Column: Biden’s urgent message for D-Day: Save democracy again

When I traveled with U.S. presidents abroad, there were days when I couldn’t believe I was actually being paid for the experience. One of them occurred on June 6, 2004. President George W. Bush was in Colleville-sur-Mer, on the French coast in Normandy, to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the landings.

The ceremony under sunny blue skies was quite moving (and I sat behind Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks of Saving Private Ryan fame). Better yet, my later walk among the rows of stark white crosses and a few Stars of David in the Normandy American Cemetery. I was alone but for a few English people. One of them was holding a clipboard and seemed to be directing the others to some graves. I looked at them, then interrupted them.

It turns out the elderly men were from a town where American servicemen had stayed in 1944 while awaiting orders to cross the Channel. They had a list of names and grave numbers for these former American visitors who were now buried in this location. On each grave, they left a 7 by 4 inch cross, with a red paper poppy affixed above the word “SOUVENIR”. They gave me one which, for 20 years, has been in pride of place in my home. When I dust it, I do it with respect.

This small symbol contains an outsized symbolism, both that of a great America – its citizens ready to sacrifice to preserve democracy against tyranny, for themselves and for foreigners – and that of the gratitude of our allies. With this in mind, but with a worrying difference, I looked the cover of President Biden’s visit to Normandy to mark the 80th anniversary of D-Day.

Twenty years ago, few, if any, of us listened to the tributes thinking that the democracies The countries represented there, or their alliances born out of World War II, were in some way under threat. Yet now both seem almost as fragile as the 180 veterans gathered at the cemetery, mostly in wheelchairs, bent over and wrapped in a blanket. The survivor “the boys from Pointe du Hoc” and other Norman operations are now centuries old.

By the next ten-year commemoration, these 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 ensure their survival.

This 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, he said, “is a powerful illustration of how alliances, real alliances, make us stronger — a lesson I pray so that we Americans will never forget.”

The fact that Biden even added that line about forgetting was indicative of his and our insecurity. The president, who was a baby on D-Day but has been a player in American foreign policy debates for half a century, knows better than most the troubling rightward shift in domestic and global politics of late, as well as the threats that fester. When he reiterated his message Friday at Pointe du Hoc, echoes of Ronald Reagan’s famous speech 40 years ago brought Biden closer to Reagan’s internationalist vision than Reagan’s own party is.

At Biden’s first State of the Union address two years ago, just six days after the invasion of Ukraine by Russia, an ally of the United States and Europe, he was more confident: “In the battle between democracy and autocracies, democracies are showing themselves up to the task.” Yet he has barely managed to support the once-strong U.S. military commitment to the 50-nation coalition supporting Ukraine. He faces growing “America First” isolationism among congressional Republicans, who are following their orders from Donald Trump. And he could well be beaten in November by the former president.

Biden’s international audience at the American Cemetery on Thursday clearly shared uncertainty about the free world and whether the United States will continue to lead it.

There was a round of applause, where there might not have been in years past, when Biden recounted how after the war the allies created NATO. The applause seemed to surprise him; it shouldn’t have. The subtext: His listeners fear that if Trump is re-elected, he will manage to keep his promises. past threats weaken or give up NATO and encourage the Russians do “whatever they want”.

“Isolationism was not the solution 80 years ago, and it is not the solution today,” Biden said to further applause. The test case is Ukraine: “We will not leave,” he said. More applause. Yet Biden has already said it, and he was almost wrong.

The president’s audience was as much the one at home as the one in front of him in the green space of the cemetery: “Let us be the generation who, when history is written about our time – in 10, 20, 30, 50, 80 years – we will say: When the moment has come, we have met the moment. …Our alliances have become stronger. And we also saved democracy in our time.

The choice has never been clearer: Biden is seeking re-election against a rival who has launched a “Make America Great Again” movement, which amounts to authoritarianism at home and a go-it-alone, supportive approach. to dictatorships abroad. Trump has neither my respect – nor yours – for America’s history of sacrifice and leadership abroad. As president, he canceled a visit to an American World War I cemetery in France, to complain about advisors“It’s full of losers.”

This would dismay the Brits I met in Colleville 20 years ago, who had crossed the Channel to honor the Americans who had done the same and died abroad. It is now up to us to do our small part to salute the sacrifices of past generations and save democracy.

@jackiekcalmes