Obama skips Memorial Day ceremony at Arlington [Reader Post]

Maybe we should be grateful that he is not going to these hallowed grounds and dishonoring the heroes that lie in their graves. If anyone ever had questions about how this man really feels about our military, this action should answer those questions.

This Marxist Muslim POS we have as POTUS could care less about the past sacrifices our military made for the Republic. He is all about destroying it. Have some more thoughts but not appropriate at this time.

Reagan missed Arlington on 4 occasions, only one of those owing to a vacation; George H. W. Bush missed 4 times, 3 of which were due to vacations; George W. missed Arlington once, attending Memorial Day ceremonies at Normandy; Bill Clinton was at Arlington every Memorial Day of his presidency.

Obama will be speaking at the Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery on Memorial Day. He previously participated in Memorial Day ceremonies there as a U.S. Senator, in 2005.

The count came from here: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/memorialday.asp?tradition

A transcript of Obama’s 2005 Memorial Day speech at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery is the only reference I could find for that:

http://chicago.about.com/od/neighborhoodshistory/a/ObamaSpeechLinc.htm

I checked where Reagan and George H W Bush both missed a Memorial Day ceremony or two, but haven’t found where GW Bush missed one. Oh well, even though it’s war time the poor man hasn’t been home in 15 months. He needs to get home and cut the grass, pick up the newspapers off the lawn. Might even barbecue! But he’ll watch Saving Private Ryan and that will make up for missing the ceremony at Arlington during wartime.

No, sorry, actually, he will probably spend the weekend finding out who the REAL person was that offered Representative Sestak the job. If it takes him the rest of his life. Kinda OJ-ish.

Don’t forget he will be in CA campaigning for Barbara Boxer this weekend too.

ARCHER52: for a 13 year old boy,he likes to play with older males. bye 🙄

The veterans interred at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery count for little, apparently. When the President attends a ceremony there on Memorial Day, it doesn’t count?

This guy would probably disagree: http://www.mishalov.com/duty-honor.html

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=1662823n

@Cary:

I meant I brought up the same points Greg does here.

Can I at least make faces at Obama? 😛

@Tom in CA: Excuse my ignorance, but what does RWL mean. Can’t find it on the Net.

Show no compassion, no mercy, no understanding. The only way we get rid of the cancer that is liberalism is by radical surgery.

Remember who they are, what they believe in and what they are willing and have done to get their agenda moved forward.

No quarter given because they have offered NO quarter to us.

Them or us.

Simple.

Being a vet I will always support our military in their mission. What I dont have to do is support the person who may be sitting on the porcelian throne who gave them their mission.

@Bill: As I mentioned earlier, you wouldn’t attend a memorial service of your enemy’s fallen. We can’t expect him to attend HIS enemy’s fallen either.

BY NOT GOING TO ARLINGTON AND GOING HOME IS ABOUT POLITICS. IT IS HIS BASE I AM NOT BUYING INTO THAT IT ISNT.

When you constantly bow down before our enemies (current and former) and apologize for American military successes (current and former) you are unfit to address the fallen and disturb their rest. I agree with Mata on this one. Biden is a better choice.

2002 was the 60th aniversary of Normandy. I can think of no better place that year to recognize the 8 thousand-plus American men who died that day so that assholes like “Real American Prick” can spew their unthinking/unfeeling filth in English, not German.

May 27, 2002

PRESIDENT BUSH: Mr. President and Mrs. Chirac; Secretary Powell and Secretary Principi; members of the United States Congress; members of the American Armed Services; veterans; family members; fellow Americans; and friends: We have gathered on this quiet corner of France as the sun rises on Memorial Day in the United States of America. This is a day our country has set apart to remember what was gained in our wars, and all that was lost.

Our wars have won for us every hour we live in freedom. Our wars have taken from us the men and women we honor today, and every hour of the lifetimes they had hoped to live.

This day of remembrance was first observed to recall the terrible casualties of the war Americans fought against each other. In the nearly 14 decades since, our nation’s battles have all been far from home. Here on the continent of Europe were some of the fiercest of those battles, the heaviest losses, and the greatest victories.

And in all those victories American soldiers came to liberate, not to conquer. The only land we claim as our own are the resting places of our men and women.

More than 9,000 are buried here, and many times that number have — of fallen soldiers lay in our cemeteries across Europe and America. From a distance, surveying row after row of markers, we see the scale and heroism and sacrifice of the young. We think of units sustaining massive casualties, men cut down crossing a beach, or taking a hill, or securing a bridge. We think of many hundreds of sailors lost in their ships.

The war correspondent, Ernie Pyle, told of a British officer walking across the battlefield just after the violence had ended. Seeing the bodies of American boys scattered everywhere, the officer said, in sort of a hushed eulogy spoken only to himself, “Brave men, brave men.”

All who come to a place like this feel the enormity of the loss. Yet, for so many, there is a marker that seems to sit alone — they come looking for that one cross, that one Star of David, that one name. Behind every grave of a fallen soldier is a story of the grief that came to a wife, a mother, a child, a family, or a town.

A World War II orphan has described her family’s life after her father was killed on a field in Germany. “My mother,” she said, “had lost everything she was waiting for. She lost her dreams. There were an awful lot of perfect linen tablecloths in our house that never got used, so many things being saved for a future that was never to be.”

Each person buried here understood his duty, but also dreamed of going back home to the people and the things he knew. Each had plans and hopes of his own, and parted with them forever when he died.

The day will come when no one is left who knew them, when no visitor to this cemetery can stand before a grave remembering a face and a voice. The day will never come when America forgets them. And our nation and the world will always remember what they did here, and what they gave here for the future of humanity.

As dawn broke during the invasion, a little boy in the village off of Gold Beach called out to his mother, “Look, the sea is black with boats.” Spread out before them and over the horizon were more than 5,000 ships and landing craft. In the skies were some of the 12,000 planes sent on the first day of Operation Overlord. The Battle of Normandy would last many days, but June 6th, 1944, was the crucial day.

The late President, Francois Mitterrand, said that nothing in history compares to D-day. “The 6th of June,” he observed, “sounded the hour when history tipped toward the camp of freedom.” Before dawn, the first paratroopers already had been dropped inland. The story is told of a group of French women finding Americans and imploring them not to leave. The trooper said, “We’re not leaving. If necessary, this is the place we die.”

Units of Army Rangers on shore, in one of history’s bravest displays, scaled cliffs directly in the gunfire, never relenting even as comrades died all around them. When they had reached the top, the Rangers radioed back the code for success: “Praise the Lord.”

Only a man who is there, charging out of a landing craft, can know what it was like. For the entire liberating force, there was only the ground in front of them — no shelter, no possibility of retreat. They were part of the largest amphibious landing in history, and perhaps the only great battle in which the wounded were carried forward. Survivors remember the sight of a Catholic chaplain, Father Joe Lacey, lifting dying men out of the water, and comforting and praying with them. Private Jimmy Hall was seen carrying the body of his brother, Johnny, saying, “He can’t, he can’t be dead. I promised Mother I’d look after him.”

Such was the size of the Battle of Normandy. Thirty-eight pairs of brothers died in the liberation, including Bedford and Raymond Hoback of Virginia, both who fell on D-Day. Raymond’s body was never found. All he left behind was his Bible, discovered in the sand. Their mother asked that Bedford be buried here, as well, in the place Raymond was lost, so her sons would always be together.

On Memorial Day, America honors her own. Yet we also remember all the valiant young men and women from many allied nations, including France, who shared in the struggle here, and in the suffering. We remember the men and women who served and died alongside Americans in so many terrible battles on this continent, and beyond.

Words can only go so far in capturing the grief and sense of loss for the families of those who died in all our wars. For some military families in America and in Europe, the grief is recent, with the losses we have suffered in Afghanistan. They can know, however, that the cause is just and, like other generations, these sacrifices have spared many others from tyranny and sorrow.

Long after putting away his uniform, an American GI expressed his own pride in the truth about all who served, living and dead. He said, “I feel like I played my part in turning this from a century of darkness into a century of light.”

Here, where we stand today, the new world came back to liberate the old. A bond was formed of shared trial and shared victory. And a light that scattered darkness from these shores and across France would spread to all of Europe — in time, turning enemies into friends, and the pursuits of war into the pursuits of peace. Our security is still bound up together in a transatlantic alliance, with soldiers in many uniforms defending the world from terrorists at this very hour.

The grave markers here all face west, across an ageless and indifferent ocean to the country these men and women served and loved. The thoughts of America on this Memorial Day turn to them and to all their fallen comrades in arms. We think of them with lasting gratitude; we miss them with lasting love; and we pray for them. And we trust in the words of the Almighty God, which are inscribed in the chapel nearby: “I give unto them eternal life, that they shall never perish.”

God bless.

There is no similar reason to be in Chicago, other than to suck the cocks of those who made him what he is today.

France? Would you like to explain how Bubba found some some stones on Normandy beach that has none and he constructed a cross in the sand. They admited later it was staged. Thats was not Fox News B.S.. I guess you will call it another right wing conspiracy fabricated by Fox..Would you like to talk about Somali as well
Do you know how many Americans are buried in France in cemetaries that we keep up? Germany and other countries liberated by our troops? I am a vet and I wasnt thrilled when Bush SR didnt go to Arlington but he was a vet and he has never turned his back on vets. Where as this POS does. Im gald he isnt going he doesnt deserve to stand on the hallowed grounds of any vets final resting place. Would you care to discuss the ROE that our troops are dying from because of his clueless idea of what war is about. In your case its not about your exbox games.
Have you ever had to a make a command decision? How many command decisions was that now?

@anticsrocks: First of all the whole idea that Obama has a distain for our military is nothing more then right wing BS!!!! You guys have worked yourself up so much you actually believe your own BS…

@Real American Patriot: This is the same CIC who wanted the troopers to have their medical expenses paid for by their own medical insurance. While he was in Germany he CANCELED a visit to the military hospital and went to the gym. I still can’t put the words “Obama” and “president” together. It just ain’t right.

I am actually glad he won’t be at Arlington. If he is buried there he will be the fist illegal to have that honor.

You also need to drop the word “Patriot” from your screen name. Look it up and you will understand why.