Biden said in his D-Day anniversary speech that the Allies who liberated Europe from Nazi Germany were a “powerful illustration” of how alliances can make the world stronger.
The president added that “isolationism was not the answer 80 years ago and is not the answer today,” in an apparent jab at some Republicans who are skeptical of defending Ukraine against Russia.
“The struggle between a dictatorship and freedom is unending,” he said. “To surrender to bullies, to bow down to dictators is simply unthinkable. Were we to do that, it means we would be forgetting what happened here on these hallowed beaches.”
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) similarly said the U.S. must not repeat the mistakes of isolationism in the 1930s before World War II.
“Some of the same forces that hampered our response in the 1930s have re-emerged,” McConnell wrote in The New York Times. “It should not take another catastrophic attack like Pearl Harbor to wake today’s isolationists from the delusion that regional conflicts have no consequences for the world’s most powerful and prosperous nation.”
Congress delayed for months sending new aid to Ukraine before finally passing a $61 billion package in April. Still, the delay has spurred concerns that U.S. support for Ukraine is cracking.
The Biden administration has frequently argued that allowing Russia to win in Ukraine would endanger a democratic and free world governed by principles.
Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin called for the world to “rally again to defend the open postwar world of rules, rights and responsibilities.”
“Those rules protect us. Those rights define us,” Austin said in his D-Day speech. “And those responsibilities summon us once more.”
Secretary of State Antony Blinken said the world has “a responsibility to honor what they did,” referring to the Allies in World War II.
“But the real way to honor it is to make sure that we’re good in our time, in our moment, in standing up to the challenges that we face,” Blinken said in an interview with MSNBC’s “Morning Joe.”
“There’s a really powerful parallel too between what we’re commemorating today and what we’re doing now.”
Read the full report at TheHill.com
