Biden Honors America’s Fallen Soldiers in Memorial Day Remarks: ‘We as a Nation Are Eternally Grateful’
President Joe Biden said that America is “eternally grateful” for the sacrifices made by the nation’s soldiers and their families, and pleaded for Americans to remember that “we’re all created equal in the image of almighty God” in remarks at Arlington Cemetery to mark Memorial Day on Monday.
“Here in Arlington lie heroes who gave what President Lincoln called the last full measure of devotion,” Biden said.
Referring to the cemetery’s Section 60, the final resting place of servicemen and servicewomen killed in America’s most recent conflicts, Biden said “when I walk through, it reminds me of the cost of war. Hundreds of graves, hundreds of graves are here from recent conflicts. Hundreds of patriots who gave their all, each of them leaving behind a family who live with the pain and their absence every single day. I want to assure each of those families, we will never forget what you gave to our country.”
“On this Memorial Day, we honor their legacy, and their sacrifice,” Biden later said, after noting that since 7,036 service members have died in Afghanistan and Iraq since his first day as vice president to former President Barack Obama. “Duty, honor, country. They lived for it, they died for it, and we as a nation are eternally grateful.”
In his remarks, Biden also discussed the “idea of America.”
“An idea that we’re all created equal in the image of almighty God,” Biden said. “That we’re all entitled to dignity, as my father would say, and respect. Decency and honor. Love of neighbor. They’re not empty words but the vital beating heart of our nation.”
“Today, as we remember their sacrifice, we remind ourselves of our duty, to their memory, to the future they fought for,” Biden said. “We owe the honored dead a debt we can never fully repay.”
“We owe them our whole souls,” Biden continued. “We owe them our full, best efforts to perfect the union for which they died. We owe them the work of our hand and our hearts to make real the promise of a nation founded on the proposition that all of us, all of us, all of us are created equal and deserve to be treated that way throughout our lives.”
Earlier, Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris participated in a wreath-laying ceremony at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.
On Sunday, Biden delivered remarks at Veterans Memorial Park in Wilmington, Delaware, and honored the memory of his late son Beau Biden, who is buried there.
Watch above, via MSNBC.
