Arlington, Va. – President Bush, delivering a Memorial Day message surrounded by the graves of thousands of military dead, said Monday that the United States must continue the war on terrorism in the name of those who have given their lives in the cause.
“The best way to pay respect is to value why a sacrifice was made,” Bush said, quoting from a letter that Lt. Mark Dooley wrote to his parents before being killed in September in the Iraqi city of Ramadi.
Noting that about 270 men and women of the nearly 2,500 who have fallen since the 2001 terrorist attacks are buried at Arlington National Cemetery, Bush said, “We have seen the costs in the war on terror that we fight today.
“I am in awe of the men and women who sacrifice for the freedom of the United States of America,” the president said, drawing a standing ovation from the troops, families of the fallen and others gathered at the cemetery’s 5,000- seat white marble amphitheater.
“Here in the presence of veterans they fought with and loved ones whose pictures they carried, the fallen give silent witness to the price of liberty, and our nation honors them this day and every day,” he said.
The nation can best honor the dead by “defeating the terrorists … and by laying the foundation for a generation of peace,” Bush said.
Standing in the shade outside the amphitheater, Diane Cameron, 59, said it was the 15th year that she made the journey from Texas. She has sat through similar speeches by Ronald Reagan, Bush’s father and Bill Clinton.
“You don’t come here for the politicians,” she said. “The politicians are the ones who get us into war. Our military gets us out.”
After the ceremony, she said, she planned to visit the grave of her brother, a Navy pilot whose jet had been shot down over Vietnam in the 1960s.
“This is the right way to celebrate Memorial Day,” she said. “It’s something I can only do here in Arlington.”
The president spoke after laying a wreath at the Tomb of the Unknowns.
Earlier at the White House, Bush signed the Respect for America’s Fallen Heroes Act, passed by Congress largely in response to the activities of a Kansas church group that has staged protests at military funerals across the country, claiming the deaths are due to God’s anger at U.S. tolerance of homosexuals.
The new law bars protests within 300 feet of the entrance of a national cemetery and within 150 feet of a road into the cemetery. This restriction applies an hour before until an hour after a funeral. Those violating the act would face up to a $100,000 fine and up to a year in prison.
Monday’s observance at Arlington National Cemetery was not a funeral, so demonstrators were free to speak their minds at the site. Bush’s motorcade passed several on the way in, including a small group that held signs saying, “Thank God for dead soldiers.”
The Washington Post contributed to this report.
