Operation Overlord

The United States is often condemned these days as an oppressor and imperialist. However, we must remind these critics, many of whom reside in Eurpoe, that were it not for a certain operation whose anniversary falls today, most of them would still be speaking German.

I refer of course to the greatest liberation operation ever attempted, the invasion of Normandy that began on June 6, 1944. Involving over 2700 ships, the invasion, code-named Operation Overlord, was the greatest amphibious landing in history. Memorialized by correspondent Cornelius Ryan in his epic book The Longest Day, which inspired a film of the same name, the invasion featured some of the fiercest fighting and greatest bravery of the entire war. On D-day alone over 2400 men were killed at Omaha Beach- nearly as many as have been lost in three years in Iraq. One wonders how the defeatist journalists and pundits of the present day would have spun the awesome casualties taken by the Allies on D-Day. Fortunately, American leaders and journalists of that era were both more patriotic and possessed of more intestinal fortitude.

Today, few remember the sacrifices made by the many men who died in the invasion of France in 1944. But were it not for the efforts of Allied troops (most of whom were British, American and Canadian) in 1944, Hitler's National Socialists might still rule Western Europe. So I remind the Europeans who are so quick to criticise us today- would you rather that we had not liberated you sixty years ago? For Europe, like Iraq and Kuwait, was under the thumb of a brutal dictator, and I can only imagine how the UN would have dealt with that situation, since Hitler would have been entitled by the UN's logic to fill the Security Council seat of France as well as his own.