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.
...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."
http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2009/11/08/obama-draws-criticism-sitting-berlin-wall-anniversary/