By Bree Hocking
So BHO, our very own American political messiah, touched down in Berlin today and delivered a soaring address to some 200,000 near hysterical German fans. (Over here, Barry, touch me. Bitte, bitte. Fist-bump with me. Ach du Lieber, don’t pass me by.) Obama laid out a good case for making himself head of the impending one world utopia, which his American presidency will no doubt usher in. Under his leadership, it is clearly only a matter of time before the whole world is holding hands and singing kumbaya. But in the excitment of the moment, he got a wee bit carried away, as the Irish might say, when speaking about all these crumbling walls and the coming age of universal unity.
Not only have walls come down in Berlin, but they have come down in Belfast, where Protestant and Catholic found a way to live together; in the Balkans, where our Atlantic alliance ended wars and brought savage war criminals to justice; and in South Africa, where the struggle of a courageous people defeated apartheid.
Yes, the Northern Ireland Peace Process is widely viewed as a success, and, yes, I understand it was a metaphor, but as for the walls coming down – not exactly. Last I checked, the so-called “peace walls,” the ugly concrete monstrosities that divide working-class Protestant and Catholic neighborhoods in Belfast, are in fact still standing. What’s more, the people living there don’t seem in any rush to take them down. The US-Ireland Alliance released a poll earlier this year, which found that a majority of residents while agreeing in principle that the walls should come down did NOT support tearing them down at this time.
