Their duty was to serve. Ours is to remember

OPINION:

On Memorial Day, our nation comes together to honor the courageous American warriors who poured out their last full measure of devotion in defense of our freedom. The Bible tells us to mourn with those who mourn and grieve with those who grieve. And today as one nation, we pause to do just that. The Good Book also reminds us to pay our debts. But the debt our nation owes to our fallen servicemen and women is one we can never fully repay. 

Memorial Day is the day that makes possible all other American days. Without the sacrifice we honor at patriots’ graves in churchyards and national cemeteries across the country, there would be no America.

What we celebrate today as Memorial Day began just three years after the end of the Civil War. It was originally established as Decoration Day to honor fallen soldiers by decorating their final resting places with newly bloomed May flowers and the flag they saved.

That tradition has continued as each generation of servicemen and women has stepped forward to answer their nation’s call and preserve American freedom. Our lives, our liberty, our values and our way of life are secured only by the heroism and sacrifice of those who wear our nation’s uniform.

History records that more than 40 million have served in the uniform of the United States and nearly 1 million Americans have fallen in uniform since our nation’s founding. Americans of every race and creed have fought, bled and died for our freedom.

Their duty was to serve. Our duty is to remember.

But our duty must go far beyond remembrance — it must include a commitment to ensuring that our military remains the best trained, best equipped and most prepared fighting force in world history. 

Despite calls to cut defense spending from both the left and the right, America’s obligation remains to be the leader of the free world and the arsenal of democracy. China is floating a new battleship every month. Russia is waging an unconscionable war of aggression in Ukraine. North Korea is firing missiles again, Iran is enriching uranium, and Middle Eastern countries are drawing closer to China and Russia by the day.

As evil grows around the world, only a renewed America is capable of keeping evil in check. If America isn’t leading the free world, the free world isn’t being led.

Nearly two and a half centuries after our country’s founding, America still stands strong, proud and free. We remain a nation that cherishes liberty, a nation whose spirit cannot be broken, a nation that triumphantly holds up its values as a model for the world to follow. We remain the land of the free because we are the home of the brave. 

The United States military is the greatest fighting force ever assembled on the face of the earth, the greatest force for peace in the history of mankind, made up of the greatest patriots in the history of our country. We will be forever grateful for their service and their sacrifice.

On this Memorial Day, as we remember the fallen, let our hearts dwell on the acts of courage and compassion that have kept our nation free and stirred the hearts of generations. Let us promise to be ever vigilant, ever ready, and ever resolved to defend the precious homeland we share as one people and one nation under God. And let us renew a pledge that is as unbreakable as the American spirit, a pledge that we must keep as long as our American flag waves proudly in the skies above – that we will never, ever forget.

• Mike Pence is an American politician who served as the 48th vice president of the United States from 2017 to 2021.