Sorry, Lafayette, I’m Staying Home
A Florida congresswoman, Rep. Ginny Brown-Waite is proposing legislation to enable families of war dead who are buried in France to exhume their bodies and bring them home to be buried in the United States. Her explanation: “I, along with many other Americans, do not feel that the French government appreciates the sacrifices men and women in uniform have made to defend the freedom that the French enjoy today.”
Never mind that the reason we enjoyed any of the freedom we used to have in this country is because the without the help of France, we would never have won the revolutionary war. That’s the reason Eisenhower sent a message to the French on the eve of the D-Day invasion: “Lafayette, I’m coming.” And General Lafayette, the Frenchman who came to our aid, loved America so much that he wanted to be buried on American soil.