CBS: Obama’s ‘Elegant Words’ May Prevent ‘Another D-Day’

Change font size:  A |  A

On Sunday, White House correspondent Chip Reid gave a glowing review of President Obama’s overseas trip: "A trip laden with symbolism and elegant words, asking the world to look beyond old hatreds and wounds. In doing so, he hopes to create a world where there never has to be another D-Day." [audio available here]

During CBS Sunday Morning, Reid reported on Obama’s trip to the Middle East and Europe, highlighting the President’s speech in Cairo last week and marking of the 65 th anniversary of D-Day in France on Saturday. On the subject of Obama addressing the Islamic world, Reid cited left-wing New York Times columnist and Obama sycophant, Roger Cohen, who declared: "He went out there, he spoke movingly...He spoke in a way that convinced Muslims that he is sensitive to their view of their suffering, to their culture, to their religion. And that's a new message from an American president."

In March of 2008, Cohen jumped aboard the Obama campaign, using his column to praise then candidate Obama’s speech on race: "It takes bravery, and perhaps an unusual black-white vantage point, to navigate these places where hurt is profound, incomprehension the rule, just as it takes courage to say, as Obama did, that black ‘anger is real; it is powerful’...Can an inquiring mind actually explore the half-shades of truth? Yes. It. Can...The clamoring now in the United States for a presidency that uplifts rather than demeans is a reflection of the intellectual desert of the Bush years."

Here is the full transcript of the report:

9:22AM SEGMENT:

ANTHONY MASON: President Obama spoke of Europe's past and the Middle East's future during his overseas trip this past week. Chief White House correspondent Chip Reid has this ‘Sunday Journal.’

CHIP REID: President Obama arrived at Omaha Beach with a clear sense of how the actions of the brave men that day 65 years ago changed the course of history.

BARACK OBAMA: Long after our time on this earth has passed, one word will still bring forth the pride and awe of men and women who will never meet the heroes who sit before us, D-Day.

REID: While he honored the sacrifices made by the American people, he said that what made D-Day so memorable was the clarity of its purpose.

OBAMA: It's all too rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity. The second World War did that. For what we faced was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity.

REID: President Obama has a personal connection. In fact, two personal connections, to D-Day. Both his grandfather and his great uncle arrived here in France down there on Omaha Beach. His great uncle Charles Payne was there when American troops liberated the Buckenwald concentration camp in Germany. On Friday, the President toured the camp with Nobel Peace Prize winner and Buckenwald survivor Elie Weisel.

ELIE WEISEL: Had the world learned there would have been no Cambodia, and no Rwanda, and no Darfur, and no Bosnia. Will the world ever learn?

REID: Remembering the Holocaust and refuting those who say it never happened was one of the themes the President struck in Cairo the day before.

OBAMA: Six million Jews were killed, more than the entire Jewish population of Israel today. Denying that fact is baseless, it is ignorant, and it is hateful.

REID: But in that speech he also sought to open a new dialogue with the Muslim world.

OBAMA: Assalam Alaikum.

ROGER COHEN: He went out there, he spoke movingly.

REID: New York Times columnist Roger Cohen.

COHEN: He spoke in a way that convinced Muslims that he is sensitive to their view of their suffering, to their culture, to their religion. And that's a new message from an American president.

REID: A trip laden with symbolism and elegant words, asking the world to look beyond old hatreds and wounds. In doing so, he hopes to create a world where there never has to be another D-Day.