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On D-Day anniversary, 'America First' doesn't sit well on the beaches of Normandy
The America that stormed France in 1944 did so for the “common cause of humanity.” But, 75 years later, America’s role on the world stage no longer seems as certain.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/on-d-day-anniversary-america-first-doesnt-sit-well-on-the-beaches-of-normandy/2019/06/05/560f5009-0c92-4035-a9ec-44bda3fefa85_story.html?utm_term=.9117f0ccf17f
--snip--
Hovering above a foreign shoreline, the cemetery presents a particular image of the United States abroad. This is a memorial to a proudly internationalist society that — to quote the inscription on the memorial chapel here — sacrificed its sons “for the common cause of humanity.” But, 75 years later, America’s role on the world stage no longer seems as certain. The future of the postwar order won in battles such as D-Day is anyone’s guess.
Zicari looks at a grave at the Normandy American Cemetery. It’s the first time he’s been back in Normandy since D-Day. (Joel Saget/AFP/Getty Images)
President Trump campaigned — and won — on the creed of “America First,” a catchphrase that evokes an America entirely foreign to the beaches of Normandy and that, in any case, Zicari was uninterested in discussing. “I don’t like to get into politics,” he said.
When asked why he came back, he said: “So the nightmares would stop.”
For presidential historian Jon Meacham, D-Day is a symbol whose meaning has changed with the times — in the mid-1960s, it was a Cold War rallying cry; in the mid-1980s, an underpinning of Ronald Reagan’s call for American restoration. --snip--
Pierre Vimont, a former ambassador to the United States, said the isolationist rhetoric emanating from the White House does not accurately reflect the status of the transatlantic relationship enshrined in Normandy.
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