Obama urges Europeans, Americans to defeat terror

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Obama said he was speaking as a citizen, not as a president, but the evening was awash in politics as the first-term U.S. senator sought to burnish his international credentials for the fall campaign at home. His remarks before a crowd estimated at more than 200,000 inevitably invited comparison to historic speeches in the same city by Presidents Kennedy and Reagan.

Now a presidential candidate himself, Obama borrowed rhetoric from his own appeals to campaign audiences this year in the likes of Berlin, N.H., as he spoke in one of the great cities of Europe.

"People of Berlin, people of the world, this is our moment. This is our time," he declared.

"The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand," Obama said, speaking not far from where the Berlin Wall once divided the city.

"The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes, natives and immigrants, Christians and Muslims and Jews cannot stand," he said.

Obama's speech was the centerpiece of a fast-paced tour through Europe designed to reassure skeptical voters in the U.S. about his ability to lead the country and take a frayed cross-Atlantic alliance in a new direction after eight years of the Bush administration.

Republicans chafed at the media attention Obama's campaign-season trip has drawn. Presidential rival John McCain went to a German restaurant in swing-state Ohio, and said he'd like to deliver a speech in Germany, but as president not candidate.

In Die Welt, the German publication, Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich., wrote scathingly of the Democratic candidate and his views on Iraq and the rest of the world: "No one knows which Obama will show. Will it be the ideological, left-wing Democratic primary candidate who vowed to 'end' the war rather than win it, or the Democratic nominee who dismisses the progressing coalition victory as a 'distraction'? Will it be the American populist who has told supporters in the United States that he will demand more from our allies in Europe and get it, or the liberal internationalist hell-bent on being liked in Europe's salons?"

Obama's campaign used the speech to raise money later Thursday, sending out an e-mail appeal with links to video of Obama's speech and to the campaign donation Web site. "In a city where a wall once divided the free from the oppressed, he talked about tearing down the walls that divide all peoples so we can address our common problems the threats of terrorism and nuclear weapons, global warming and genocide, AIDS and poverty," campaign manager David Plouffe wrote.

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