The Allies from the Second World War celebrated on Saturday in France the 82nd anniversary of the landing in Normandy that began on June 6, 1944, reports DPA, quoted by Agerpres. The American Secretary of Defense, Pete Hegseth, used the occasion to ask the West for stronger support for the United States in its efforts to defend peace and freedom.
“Peace is ensured only by force, and it is force on both sides of the Atlantic, reinforced by training, by joint military capabilities and by unwavering political will,” said the official whom US President Donald Trump prefers to call secretary of war.
At the American military cemetery in Colville-sur-Mer, where he stood alongside his French counterpart, Catherine Vautrin, Hegseth insisted that “our world is safer and more prosperous when the United States of America and our allies are strong, free and unrepentant in defending our Western tradition of freedom.”
“We stand with our allies and we expect our able and ready allies to stand with us,” he added, warning that “much of the West” had become “comfortable” after World War II.
“Peace does not just come from desire”
“We forgot that freedom isn't free. We forgot that peace doesn't just come from wishful thinking. It's brought about intentionally, with honor and with strength,” and “the men who landed on these beaches knew that,” the American official said.
Hegseth compared the Allied landing in Nazi-occupied France to the crossing of the Mediterranean Sea by migrants – a phenomenon he called an “invasion”. “Unfortunately, today other European beaches are stormed by different, dangerous ideologies”, he said, mentioning the landing of migrants in Spain, Italy, Greece or Bulgaria.
