Biden on D-Day
Plus: Al Qaeda's world tour.
Just minutes ago, President Biden spoke at the American Cemetery in Normandy to commemorate the 80th anniversary of D-Day. “The price of unchecked tyranny is the blood of the young and the brave,” Biden said as he honored veterans from the assault on Normandy Beach. “Their generation, in their hour of trial—the allied forces on D-Day did their duty. Now the question for us is, in our hour of trial, will we do ours?” Happy Thursday.
D-Day
As I write this morning in Washington, President Biden is in France, on his way to the ceremonies commemorating D-Day. He’ll speak today at the American Cemetery in Normandy, and tomorrow at Pointe du Hoc.
Yesterday, Biden sketched out the theme of his visits in his proclamation of a National Day of Remembrance of the 80th Anniversary of D-Day.
He began, appropriately, by quoting President Franklin Roosevelt’s address to the nation on the evening of June 6, 1944. (Which I encourage you to listen to here.)
But the heart of Biden’s proclamation was this:
On the 80th anniversary of D-Day, may we thank these service members for their bravery and sacrifice. May we honor their heroism, which liberated a continent and saved the world. And may we recommit to the future they fought and which many died for.
In other words: Gratitude. Honor. Commitment.
This tripartite structure seems to characterize commemorations.
It is, for example, the structure of the Gettysburg Address.
It’s also the structure of Ronald Reagan’s remarks on the 40th anniversary of D-Day.
We tend to remember the first part of Reagan’s speech, with its moving and famous tribute to the veterans seated before him: “These are the boys of Pointe du Hoc. These are the men who took the cliffs. These are the champions who helped free a continent. These are the heroes who helped end a war.”
But Reagan focused in the latter part of his speech on the lessons we should learn from World War II, and on the commitment we should now make:
We in America have learned bitter lessons from two World Wars: It is better to be here ready to protect the peace, than to take blind shelter across the sea, rushing to respond only after freedom is lost. We’ve learned that isolationism never was and never will be an acceptable response to tyrannical governments with an expansionist intent . . .
But for now, particularly today, it is good and fitting to renew our commitment to each other, to our freedom, and to the alliance that protects it . . .
Here, in this place where the West held together, let us make a vow to our dead. Let us show them by our actions that we understand what they died for.
Biden will also speak over these next few days of gratitude, of honor, and of commitment.
He’ll speak in the tradition of Roosevelt and Reagan.
He probably won’t explicitly remind us that there is a different tradition that the nation shunned. He probably won’t remind us that Roosevelt had to confront and defeat the America First movement of his time. He probably won’t remind us that the Republican party, with its 1940 nomination of Wendell Willkie, also repudiated America First.
But we now need to confront the fact that this once happily rejected tradition—a toxic brew of isolationism, nativism, and know-nothingism—has come back to life with a vengeance.
In 1944 and 1984, the presidential candidates of both political parties—the bulk of both parties—were broadly committed to America’s global task and responsibility.
Not so in 2024.
As a result, while the challenges we face abroad are far less challenging than those we confronted in 1944, or even in 1984, the challenge we face here at home in 2024 is greater.
President Biden spoke eloquently today in Normandy. But what matters most is what we, the American people, do this year, and in the years ahead.
—William Kristol
In Plain Sight
While the world is understandably focused on the Ukrainian and Gazan battlefields, Al Qaeda and its allies are traveling freely across the globe. I didn’t get this information clandestinely or through some unnamed source. Instead, it occurred in plain sight. The Taliban announced it for the world to see.
On June 4, Afghanistan’s Minister of Interior, Sirajuddin Haqqani, met with the President of the United Arab Emirates, Sheikh Muhammad bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, in Abu Dhabi—a city housing thousands of American service members at Al Dhafra Air Base.
Haqqani isn’t just some no-name minister. I should know. I hunted him throughout my twenty years in the intelligence community and three years in Afghanistan. The son of the ruthless Jalaluddin Haqqani, he killed over two thousand American service members, thousands of our European allies, and nearly 70,000 Afghans.
There’s also an FBI bounty on his head for $10 million for killing American citizens.
While most media accounts charitably described Haqqani as a senior Taliban leader, he also leads its most dangerous branch, the Haqqani Network. And most importantly, he has “long-standing ties to Al Qaeda” and is a close ally of Pakistan’s notorious Inter-Services Intelligence.
“Siraj’s second wife is a close relative of Abdul Azim Musa Bin Ali, who is Al Qaeda’s expert covert operations leader,” Colonel Abdul Rahman Rahmani, a former Afghan counterterrorism officer, told The Bulwark.
Whatever one thinks of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan, it has left the United States with few options in the Hindu Kush. The Biden administration is likely trying to exacerbate tensions between Haqqani and Taliban leader Haibitullah Akhanzada. But that’s a dangerous game to play with Siraj.
First, it’s a slap in the face to thousands of America’s Afghan combat veterans and Gold Star families. It’s been less than three years since the fall of Kabul. Rehabilitating such butchers will not land well with those who spent their lives fighting these men.
“This man has the blood of thousands of service members and our Afghan partners on his hand,” Maj. Jason Howk (Ret.), the Director of Global Friends of Afghanistan, told The Bulwark. “It’s like spitting in the face of Gold Star families and veterans.”
Second, playing back-channel games with men like Haqqani will almost certainly lead to disaster. He’s the same man who helped swindle the Trump administration into pursuing the Doha Agreement, which former CENTCOM Commander Gen. Kenneth McKenzie (Ret.) recently called a “disaster.”
“If any American agency thinks they can trust the Haqqani terror network, they are just joining the long line of others duped by Pakistani ISI,” Howk said.
“The idea that there are factions within the Taliban is a discredited example of the same wishful thinking that underpinned the Doha agreement in 2020,” said Annie Pforzheimer, former deputy chief of mission at the U.S. embassy in Kabul. “Haqqanis have senior positions within the Taliban regime’s security apparatus for a reason, which is that they are demonstrably in step with Taliban leadership and act as part of the repressive structure that jails those who speak out for human rights, tortures prisoners, including young women, and kills former military and government officials. I cannot believe that those activities qualify as ‘American interests.’”
Trusting men like Haqqani to be dependable counter-terrorism partners against the Islamic State will not work. Haqqani has ties to the Islamic State, too. Moreover, he’s a terrorist. He’s not interested in working with us but will gladly take our help if it furthers his pursuit of power.
—Will Selber
Quick Hits
1. The ‘Double Haters’
Sarah has a great new piece up at the Atlantic coming out of her latest focus group. The question at hand: How are two-time Trump voters who have soured on him since 2020 processing the news of his felony conviction? How gettable are voters who fit that description for Joe Biden?
“If Biden is going to win in November, these are the voters he must persuade to hold their noses and vote for him,” Sarah writes. “And there’s reason to believe that Trump’s felony conviction just made it a little bit easier for them to do it”:
Spending 90 minutes with this group helps explain how the double haters are thinking about this race. They’re not all united ideologically, but they’re united in trusting the judicial system over Trump—at least for now.
These voters don’t speak for the majority; as swing voters, they’re marginal. But the margins will decide this race. The conviction confirmed what many of them already knew: Trump is unfit for office.
Whether or not voters like this “go home” to Trump or choose to support Biden over the next five months will be a big factor in deciding the election. A lot of variables are involved: whether Trump’s daily chaos starts to make more of an impression; Biden’s performance in the debates; prices and interest rates; the salience of issues such as immigration and abortion; and what Trump’s sentence ends up being.
2. Who were these young men?
Up at the site today, Kami Rice—an American writer living in France—has a beautiful piece meditating on the new “Dawn of the American Century” exhibition currently running at the Mémorial de Caen, the World War II museum and memorial in Normandy:
For me, D-Day is no longer just an important international event from the past. It’s now a local event that marked my community then and still marks my everyday life in tangible ways. A bike ride through the birdsong-filled Orne River estuary takes me past graffitied German bunkers.
A friendly “bonjour” to a local on a walk turns into stories of his other summer strolls on the wooded path from his family beach home past the American Cemetery on the edge of the sea in Colleville-sur-Mer. He and his wife refer to it as a garden and say June 6 commemoration events are emotionally moving even if they snarl traffic for a week on tiny country roads.
My Uber driver tells me proudly how it’s still a family event to put flowers on the grave of his great-grandfather who was among the 177 French commandos who fought ashore on D-Day. Great-grandpa died liberating the community his family lived in then and lives in now.
The reflection of world historical events on this type of normal life frames the Mémorial’s exhibition. Rather than speaking of their deaths, Kléber Arhoul and the museum’s scientific curator, Clément Fabre, wanted to explore the lives of D-Day’s soldiers.
Cheap Shots
Lots of serious stuff today, so here’s an unserious clip for the road:
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Cheap Shots - all I can say about that is I have a better relationship with God than Trump and I'm an atheist.
A quibble: "Whatever one thinks of President Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan..."
Biden decided to honor Trump/America's signed agreement to withdraw from Afghanistan; he didn't just wake up and say - "hey, let's get of Afghanistan by the end of May." Given the criticism he's received on this matter, it seems important not to miss the subtleties.