Twenty-one years ago today, President Reagan gave this speech at Normandy.

D-day was the most important military operation in the history of warfare. It was clearly the turning point in the Second World War. Without it, socialist Nazis would very likely still be a strong force in the world.

Anyone who thinks Hitler would have avoided crossing the ocean is grossly mistaken. While any assertion that he would have come and tried his hand at taking over the US is pure speculation, one need only look at his power-hungry tendencies during his operations in Europe. This is the only explanation for his intruisions into Poland, France, England, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Like Napoleon, he would have had no desire to stop there.

Had he succeeded in his conquest of Europe, the size of his army would have increased by mammoth proportions, as many young boys and men would have been forced to join the armed services or spend some time at one of Hitler's many vacation resorts, such as Dachau or Auschwitz. This practice woud have spread into all of the conquered territories and the US would have had to face what would have essentially been the combined forces of Germany, Austria, France, Great Britain, and Poland.

If you ask me (and even if you don't), I am of the opinion that the adversary we faced in the 1940's was formidible enough just including Hitler. Add to that his alliances with Italy and Japan, and we had a serious war on our hands. Hitler had to be stopped. If Hitler had succeeded, much of the world would be suffering under a totalitarian socialist regime that would simply exterminate anyone who dissented. Jews throughout the world would have been killed off nearly to extiction, and anyone with any kind of religious beliefs would have to either relinqush them or die.

Had our allied forces not been able to participate at Normandy, can anyone be sure the mission would have succeeded? It was a tough battle. 29,000 American soldiers lost their lives that day. That's right. Twenty-nine thousand Americans gave their lives in ONE DAY fighting to save the world from Hitler.

Just to put this into perspective, according to CNN, hardly a conservative-leaning source, there have been less than 2,000 COALITION casualties in the current campaign in Iraq. This includes not only Americans, but all casualties from the seventeen or so nations involved in the operation.

In my estimation, at least 25,000 American soldiers' lives have been saved by going into Iraq and taking out Saddam before he became the kind of problem Hitler did. This is true whether you agree with the war or not. Free nations are forced, by the very nature of their freedom, to defend that freedom from time to time with their own blood.

This post, however, is not meant to be a forum on the Iraq situation, but rather a tribute to the 29,000 Americans who so generously gave their lives so that you and I could enjoy our lives free of socialism and totalitarianism. Let's not forget their families, friends, and fellow soldiers who also suffered due to these losses. We owe every soldier who has entered a theater of operations the greatest debt of gratitude for their sacrifices. Without their sacrifices, we may have been called upon to make those sacrifices ourselves.

RWR