UPDATE III:
Today, Trump admitted he should have visited Arlington National Cemetery on the occasion of Veterans Day.
In an interview with Chris Wallace to air this weekend, Trump said, according to the New York Times:
In retrospect, I should have, and I did last year and I will virtually every year…But we had come in very late at night and I had just left, literally, the American cemetery in Paris and I really probably assumed that was fine and I was extremely busy because of affairs of state — doing other things.
Even in admitting to such a “faux pas,” the commander in chief, who has never visited our troops in Iraq of Afghanistan, was not entirely correct.
The Times:
In fact, he did not go to Arlington on Veterans Day last year — he was in Asia at the time — but he has gone to the military cemetery for Memorial Day twice. And on Thursday of this week, he made a pre-Thanksgiving visit to the Marine Barracks in Washington, the home of the Marine commandant and units assigned to ceremonial and security missions in the capital. He spent less than an hour, then returned to the White House to briefly address a group of veterans
UPDATE II:
After having failed to honor our own country’s World War I deaths while on French soil, because of a little bit of rain, and after having failed to honor our fallen heroes at Arlington National Cemetery, for whatever reasons, the U.S. commander in chief now insults and mocks the people and the country…
That hosted him during the Armistice anniversary celebration and remembrance
That was invaded by the Nazis during that same war and lost 1.4 million of its souls
That helped our nation win our independence.
…on the very same day that France is mourning the 130 people that were killed in a terrorist attack exactly three years ago
Here is one of the tweets “unleashed” by the president of the United States today against our ally:
Emmanuel Macron suggests building its own army to protect Europe against the U.S., China and Russia. But it was Germany in World Wars One & Two – How did that work out for France? They were starting to learn German in Paris before the U.S. came along. Pay for NATO or not!
UPDATE I:
While, on the 100th anniversary of the end of WW II, the president of the United States did not visit the Aisne-Marne American cemetery in the French village of Belleau, 55 miles northeast of Paris, because of rain, it is not known why the commander in chief failed to attend Sunday’s Veterans Day observance at Arlington National Cemetery’s Tomb of the Unknown Soldier – “an unofficial presidential tradition.”
Fox News reported only:
President Trump is spending Monday at the White House and had no plans to visit Arlington National Cemetery in northern Virginia as America observes the Veterans Day holiday.
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The Veterans Day observance has been held at Arlington every year since 1954 when the holiday’s name was formally changed from Armistice Day.
Original Post:
Today, on the 11th hour of 11th day of the 11th month of 1918, we are commemorating the armistice that went into force ending one of the bloodiest wars in modern times: The First World War, idealistically referred to as “the war to end all wars.”
A war in which more than 10 million soldiers died.
A war in which more than four million American men and women served in uniform.
A war in which the United States suffered 375,000 casualties, including 116,516 deaths.
Leaders from across the world traveled to France to honor and to remember.
The leaders of former enemies France and Germany — their nations lost 1.4 million and 2 million, respectively, in that war — Chancellor Angela Merkel and President Emmanuel Macron, displayed emotion and even “intimacy” as they held their heads and hands together (below) and “underscored their countries’ current roles as guarantors of peace in Europe,” at the site where the armistice was signed.
They, along with many other world leaders, paid their respects to the fallen from their own countries and from around the world at several World War I cemeteries, memorials and monuments.
On the eve of the anniversary, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau traveled to Vimy Ridge, a battlefield in northern France, where Canada defeated German opposition against all odds, to honor the fallen.
As previously mentioned, France’s Macron and Germany’s Merkel visited the town of Compiègne in northern France, where the Allies and Germany signed the Armistice.
The British Prime Minister, Theresa May, along with the Belgian Prime Minister, visited the St Symphorien Military Cemetery in Mons where she laid wreaths at the graves of the first and last UK soldiers killed in the war. May and Macron also visited the Thiepval Memorial, which commemorates more than 72,000 British and Commonwealth soldiers.
The president of the United States who traveled nearly 4,000 miles to Paris to participate in the ceremonies and who was scheduled to visit the solemn Aisne-Marne American cemetery in the French village of Belleau, 55 miles northeast of Paris, cancelled the visit because of rain.
The Aisne-Marne cemetery is the final resting place for many of the more than 1,800 Americans who died in the 1918 battle of Belleau Wood, in which American and French troops repelled German Forces in a brutal and deadly battle that “forged a new Marine Corps.”
The cemetery has 2,288 gravesites honoring those who died, including many Americans. The names of 1,060 more Americans who went missing and whose bodies were not recovered are engraved on the walls of the site.
Instead of the president of the United States, Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and White House, Chief of Staff General John Kelly braved the rain and traveled to Aisne-Marne to honor the fallen in the name of all Americans.
Marine Corps Gen. Joe Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his wife, Ellyn, visit the chapel at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial near the Belleau Wood battleground, in Belleau, France, Nov. 10, 2018.
Thank you generals.
Today, the leaders of approximately 70 countries gathered at the Arc de Triomphe to mark the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I, where the French President, remembering the forces that led to World War I, rebuked nationalism with these words:
Patriotism is the exact opposite of nationalism…Nationalism is a betrayal of patriotism by saying, ‘our interest first, who cares about the others?’
Lead photo: U.S. Marines carry a wreath during a wreath-laying ceremony at the Aisne-Marne American Cemetery and Memorial near the Belleau Wood battleground, in Belleau, France, Nov. 10, 2018.
Video, courtesy of BBC.com
