World War II Veterans Defy Administration’s Vindictiveness

If you want evidence of how the administration is going to back up that cold look and “I will not negotiate” stance from President Obama, we now have an example.

If you have ever been to the World War II Memorial in Washington, it is an open, outdoor theater-type design. There is no indoor museum, no museum building, no walled off area. Rather it is an arrangement of stone pillars around a reflecting pool.

World War II Memorial from the east.

There is also an organization that has been working hard to see that WWII veterans get a chance to see the memorial to their efforts before they pass from this earth. The group arranges “Honor Flights” for veterans to be flown to Washington at no expense to them, takes them to visit the memorial and other historic sites in Washington and flies them home the same day. These are men — some of them on walkers, canes and in wheelchairs — who saved the free world over 70 years ago.

Looking down to the WWII Memorial from the Washington Memorial. No fences when we were there.

So how does this administration honor these veterans?

Since there is no closed off area, there is no way to “close” the memorial. So they went out and got some steel panels, like those cattlemen would use to hold cattle in the middle of a parking lot with no fencing, and barricaded the area of the national mall where the memorial is located. In other words, they went way out of their way to fence off an open area of the mall.

So when a group of Honor Flight veterans arrived from Mississippi, having traveled with all the difficulties of war veterans traveling in their 70s, 80s and 90s specifically to see the Memorial, they found it fenced off so they couldn’t get close enough to see the plaques and stones honoring their achievements.

The Memorial several years ago.

We guess it would be predictable from this administration that vindictively shut down White House tours, the Thunderbirds, the Blue Angels and found dozens of way to punish the American people. That they would go far out of their way to install steel panels to block off access to a memorial honoring the world’s most heroic efforts to preserve the free world is sad. This president has made it clear from ocean to ocean that he is ashamed of America and what she stands for. Such action is, therefore, no surprise.

It also is no surprise how these veterans reacted. The reports vary as to whether they simply moved the barricades aside and went in anyway or whether the panels were moved aside for the veterans. But they were not leaving until they got in and saw what they came to see. Kind of like what they did in Europe and in the Pacific.

We assume this is just a taste of the style of heavy-handed government authority-wielding we can expect to see. After all, there was plenty of practice in implementing the sequester as brutally as possible upon the taxpaying citizens. Brace yourself.