Hear
WASHINGTON.- In a solemn speech on the coast of Normandy, in France, the president of the United States, Joe Biden, called to honor the sacrifice and legacy of the fallen soldiers in World War II and face the new aggression that Europe suffers, now, under the siege of Russia and Vladimir Putin, to guarantee the durability of freedom and democracy.
At the close of the commemoration of 80th anniversary of “Day D” that changed the course of the war – and of history – between the Allies and Adolf Hitler’s Nazi Germany, Biden traveled to Pointe du Hoc, to a monument erected at the top of a cliff overlooking the beaches where the fierce battle was fought that opened the door to the end of Hitler, and World War II. In the early morning of June 6, 1944, during the landing of Allied troops on Utah and Omaha beaches, 225 soldiers Rangers, an elite corps of the North American army, scaled the cliff with the critical mission of eliminating the German artillery located on the coast.
“All they could see was the outline of the coast and the enormity of these cliffs,” Biden compiled, at the beginning of his speech. “All they knew was that time was of the essence, just 30 minutes, 30 minutes to take out the cannons on top of this cliff, cannons that could stop the Allied invasion before it even started,” the president said.
Biden continued with the story of the epic battle: he said that “gunshots and grenades rained down on the soldiers, that the Nazis cut their ladders and ropes, and that the Rangers They ended up climbing with their hands, “scratched, literally clawed their way to the top of this cliff” to breach the German defenses, a critical objective for the ultimate success of the invasion.
“They broke Hitler’s Atlantic Wall and, in that single effort, they changed the tide of the war that began to save the world,” he concluded.
It was at that point in his message that Biden recovered the central theme that he brought to Europe, when crossing the Atlantic to commemorate a new anniversary of the battle that culminated years of preparation and sealed the alliance that managed to stop the advance of Nazism in Europe: defense, once again, of democracy.
Biden linked Hitler to Putin with an invisible thread, and asked to honor the legacy of the Rangers who climbed the cliff and the rest of the soldiers who fell in the Second War and face the new aggression that Europe is suffering, in defense of freedom and democracy.
“Democracy begins with each of us. It begins when a person decides that there is something more important to themselves, when they decide that the person they are serving with is someone to care for, when they decide that the mission matters more than their life, when they decide that their country matters more than them. Biden said.
“That’s what they decided. That’s what every soldier and every Marine who stormed this beach decided. A feared dictator had conquered a continent and had finally met his match. Thanks to them, the war turned and they opposed Hitler’s aggression. Does anyone doubt, does anyone doubt that they would want the United States to confront Putin’s aggression here in Europe today?“asked the president.
Biden said the fallen soldiers are calling everyone together and asking that “we be true to what America stands for,” and that “we do our job, let us protect the freedom of our time, let us defend democracy, let us stand up to aggression abroad and at home”, in what seemed a reference to his next rival in the presidential elections, Donald Trump.
Biden’s message at Pointe du Hoc stretched the line of argument that the president had deployed the day before, when he said that “the dark forces” against which the soldiers fought “never fade,” and the battle between dictatorship and freedom will never end. ends, in another reference to the current fight against Putin, whom the West sees as an existential threat to democracy.
“Aggression and greed, the desire to dominate and control, to change borders by force, are perennial things. “The fight between dictatorship and freedom is endless,” Biden had said the day before.
To finish framing that commitment and his determination to confront Putin, Biden maintained a bilateral meeting in France with the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky, who for more than two years has faced Putin’s invasion, turning Ukraine into the trench of European defense against Russian aggression.
In an unusual gesture, Biden apologized for the political disputes in Washington between Republicans and Democrats that blocked the shipment of weapons to Ukraine for months, an unforeseen obstacle in the Ukrainian defense of Putin’s troops. And he announced a new shipment of weapons for 225 million dollars.
Biden has said countless times that if the West lets Putin take Ukraine, the Russian leader will continue his advance on the rest of Europe. Seated next to Zelensky, Biden renewed his commitment to the defense of Ukraine.
“I’m not going to turn my back on you,” Biden told Zelensky. “We are still inside. Completely. Thoroughly,” he insisted.
