The Allied landings in Normandy on 6th June 1944 is amongst the most desperate military undertakings in the history of war. An amphibious operation against a formidable and prepared enemy would almost always lead to heavy casualties. It was an operation with unprecedented risk and no amount of preparation was ever going to be enough.
It was an undertaking of such epic proportions that the Allied leadership was in a state of neurotic anxiety even on the eve of the operation. A little after midnight of 6th June, a very anxious Winston Churchill, bade his wife goodnight with the words, “Do you realize that by the time you wake up in the morning, twenty thousand men may have been killed?”
Failure would have been a disaster of epic repercussions and the world history would take a turn for uncharted territory. History would be made one way or the other. The Americans had come to Europe to finish the war as quickly as possible, and this meant taking the shortest, most direct route to Germany. Thus the D-Day landings were to be the most highly planned operations in military history.
Success was never guaranteed and celebrating the success and the sacrifices make sense even today and the world needs to remember so that the same evil never rises again. A celebration is to honor the heroes who saved the world that day!! D-Day will forever remain and deserves to be so.
Contrast that celebration to the 9-11 celebrations. A ghastly event of epic monstrosity was orchestrated by a group of people of the most evil ilk imaginable. They had one objective – to cause destruction and inflict fear on their target of hatred. They wanted to make a statement and a statement the made that resonated across the world and united the civilized world like never before.
Yet remembering 9-11 publicly and in the scale that the United States does every year only provides a megaphone to the same wicked and cowardly terrorists and only fuels their ambitions. WE SHALL NEVER FORGET is a slogan that sounds great but makes little sense. It is time to forget. Never forgetting is exactly what the terrorists want us to do – to be always reminded of their agenda or fear and hatred.
The US Congress struggles to fund the medical care of the brave New York policeman and firemen (and women) who cared little for their own health and rushed in to the two World Trade Center buildings to save as many lives as possible, defying logic and the innate human instincts to survive. The United States should allow the innocent victims of that day to mourn in private, it must never forget the sacrifices of the brave men and women of New York Police Department and Fire Department, but it makes little sense to remember 9-11 as a historical event at all – doing so only facilitates the perpetrators of that horrific tragedy continuing to get a global stage every year to tout their “achievement” with no expense.
We should consider celebrating success and sacrifice and stop remembering acts of violence and inadvertently facilitate the objective of the perpetrators of that violence.
In our own personal lives, we celebrate happy events and forget the sad ones! Why not as a country, or as a society?
Unbigotry 