President Barack Obama from Omaha Beach, Normandy:
President Obama:
Omaha — Normandy — this was democracy’s beachhead. And our victory in that war decided not just a century, but shaped the security and well-being of all posterity. We worked to turn old adversaries into new allies. We built new prosperity. We stood once more with the people of this continent through a long twilight struggle until finally a wall tumbled down, and an Iron Curtain, too. And from Western Europe to East, from South America to Southeast Asia — 70 years of democratic movement spread. And nations that once knew only the blinders of fear began to taste the blessings of freedom.
None of that would have happened without the men who were willing to lay down their lives for people they’d never met and ideals they couldn’t live without.
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