Howdy all!

In honor of the government shutdown today I’m going to make a proposal that will not only save the American taxpayer money, but also show some good will to an extremely long treasured ally of ours.

Today’s agency of focus with it’s doors completely shuttered at this moment in time is the American Battle Monuments Commission.  The ABMC maintains and staffs the American servicemen cemeteries around the world, with the most well known in Normandy, France.  9,387 American servicemen that lost their lives on June 6, 1944 during Operation Overlord (and more popularly known as D-Day) as tens of thousands of American soldiers and marines stormed the beaches in Normandy to burst open Hitler’s Atlantic Wall and begin the liberation of France and the rest of Western Europe.  Since that time, the ABMC has run these foreign cemeteries.

I propose permanently shuttering this commission and offering it back to France.  France owes it’s existence to those American servicemen interned in her soil and I believe that they will honorably and justly preserve and protect those cemeteries as hallowed ground long after the federally-funded staff have all left.

Granted, we need to clear it with France first, but I believe that they would love to have the honor of celebrating those men’s lives and will keep those cemeteries as beautiful as they are today.

And frankly, considering the treatment that our living veterans of World War II have been treated lately by the attempts at the National Park Service to lock them out of a privately funded memorial to the sacrifices of their brothers-in-arms, I think the French will give those men and those that left it all on the beaches of Normandy all of the respect and honor that they deserve.