When I traveled with American presidents abroad, there were days when I couldn't believe I was being paid for the experience. One of them was on June 6, 2004. President George W. Bush was in Colleville-sur-Mer, on the French coast of Normandy, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the D-Day landings.
The ceremony under a sunny blue sky was quite moving (and I sat behind Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks of Saving Private Ryan fame). Better still was my subsequent walk among rows of austere white crosses and some Stars of David in the Normandy American Cemetery. He was alone except for a few Englishmen. One was clutching a clipboard and seemed to direct the others to certain graves. I looked at them and then interrupted them.
opinion columnist
Jackie Calmes
Jackie Calmes brings a critical look to the national political scene. He has decades of experience covering the White House and Congress.
It turned out that the elderly men were from a town where American servicemen had stayed in 1944 while awaiting orders to cross the English Channel. They had a list of names and grave numbers of those former American visitors who were now buried at this location. At each grave, they left a cross, 7 by 4 inches, with a red paper poppy glued on top of the word “REMEMBRANCE.” They gave me one, which has held a place of honor in my house for 20 years. When I dust it, I do it with reverence.
That small sample contains enormous symbolism, both of an America that is great (its citizens willing to sacrifice to preserve democracy against tyranny for themselves and foreigners) and of the gratitude of our allies. In that spirit, but with a disturbing difference, I observed the coverage of President Biden's visit to Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day.
Two decades ago, few if any of us listened to the tributes thinking that democracies represented there, or their alliances born of the Second World War, were in danger. However, now they both seem almost as fragile as the 180 veterans who gathered at the cemetery, most in wheelchairs, hunched over and covered with blankets. survivors “Boys from Pointe du Hoc” and other Normandy operations are now centuries old.
By the next decennial commemoration, those last living links to the liberation of Europe from Nazism and fascism will surely have disappeared. But what about the countries and the cause they fought for? The challenge for the rest of us is to make sure they continue to live.
That challenge was Biden's theme in his 16 minute speech in Colleville on Thursday. What the United States and its allies did 80 years ago, she said, “was a powerful example of how alliances, real alliances, make us stronger, a lesson I hope we Americans never forget.”
The fact that Biden even added that line about forgetting was a sign of his insecurity and ours. The president, who was a baby on D-Day but has been a player in US foreign policy debates for the past half century, knows better than anyone the disturbing rightward shift in domestic and global politics of late. , and the threats that worsen. When he reiterated his message Friday at Pointe du Hoc, echoes of Ronald Reagan's famous speech there 40 years ago brought Biden closer to Reagan's internationalist vision than Reagan's own party.
In Biden first state of the union address Two years ago, just six days after Russia invaded Ukraine, an ally of the United States and Europe, he was more confident: “In the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are rising to the occasion.” However, he has has barely been able to hold on the once strong US military commitment to the 50-nation coalition backing Ukraine. He faces growing “America First” isolationism among Republicans in Congress, who take their orders from Donald Trump. And he could very well be defeated in November by the former president.
Biden's international audience at the American cemetery on Thursday clearly shared the uncertainty about the free world and about America's will to continue leading it.
There was a burst of applause, where in previous years there might well have been none, when Biden recounted that after the war the allies established NATO. The applause seemed to surprise him; he shouldn't have done it. The subtext: His listeners fear that if Trump is elected again, he will comply past threats weaken or abandon NATO already encourage the russians do “whatever they want.”
“Isolationism was not the answer 80 years ago, and it is not the answer today,” Biden said to more applause. The test case is Ukraine: “We will not leave,” she said. Applause again. However, Biden has said that before and he was almost proven wrong.
The president's audience was both those at home and those in front of him in the green expanse of the cemetery: “Let us be the generation that when history is written about our time (in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80) years from now) it will be said: When the time came, we knew the time. …Our alliances grew stronger. And we also saved democracy in our time.”
The choice has never been clearer: Biden seeks re-election against a rival who has created a “Make America Great Again” movement, which amounts to authoritarianism at home and an independent, dictator-friendly approach in abroad. Trump has none of my reverence—or his—for America's history of sacrifice and leadership abroad. As president, he canceled a visit to a World War I American cemetery in France. complaining about advisors“It's full of losers.”
That would horrify the Britons I met in Colleville 20 years ago, who crossed the English Channel to honor Americans who did the same and died on foreign soil. Now it is up to us to do our small part to salute the sacrifices of past generations and save democracy.
@jackiekcalmes
