Today is Memorial Day, when we pay tribute to all those who throughout our 250 years of history have given their lives to defend liberty and to found or preserve our great Republic. Ronald Reagan had a challenge for Americans on this holiday in 1982 that is just as relevant today, particularly as we await the next phase of the conflict with the terrorist Iranian regime.
While Reagan considered his words “feeble” in the face of the sacrifice from those who “loved their countrymen enough to die for them,” Americans both in the 1980s and today find his speech very powerful. As the president who won the Cold War said, “if words cannot repay the debt we owe these men, surely with our actions we must strive to keep faith with them and with the vision that led them to battle and to final sacrifice.”
Indeed, “Our first obligation to them and ourselves is plain enough: the United States and the freedom for which it stands, the freedom [for] which they died, must endure and prosper,” Reagan stated. “Their lives remind us that freedom is not bought cheaply.”
Our most recent conflict has been the operation against the terrorist Iranian regime, which cost the lives of 13 Americans. Do we not have an obligation to justify their sacrifice by finishing the work they began and eliminating the vicious and mass murdering enemies whom they fought?
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Speaking of our fallen heroes, Reagan said, “Each died for a cause he considered more important than his own life. Well, they didn’t volunteer to die; they volunteered to defend values for which men have always been willing to die if need be, the values which make up what we call civilization.”
He also poignantly observed:
And how they must have wished, in all the ugliness that war brings, that no other generation of young men to follow would have to undergo that same experience… let us also pledge to do our utmost to carry out what must have been their wish: that no other generation of young men will ever have to share their experiences and repeat their sacrifice.
America used to win every war it fought because our patriotism and our determination for unconditional surrender were second to none. We would do well to recapture that spirit.
Reagan added, “As we honor their memory today, let us pledge that their lives, their sacrifices, their valor shall be justified and remembered for as long as God gives life to this nation.” He closed with a challenge to Americans, which I repeat on this 250th year of America’s existence:
Earlier today with the music that we have heard, and that of our National Anthem — I can’t claim to know the words of all the national anthems in the world, but I don’t know of any other that ends with a question and a challenge as our does: Does that flag still wave o’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?
Donald Trump and the American military now have the option to eliminate the biggest state sponsor of terrorism in the world (Iran’s regime), which has been attacking and killing Americans for nearly 50 years. This regime has made it clear over and over and over that it will never accept peace with America, which it labeled the “great Satan.” So our choices are to let this situation continue until a new generation of American young men and women have to fight the Iranian Jihad, or end it now and spare future generations the costly fight.
What will be our choice this Memorial Day?
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