Obama honors US war dead on Memorial Day (AFP)

Monday, May 30, 2011 4:01 PM By dwi

ARLINGTON, Virginia (AFP) – President Barack Obama, in a Memorial Day address at Arlington National Cemetery, urged Americans on Monday to take the sacrifices of their war departed by "heeding the warning they set."

"Our commonwealth owes a debt to its fallen heroes that we crapper never full repay," Obama said at the expeditionary cemetery, marking the solemn domestic holiday in the study of the nation's fallen assist members.

"But we crapper take their sacrifice, and we must. We staleness take it in our own lives by retentive their memories near to our hearts, and heeding the warning they set," he told the assist on this hot and muggy day just outside the nation's capital.

The cemetery is the resting locate of 300,000 US assist members, presidents, and Supreme Court justices. It includes the graves of Revolutionary War departed up through those killed in Irak and Afghanistan.

"We immortalise our prototypal patriots -- blacksmiths and farmers, slaves and free men -- who never knew the independence they won with their lives," said Obama, who earlier ordered a chaplet at the Tomb of the Unknowns.

"We immortalise the armies of men, and women disguised as men, black and white, who lapse in apple orchards and cornfields in a war that saved our union," he added, alluding to the Civil War.

"We immortalise those who gave their lives on the battlefields of our nowadays -- from Normandy to Manila, Chemulpo to Khe Sanh, Bagdad to Helmand, and in jungles, deserts, and municipality streets around the world," the chair said.

Obama highlighted several assist members killed in Irak and Afghanistan, saying they are course "in an unbroken chain that stretches back to the early life of our Republic."

The chair told the news of Marine Lieutenant Travis Manion and Navy SEAL Brendan Looney, also a lieutenant. They had become prizewinning friends as roommates at the US Naval Academy.

After graduation, Manion deployed to Iraq. In April 2007 "while fighting to rescue his man Marines from danger, Travis was killed by a sniper," Obama said.

Looney was killed terminal Sept in Afghanistan, along with octad others, in a helicopter crash.

The digit families talked and united to advise Manion's relic from his cemetery in university and belowground them lateral by lateral at Arlington.

"The relationship between 1st Lieutenant Travis Manion and Lieutenant Brendan Looney reflects the meaning of Memorial Day. Brotherhood. Sacrifice. Love of country," Obama said.

"And it is my fervent prayer that we may take the memory of the fallen by living discover those ideals every day of our lives, in the expeditionary and beyond."


Source

0 comments:

Post a Comment