BO fails to attend the celebration of the Fall of the Wall

He did, however give a canned speech for the occasion:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091110/ap_on_re_eu/eu_germany_wall_anniversary_27

"Let us never forget Nov. 9, 1989, nor the sacrifices that made it possible," Obama said to applause and cheers.

Um...what, exactly, were those "sacrifices" he's talking about? There was no war. OK, there was a cold war. Whatever sacrifices we made were all under the covers. It was all part of Reagan's campaign to wipe out communism without going to war, which he did quite well, if we are going to take any credit for it at all. I think we had a hand in it, though, because at the time, Reagan and Gorbachev were quite chummy.

The thing is, I think that BO is incapable of grasping:

1. That you can do things without sacrificing
2. That people other than him are capable of achievement (even though RR never got a Nobel Peace Prize)
3. That you actually need to read about an event before you give a speech on it.

Maybe you could consider the 20 years of oppression before the wall came down a kind of sacrifice, but it was not a sacrifice to remove the wall. It was a sacrifice to that enemy of freedom: communism, which our Dear Leader so ardently worships, despite lackluster protests to the contrary.

So, the lack of freedom that existed could be considered the "sacrifice." It's certainly arguable that without the lack of freedom before the wall came down, the event of the wall coming down itself would not have been a great achievement, but such a statement has a kind of empty of meaning. It only works as a rhetorical trick, with which our Dear Leader is always Johnny-on-the-spot. Yet, I think this is a stretch, even for him.

It demonstrates, though, that Dear Leader's favorite word is "sacrifice." So much so that he must find a way to insert it into any achievement, whether it belongs or not, in order for us to subconsciously associate the word "sacrifice" with words like "achievement," "accomplishment," and so on.

We must remember, though, that our sacrifice is the achievement that Dear Leader is trying to accomplish.