Yesterday President Nicolas Sarkozy of France and Chancellor Angela Merkel of Germany held a joint ceremony in Paris to commemorate the end of World War I. What an amazing sight it must have been to see the leaders of these former enemy countries laying a wreath at the Arc de Triomphe. Merkel said, "We will never forget to what point the French suffered because of the Germans in the first half of the 20th century. Still one must learn to rise above one's history...there is a force that can help us: the force of reconciliation."
Wow! What a remarkable thing after all the wars these two peoples fought throughout history, not only the two World Wars, but also the Franco-Prussian War, the Napoleonic Wars and so many earlier conflicts. And now they are in the EU and share a common currency. I am sure that Georges Clemenceau would never have believed if someone had tried to tell him when he represented France at the "peace" conference after World War I. It made me wonder if some current enemies could one say be reconciled and share such a commemoration. The Palestinians and the Israelis? The Pakistanis and the Indians? It seems unthinkable now, but no more unthinkable than this would have seemed in 1918 or 1945.
What do you think?
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