Obama and D Day

Seeing Obama at the Victory garden was bizarre. It's so amazing this man is our Commander In Chief. His speech at the ceremony commemorating those who gave their lives on D Day was redundant and boring. There were some comments I had problems with.

We live in a world of competing beliefs and claims about what is true. It is a world of varied religions and cultures and forms of government. (It's all about "nuances", isn't it?) In such a world, it is rare for a struggle to emerge that speaks to something universal about humanity. (Like doing what's right?)

The Second World War did that. No man who shed blood or lost a brother would say that war is good. But all know that this war was essential.(Just like when we deposed a dictator who violated 17 UN Resolutions, used WMDs on his own people, and fought a war with one neighboring country and invaded another while giving terrorists worldwide support.) For what we faced in Nazi totalitarianism was not just a battle of competing interests. It was a competing vision of humanity. Nazi ideology 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. (Kinda sounds like Mr. Hussein, doesn't it?)

The nations and leaders that joined together to defeat Hitler's Reich 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 (What does THAT mean?), whatever our differences, we knew that the evil we faced had to be stopped (Like the US Congress in 2003 knew?). 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.(Sounds more and more like George Bush.)

In America, it was an endeavor that inspired a nation to action. A President who asked his country to pray on D-Day also asked its citizens to serve and sacrifice to make the invasion possible. On farms and in factories, millions of men and women worked three shifts a day, month after month, year after year. Trucks and tanks came from plants in Michigan and Indiana; New York and Illinois. Bombers and fighter planes rolled off assembly lines in Ohio and Kansas, where my grandmother did her part as an inspector. Shipyards on both coasts produced the largest fleet in history, including the landing craft from New Orleans that eventually made it here to Omaha. (As compared to today when the Marines say, "We're at war, the country's at the mall.")

But despite all the years of planning and preparation; despite the inspiration of our leaders, the skill of our generals, the strength of our firepower and the unyielding support from our home front, the outcome of the entire struggle would ultimately rest on the success of one day in June. (Uh, Obama it was not "just one day")

This is just another example of Obama saying one thing and believing another. His comments could have been made by George Bush. But then George Bush didn't travel around the world apologizing, cut Defense spending, emasculate our intelligence community, pull out of Iraq, and close Gitmo, did he?.