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On D-Day anniversary, ‘America First’ doesn’t sit well on the beaches of Normandy
COLLEVILLE-SUR-MER, FRANCE — Onofrio Zicari had never been able to bring himself to return to the beaches of Normandy.
But
this year, at 96, the retired Los Angeles milkman decided he had to
come back to the place seared into his memory from the morning of June
6, 1944, when he stormed Omaha Beach in the fifth wave of incoming
soldiers on D-Day. He flew from his home in Las Vegas to northern France
— nearly 5,300 miles — to find one particular white cross in the
American cemetery.
Donald E. Simmons was the
last one out of the landing craft that morning, as Zicari and the others
made their way across the water and through an onslaught of German
gunfire from a ridge in the distance. Simmons was killed almost
instantly, Zicari said, his hand on his friend’s grave. “He was my
buddy.”
At 21 and 20, Zicari and Simmons were
still boys on D-Day. They would have had a hard time imagining the world
75 years later. Only one of those boys lived to see the end of the war,
the rites of marriage and fatherhood, the grandeur of what was called
the American century.
Hovering
above a foreign shoreline, the cemetery presents a particular image of
the United States abroad. This is a memorial to a proudly
internationalist society that — to quote the inscription on the memorial
chapel here — sacrificed its sons “for the common cause of humanity.”
But, 75 years later, America’s role on the world stage no longer seems
as certain. The future of the postwar order won in battles such as D-Day
is anyone’s guess.
President Trump campaigned — and won — on the creed of “America First,”
a catchphrase that evokes an America entirely foreign to the beaches of
Normandy and that, in any case, Zicari was uninterested in discussing.
“I don’t like to get into politics,” he said.
When asked why he came back, he said: “So the nightmares would stop.”
For
presidential historian Jon Meacham, D-Day is a symbol whose meaning has
changed with the times — in the mid-1960s, it was a Cold War rallying
cry; in the mid-1980s, an underpinning of Ronald Reagan’s call for
American restoration.
This was the essence of Reagan’s 1984 “Boys of Pointe du Hoc” speech (credited to speechwriter Peggy Noonan). “And I tell you, we are ready to seize that beachhead,” Reagan said.
In 2019, Meacham noted, the beaches of Normandy have yet another meaning.
“This
year, I think many Americans who are likely to be sentimental about the
story of Operation Overlord are also likely to be supporting a
president whose instincts are isolationist, not interventionist, and who
takes a dim view of the postwar order that more or less kept the peace
for more than half a century,” he said.
“These
beaches teach us the steep toll of isolation and America First — and
should be perennial reminders that we cannot escape history.”
Pierre
Vimont, a former ambassador to the United States, said the isolationist
rhetoric emanating from the White House does not accurately reflect the
status of the transatlantic relationship enshrined in Normandy.
“Despite the sometimes spectacular declarations,
the foundations of this relationship remain solid,” Vimont said. “There
is a reality of cooperation and transatlantic relations that remains
very strong.”
But other European observers
point to genuine transatlantic divergences that transcend, and even
predate, the theatrics of Trump’s Twitter account: the U.S. “pivot to
Asia,” the feeling that Europe should shoulder more of its own defense
burden, the list goes on.
“Nostalgia can’t
guide us,” said Benjamin Haddad, a French political scientist and head
of the Atlantic Council’s Future Europe Initiative.
“The
very fact that we have peaceful, stable democracies in Europe despite
the challenges they faced is an incredible testimony of American
success, but this is also why Europe will be less central to America in
the 21st century than it was in the 20th, and we should celebrate that,”
Haddad said.
To wander the
pathways of the manicured cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer — with 9,388
white crosses and Stars of David extending as far as the eye can see —
is to contemplate the cruel specter of the what-might-have-been. The
things undone, the lives unlived.
Zicari made
clear that everyone who experienced D-Day left something on these
beaches, even those who survived. In coming back, he said he hoped for
only one thing.
“I’m 96 years old. And my kids said, ‘Go ahead, Dad. You’ll have your closure.’ ”
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