What the "D" is not

Seventy-five years ago today, the operative words were Omaha, and Utah, and Juno, and Sword, and Gold.

Seventy-five years ago today, men waded ashore with their heads bent as if against wind-driven hail, only the hail was hot pieces of metal, and the hot pieces of metal ripped and tore and dismembered and stole life.

Seventy-five years ago today, men tumbled out of landing craft on Omaha and Utah and Juno and Sword and Gold beaches on the coast of Normandy, and waded ashore, and sometimes they made it and sometimes they didn't. They turned the coming tide red with their blood. Their bodies became mortal flotsam. They left parts of their bodies scattered from hell to breakfast on that pitiless strand.

And then, somehow, they got off it.

They broke the hard shell of Hitler's Atlantic Wall. They hollowed out the legions of his murderous Reich. And eventually they brought his mad butcher's vision to an end.

Seventy-five years ago today.

Which is why we honor them this day. Which is why we pause to remember those who didn't get off the beach, remember the ones who lie now beneath pristine white crosses atop the bluff they never lived to scale.

That's what this day is about, 75 years after D-Day. It is not about what Ronna McDaniel, the Republican Party chairwoman, said it was the other day while whining about what a big bunch of meanies the media are.

“We are celebrating the anniversary, 75 years of D-Day,” McDaniel said. “This is the time where we should be celebrating our president, the great achievements of America, and I don’t think the American people like the constant negativity.”

Um ... no, ma'am. This is not about Our Only Available President and whether or not the media have been sufficiently glowing about his European trip. And this isn't about American exceptionalism, either.

This is about those men lying beneath those crosses, and what they gave to rid the world of a great evil. The men who did that were not just Americans. They were Americans and Brits and Canadians -- and, in the interior of Normandy, Frenchmen, too. They were part of the greatest international coalition ever assembled, and they were all exceptional.

Our Only Available President had nothing to do with any of that. He has nothing in common with those men lying beneath those crosses, given that they stormed the beaches of Normandy and, when it was his turn, he stormed the beaches of Avoidance.

His operative words were not Omaha, and Utah, and Juno, and Sword, and Gold. They were Deferrment and Bone Spur.

In so many words the other day, he said he would have gladly fought for his country in the right war. But he said never liked Vietnam as a war.

Well, Mr. President, not many people did like Vietnam as a war. But they went anyway. Some went because they thought it was their duty; some went because they didn't have the choices the circumstances of your birth afforded you.

And so, no, Ms. McDaniel, the "D" in "D-Day" does not stand for "Donald," simply because he happens to be in the vicinity.

In this particular case, it stands for "Demerit."

 Which is what Ms. McDaniel gets this day, from any American with a conscience and sense of history.