The Wall Street Journal's 'Best of the Web" has an interesting point on something Obama left out of his Berlin, speech last week:
The Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby notes a telling omission from Obama's big Berlin speech--specifically, from the portion discussing the 1948 Berlin airlift:
Not once in his Berlin speech did Obama acknowledge Truman's fortitude, or even mention his name. Nor did he mention the US Air Force, or the 31 American pilots who died during the airlift.
Indeed, Obama seemed to go out of his way not to say plainly that what saved Berlin in that dark time was America's military might. Save for a solitary reference to "the first American plane," he never described one of the greatest American operations of the postwar period as an American operation at all. He spoke only of "the airlift," "the planes," "those pilots." Perhaps their American identity wasn't something he cared to stress amid all his "people of the world" salutations and talk of "global citizenship."
Whether this was a strategic decision or Obama's own instinct, it does underscore the differences between the American and European views of the world--differences that neither were created by President Bush nor would disappear under a President Obama.
(American airplane delivers food to Berlin to break Soviet blockade of the city)
Doesn't this fit in with his reluctance to wear an American Flag pin?
