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world war ii
A Disgraceful Hegseth Dishonors Those Who Gave Their Lives on D-Day
It is not surprising that Hegseth cannot identify with the men who fought on D-Day.
Jun 08, 2026
If you have ever had the opportunity to visit the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer, France it is something that stays with you. The rows of white gravestones silhouetted against green grass and blue sky bear silent and eloquent witness to what happened on June 6, 1944. The cemetery contains the graves of 9,389 of Americans, most of whom lost their lives in the D-Day landings and the battles in France in 1944.
From the cemetery, you can see down to Omaha Beach the bloodiest part of the D-Day battlefield. While estimates vary, 2,400 to 3,600 total American casualties (including killed, wounded, and missing) occurred on Omaha Beach on D-Day, June 6, 1944. For me, the most moving part of the Cemetery is the Walls of the Missing where inscribed 1,557 names of the soldiers and sailors who were missing in action and have never had their bodies recovered.
For decades, American politicians have been visiting the Normandy Beaches to pay tribute to all the Americans and Allies (primarily British and Canadian) who fought on June 6, 1944. Particularly well-known is the speech that President Ronald Reagan made in June of 1984:
The men of Normandy had faith that what they were doing was right, faith that they fought for all humanity, faith that a just God would grant them mercy on this beachhead or on the next. It was the deep knowledge—and pray God we have not lost it—that there is a profound, moral difference between the use of force for liberation and the use of force for conquest. You were here to liberate, not to conquer, and so you and those others did not doubt your cause. And you were right not to doubt. You all knew that some things are worth dying for.
For an American politician, remarks at the Normandy beaches ought to be simple and straightforward. All you have to do is pay tribute as best you can to the extraordinary sacrifice made on June 6, 1944. As hard as it is to believe, US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth failed this simple task. Rather than just pay tribute to the efforts of those who “hit the beach” on June 6, 1944, Hegseth launched into an anti-immigrant and far-right rant. As the New York Times reported:
In his remarks, Mr. Hegseth said that “freedom is not free” and especially praised the role played by American troops, but said that over the past eight or so decades, some European countries had grown “comfortable.” “Today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies,” he said. “Boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late?”
I am sure it escaped Hegseth the fact that many of the Americans he heralds for their sacrifice were the sons of immigrants to the United States. To compare refugees coming to Europe fleeing war and economic oppression with Nazi tyranny defies belief.
It is not surprising that Hegseth cannot identify with the men who fought on D-Day. They were not the much hyped “war fighters” ignoring politically correct rules of engagement that Hegseth celebrates. Instead, they were ordinary men doing extraordinary things to defeat the most terrible tyranny the world has ever seen. History will remember the deeds of those who defeated Nazi tyranny, while Hegseth's far-right rhetoric will be nothing more than a footnote to a sad chapter in American history.
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Hegseth Ripped for 'Racist Rant' Against Migrants at D-Day Event
"Apparently our nitwit secretary of war(drobe) thinks a D-Day commemoration is an appropriate time to push his far-right ideology in Europe," said US Sen. Tim Kaine.
Jun 07, 2026
US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth came under fire from critics around the world this weekend after he turned his speech at a Saturday event marking the D-Day anniversary into a "racist rant" against migrants.
On June 6, 1944, Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in France, which was occupied by Nazi Germany's troops. Thousands were killed, but it is now widely seen as the beginning of the end of World War II. More than eight decades later, Hegseth traveled to the Normandy American Cemetery in Colleville-sur-Mer for the second straight year.
"Sadly, today, different European beaches are stormed by different dangerous ideologies," President Donald Trump's Pentagon chief said at the cemetery. "Beaches in Spain, in Italy, in Greece, and Bulgaria—boats and men arrive. When will European capitals do something about that invasion? Or is it too late? I pray not, and I believe not."
Critics quickly decried Hegseth's comments as "straight-up white nationalist talk," "utterly disgusting," "despicable," and "a disgrace to the memory of the men and women who gave their lives to win World War II."
US Army veteran and progressive advocate Mike Lavigne denounced Hegseth as "a disgrace to his office and to the nation."
Sharing a report about Hegseth's remarks on social media, Sen. Tim Kaine (D-Va.) wrote, "Apparently our nitwit secretary of war(drobe) thinks a D-Day commemoration is an appropriate time to push his far-right ideology in Europe."
House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) said: "Thousands of American heroes died on D-Day to defend freedom and defeat fascism. Pete Hegseth should honor and respect their memory. Not politicize their ultimate sacrifice. May God Bless the Greatest Generation on D-Day and every day."
After the speech, Hegseth "conspicuously skipped [the] afternoon's main international ceremony marking the anniversary of the Allied landings," France 24 reported. "His presence was not missed by some residents of the village hosting the ceremony, Langrune-sur-Mer, who said the US official was not welcome there."
As the news network detailed:
"He has very warlike views and it seems to us that this man does not share our democratic values," Sylvie Lamy Thepaut, a member of the municipal association Langrune en commun, told BFM TV.
A message on the association's website called for Hegseth's visit to be canceled on the grounds that the Pentagon chief "espouses values contrary to democracy, human rights and peace" and had made "numerous anti-European remarks," "warlike statements," and "American supremacist pronouncements."
"The honor of Langrune, that of France, and the memory of the young Allied soldiers—American, British, Canadian—who died on our beaches in the name of democracy would dictate canceling this individual’s visit," the statement concluded.
Hegseth's comments notably came a just day after US Vice President JD Vance claimed on social media that Henry Nowak—an 18-year-old student fatally stabbed in the United Kingdom last year by a fellow Brit who has since been sentenced to life in prison—would still be alive "if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of whom despise the West and the people who love it."
"Each time a life like his is lost, the proper response—the only response—is righteous anger," Vance added. "One of the most important things the Trump administration has proven to the world is that stopping the flow of mass migration and defending national sovereignty is a matter of political will and leadership. Anything else is an excuse."
In response, a spokesperson for UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer said that "in recent days we have seen people trying to interfere in our democracy and seeking to stir up division on our streets. The Nowak family are grieving after Henry's horrific murder. They have said they don't want his death to be used to create further division, hatred, or tension. We should be respecting their wishes. Our politics should bring people together even in the most terrible of circumstances. That is who we are as a country."
The recent remarks from Vance and Hegseth align with the Trump administration's official National Security Strategy, which was released in December and is full of rhetoric often used by white nationalists. The document accuses the European Union of enacting "migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife," claims that "should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in 20 years or less," and stresses that US policy is to help "Europe to remain European, to regain its civilizational self-confidence, and to abandon its failed focus on regulatory suffocation."
Earlier this week, the 27-nation EU moved forward with an overhaul of its migration policy, which has led some human rights advocates to draw comparisons to Trump's use of US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to crack down on people in the United States.
"Across the Atlantic, we see the violence and fear created by ICE's brutal immigration enforcement," Silvia Carter, a spokesperson for the Brussels-based Platform for International Cooperation on Undocumented Migrants, told The Associated Press. "Europe should be learning from the harms of that model, not building its own version of it."
Already, many migrants die while trying to reach Europe. The International Organization for Migration announced in February that at least 7,667 people died or went missing on migration routes worldwide last year—including at least 2,185 who died or went missing in the Mediterranean Sea, and another 1,214 on the Western Africa/Atlantic route toward the Canary Islands—but "the real toll is likely higher."
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How Do We Reclaim Our Future From War?
Are we stuck with pending war, and actual war, from now on... until we blow up the planet? I don’t believe that at all.
Jun 07, 2026
Is war simply part of human nature? It’s been absurdly “ordinary” throughout my lifetime, and continually expanding its power and psychological reach.
And unless you’re in the middle of it—unless you’re digging for a dead child beneath a bombed building—war is just an abstract horror. It’s necessary. It’s what keeps us safe. Glory, glory hallelujah.
“You ask: What is our policy? I will say: It is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us: to wage war against a monstrous tyranny, never surpassed in the dark lamentable catalogue of human crime. That is our policy. You ask, what is our aim? I can answer with one word: Victory—victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory however long and hard the road may be; for without victory there is no survival.”
Hmmm...
We’ve spent multithousand years now turning war into the building block of civilization. You know: Create an empire. Defend, defend, defend.
This is Britain’s new prime minister, Winston Churchill, speaking in 1940, just as World War II has opened its jaws. In that context, yes, his words make sense, but the paradox hiding in those words—the speech titled “Blood, Toil, Tears, and Sweat”—is that with victory there may be no survival either. The Good War gave us, of course, the nuclear bomb. It gave us much of the military hell that’s happened in my lifetime. It also gave us, along with a multitrillion-dollar annual global military budget, a sense of eternal necessity to be ready for the next evil monster who wants to get us.
That’s it? We’re stuck with pending war, and actual war, from now on... until we blow up the planet? I don’t believe that at all, but I started digging back into history to get a fuller sense of what others thought. Who are we?
As Steve Taylor, writing some years ago in Psychology Today, noted:
Our view of human nature determines our view of the human race’s future. If we believe that human beings are innately warlike, then there is no reason for us to believe that our future holds anything else but more of the chaos and conflict that has filled our past. But if we believe that conflict is not innate to us and that our aggression is due to external factors rather than being "hard-wired" into us, then we’re entitled to have a different vision of the future.
There seems to be a consensus among historians that we didn’t start organizing for—and waging—war until about 10,000 years ago, during the Neolithic era, when agriculture began replacing hunter-gathering as humanity’s primary source of survival. A key component of agriculture was, and is, possession and development of land, which began sending waves of change through human consciousness: protect, protect, protect! Land turned into property. And thus, for thousands and thousands of years now, people have been collectively re-envisioning their relationship with each other.
Obviously, this is a quickie look at human history. My point is simply to push the idea that war isn’t inevitable, but rather a response to significant change. I now jump ahead to 1895, when New York Journal owner William Randolph Hearst sent a photographer to Cuba to cover the insurrection going on there against Spanish colonial rule. The photographer cabled Hearst that there was no war to cover, to which Hearst responded: “You furnish the pictures. I'll furnish the war.”
And Yellow Journalism was born! And war has remained media’s friend ever since. It’s headline news. There’s fighting, slaughter, and eventual victory—for someone. And the victor controls the narrative.
Well, actually, it’s the media that controls the larger narrative. That is to say, the media creates the context: War is real. It’s what we do. In essence, it’s the bookend of every historical period, the arbiter of social change and, therefore, human evolution. Any questions?
OK, here’s where I start losing my sanity. War may not be part of humanity’s DNA, but it certainly seems to be accepted as though it were. We’ve spent multithousand years now turning war into the building block of civilization. You know: Create an empire. Defend, defend, defend. And ultimately transcend, as a new empire emerges. And then another. Whatever we do in between our wars—live in peace, more or less—may have value, but it’s not all that interesting. It’s just the lull between glorious battle cries.
And thus war starts to seem like who we are. Obviously, it’s part of who we are, because we’ve made it so, but whatever serious value it has in the moment is minimal. Mostly it’s incredibly destructive. It’s an addiction. It’s the lavishly funded antithesis of human connection: with one another, with Planet Earth.
As Rupert Ross writes in his excellent book about Aboriginal wisdom, Returning to the Teachings: “The principle of wholeness thus requires looking for, and responding to, complex interconnections, not single acts of separate individuals. Anything short of that is seen as a naïve response destined to ultimate failure.”
Oh God. Wholeness. Connection. This is the opposite of war. The meaning and complexity of these concepts requires enormous exploration, but for the moment I end with a story about heart-ripping courage and connection—about the nature of peace – that I initially wrote about nine years ago.
This happened in 2017, on a commuter train in Portland, Oregon. A man started screaming racial slurs at—started waging war with—two teenage girls on the train, one of whom was wearing a hajib. He shouted, “Go back to Saudi Arabia!”
Several passengers intervened, standing between the girls and the screamer, pushing him away. The screamer had a knife; he started slashing. Two people were killed, a third was injured. The killer fled the train. He was later arrested. But, oh my God, another act of public horror had occurred. People did what they could. A woman knelt by one of the dying men—Taliesin Namkai-Meche—holding him, comforting him. He said to her, “Tell them, I want everybody to know, I want everybody on the train to know, I love them.”
Those were his last words.
As I hear them again, I realize that this is who we are, even if we don’t know what they mean. They sear the soul with doubt, with cynicism. How can we reclaim them? Do we have it in us to be so deeply loving? The only larger question is this: How do we reclaim—and start creating—our future?
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