|
Getting your Trinity Audio player ready...
|
June 6, 2019. Normandy, France. The remains of 9,387 American military dead are buried at the Normandy American Cemetery and Memorial; 9238 Latin crosses for Christians and 149 Stars of David for Jews are aligned on the bluff overlooking Omaha Beach, one of five sectors on the Normandy coast where 132,000 soldiers of the Western allies landed on June 6, 1944. US President Donald J. Trump delivers a speech praising heroism, duty, honor and freedom, and pays tribute to the young Americans who gave their lives; he also speaks of the other soldiers who fought in the Normandy landings: Canadians, British, French. He behaves as a great statesman.
Just before he spoke, French President Emmanuel Macron also paid tribute to those brave soldiers. He added some remarks — that immediately were seen as a way to lecture the American President:
“America is never as great as when it fights for the freedom of others. It is never as great as when it is faithful to the universal values defended by its founding fathers when two and a half centuries ago, France came to support its independence”.
Macron had earlier indicated that he intended to emphasize “French values” and “the art of being French”. Jean-Pierre Raffarin, a former French Prime Minister and today one of Emmanuel Macron’s political advisors, said the that French President thought the United States had “abandoned core ethical principles” and that “America today would not fight for the freedom of Europe. “
The day before that, Macron organized a ceremony to pay homage to the French resistance. “Without the resistance and all the French fighters,” he said, “France would not have regained freedom”. At another ceremony to pay tribute to the 177 Free French soldiers who landed at Normandy on D-Day, he said that the French were “everywhere to liberate their own country, on land, at sea, in the air”.
[…]
See Also:
(1) United States of EUROPE! Why new EU chief should terrify nationalists
(2) Brexit plan: Farage reveals only way Boris Johnson can get no-deal through parliament
(3) This is the EU that really gets our backs up
(4) Greece election: Left-wing government faces humiliation as voters turn backs on Tsipras
(5) BBC backlash: Beeb facing legal challenge as viewers raise thousands to tackle ‘bias’
