Without citing him, Democrat Joe Biden yesterday emulated Republican Ronald Reagan, despite the fact that he vigorously opposed him when he was a senator. The current president of the United States gave a speech at Pointe du Hoc, on the coast of Normandy, the scene of a war feat on June 6, 1944, D-Day, which has become an obligatory destination of patriotic pilgrimage for North American tourists. .
Like Reagan in 1984, in the middle of the Cold War, Biden also spoke of the duty to defend democracy and stood up to Moscow. The Republican, then considered an elderly leader, was 73 years old and was re-elected months later. Biden is 81 and his continuity in the White House hangs by a thread.
Macron visits Bayeux, the liberated town where De Gaulle gave his first speech after returning in 1944
With the blue background of the waters of the English Channel, on a cape that separates the beaches of Omaha and Utah (code names for the allied landing), Biden paid tribute to the 225 rangers (elite unit) who scaled a 30-meter cliff under enemy fire. Their mission was to neutralize a German cannon battery. The battle lasted two days and the rangers They prevailed, but 77 of them died and many more were wounded.
Evoking the spirit of those brave soldiers, Biden asked himself several rhetorical questions. “Does anyone doubt that they would want the United States to stand up against Putin’s aggression in Europe today?” he asked. “Does anyone believe that these rangers Would they want the United States to go it alone today?” he asked himself, to highlight the permanent importance of alliances. “Does anyone doubt that they would not move heaven and earth to destroy the ideologies of hate today?” She stressed.
The intervention was brief – just under 12 minutes – and had two recipients: Putin and Trump. Biden insisted on the duty to stand up to protect freedoms and “in the face of aggression abroad and at home.” “I refuse to believe that American greatness is something of the past,” he concluded. “I still believe that there is nothing beyond the reach of our ability when we act together.”
Forty years ago, with the Iron Curtain dividing Europe in two, Reagan noted “the great pain” of seeing the countries that were prisoners of Moscow after Hitler was defeated. He spoke of Warsaw, Prague and East Berlin. “The Soviet troops that arrived in the center of the continent did not abandon it when peace came,” he stated. They are still there, uninvited, unloved, inflexible, forty years after the war.”
The parallels between 1984 and 2024 are evident. The White House wanted Biden to go to Pointe du Hoc, despite the logistical complication of a rugged enclave, with dirt roads. The Secretaries of Defense, Lloyd Austin, and the Secretary of State, Antony Blinken, were there, proof of the symbolic importance of the event.
A few kilometers away, in Bayeux, Emmanuel Macron had also emulated another historical figure hours before, General Charles de Gaulle, who after landing in Normandy on June 14, 1944, gave his first speech in that town, liberated on the 7th. by the British troops without firing a single shot because the Germans had already fled. The current French president, who is taking advantage of until the last minute to try to influence Sunday’s European elections, paid tribute to the resistance.
International coalition
Military instructors for Ukraine
The French president, Emmanuel Macron, reiterated yesterday that the sending of military instructors to Ukraine to train a complete brigade, made up of 4,500 men, is pending the creation of an international coalition for this task, but he said that there are already countries willing to join in Macron did not quantify, for reasons of “efficiency” (so as not to give information to Russia), the number of Mirage 2000-5 fighter-bombers that will be transferred to Kyiv. In a press conference with his Ukrainian counterpart, Volodymyr Zelensky, at the Elysée, Macron confirmed that he will participate in the peace conference scheduled for a few days in Switzerland, despite Russia’s boycott. Zelensky spoke hours before in the National Assembly, where he assured that “Putin is the anti-Europe”, and thanked the French aid, which Macron promised to continue “until the last day”, until Ukraine is liberated.
