WASHINGTON: US President Joe Biden warned on Monday that democracy was in peril across the globe, but that it was “worth fighting and dying for.”

Throughout his Memorial Day speech at Arlington National Cemetery, Mr. Biden kept referring to the threats democracy was facing in America and across the globe.

“Democracy itself is in peril, here at home and around the world,” said the US president while his military officials and people who have lost military loved ones in Afghanistan and Iraq. “What we do now, what we do now, how we honor the memory of the fallen, will determine whether or not democracy will long endure,” Mr. Biden said.

He reminded the audience at the Grave of the Unknown Solder that 7,036 Americans had died in recent U.S. conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, serving the ideals of democracy as a vibrant form of government. “They lived for it, they died for it,” he said.

Mr. Biden praised veterans of the two wars for defending democracy and democratic values but acknowledged though that the US hadn’t always lived up to them. He called empathy “the fuel of democracy.”

president said that “we all” take democracy “for granted,” but “the biggest question” was whether democracy could win out over opposing “powerful forces.”

“All that we do in our common life as a nation is part of that struggle,” Mr. Biden said. “A struggle for democracy. It’s taking place around the world, democracy and autocracy.”

Mr. Biden’s speech came ahead of an overseas trip to meet NATO and European Union allies in Europe next month, followed by a meeting with President Vladimir Putin of Russia on June 16 in Geneva.

Published in Dawn, May 31st, 2022