In his D-Day address Barack Obama praised "the bravery and selflessness" of American troops from the Revolutionary War to Vietnam, but specifically refused to recognize the courage and sacrifice of American troops serving in Afghanistan or in either Gulf War--a remarkable slight for a Commander-in-Chief of the troops he sends into harm's way every day.
Speaking at "Obama Beach," as British Prime Minister Gordon Brown called it, Obama said of American troops on D-Day: "(T)hey fought out of a simple sense of duty - a duty sustained by the same ideals for which their countrymen had fought and bled for over two centuries.
"That is the story of Normandy - but also the story of America. Of the minutemen who gathered on a green in Lexington; of the Union boys from Maine who repelled a charge at Gettysburg; of the men who gave their last full measure at Inchon and Khe San;..."
After such specific examples, Obama finished the sentence, not, as could be expected, with praise for troops currently serving in Iraq--or even the additional troops he has sent into harm's way in Afghanistan--but with:
"...of all the young men and women whose valor and goodness still carry forward this legacy of service and sacrifice."
Language so vague that it could include anyone from student teachers to, conceivably, community organizers.
Further, it's more than a little ironic that the description Obama gave for American involvement in World War Two could--with the word, Nazi, removed--have been George W. Bush describing his decision to end the tyranny of Saddam Hussein in Iraq.
"(W)hat we faced in ... totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. ...
"(I)deology sought to subjugate, humiliate, and exterminate. It perpetrated murder on a massive scale, fueled by a hatred of those who were deemed different and therefore inferior. It was evil.
"The nations and leaders that joined together ... were not perfect. We had made our share of mistakes, and had not always agreed with one another on every issue. But whatever God we prayed to, whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped.
"Citizens of all faiths and no faith came to believe that we could not remain as bystanders to the savage perpetration of death and destruction. And so we joined and sent our sons to fight and often die so that men and women they never met might know what it is to be free."
But Obama's logic only applies to certain peoples. Despite Saddam's tyranny--gassing the Kurds, invading neighboring countries, harboring al Qaeda and other terrorists, paying cash rewards to the families of homicide bombers--Obama opposed, and presumably still opposes, the liberation of Iraq.
Apparently,the Kurds and other Iraqis aren't worth such sacrifices to "know what it is to be free."
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