bin ein Berliner’ message
BERLIN — U.S. President Barack Obama offered a new twist on Wednesday to John F. Kennedy’s historic 1963 call for liberty — “Ich bin ein Berliner“— by saying other oppressed people eager to join the free world were also “citizens of Berlin.”
Just days before Berlin marks the 50th anniversary of Kennedy’s clarion call for freedom, Obama opted to use that stirring Cold War speech as a forward-looking invitation for the world to do more to fight for liberty.
“His words are timeless because they call upon us to care more about things than just our own self-comfort,“Obama told a crowd in front of the Brandenburg Gate, just east of where the Berlin Wall that divided the city stood from 1961 to 1989.
Obama said the world should not shrink from supporting people in places like Afghanistan from taking control of their future, from backing those working for Middle East peace or from helping people in Myanmar to emerge from a dictatorship.
“In this century, these are the citizens who long to join the free world,“said Obama, on his first state visit to Germany, an important U.S. NATO ally and a major trade partner.
“They are who you were. They deserve our support for they too, in their own way, are citizens of Berlin. And we have to help them every day.“
The 3.6-meter high Berlin Wall was a 160-km long concrete barrier that encircled West Berlin, leaving its 2 million citizens trapped in an island of democracy in the heart of communist East Berlin.
The Berlin Wall was one of the world’s most deadly frontiers. At least 136 people were killed trying to escape to the West, most of them shot by East German border guards.