5 months ago
26
NORMANDY: US Prez Joe Biden observed the 80th anniversary of D-Day on the beaches of
Normandy
on Thursday by asserting that the
allied effort
to stand up to
Russia
’s invasion of
Ukraine
is a direct extension of the battle for freedom that raged across Europe during World War II.
Addressing 180 surviving veterans of the Normandy operation and thousands of other guests, Biden said that the world must defeat another “tyrant bent on domination” and meet “the test of ages” to defend Ukraine — just as the heroes who stormed the beaches and dropped behind enemy lines did eight decades ago.
“Isolation was not the answer 80 years ago and is not the answer today,” Biden said, with WWII veterans seated in wheelchairs behind him. “We know the dark forces that these heroes fought against 80 years ago. They never fade. Aggression and greed, the desire to dominate and control, to change borders by force — these are perennial. The struggle between dictatorship and freedom is unending.”
In an energetic address, Biden declared that “Nato is more united than ever” and insisted that the alliance would stand by Ukraine in its own hour of need just as the US had stood by Europe against the Nazis. “We will not walk away,” Biden said. “Because if we do, Ukraine will be subjugated and it will not end there.”
The president spoke just steps from where 9,388 members of the American military are buried, most of whom participated in the Allied invasion at Omaha Beach. Their graves are marked with rows of stark white marble crosses or Stars of David, which gleamed under the bright sunlight and blue skies.
Biden, 81, who was a toddler when American, British and Canadian troops poured onto the beaches here on June 6, 1944, will almost certainly be the last US president to speak at a Normandy remembrance who was alive at the time Allied forces began to push Adolf Hitler out of Europe.
Now, eight decades later, Biden is leading a coalition of European and other nations in a very different war on the continent, but for a very similar principle — pushing back against the attempted seizure of a neighbouring country, in this case Ukraine, by Prez Vladimir Putin of Russia.
In his remarks on Thursday at the Normandy American Cemetery, Biden drew a direct line between the two, connected by the defence of a rules-based international order. “The men who fought here became heroes not because they were the strongest, the toughest or the fiercest — although they were,” Biden said, “but because they were given an audacious mission, knowing — every one of them knew — the probability of dying was real.” “They knew beyond any doubt there are things that are worth fighting and dying for,” Biden added. “Freedom is worth it. Democracy is worth it. America is worth it. The world is worth it. Then, now and always.”
