Obama: Remember our responsibilities to our veterans this weekend

President Barack Obama asked Americans to honor with more than just words this Memorial
Day weekend those who died
fighting for the United States.

“We are called to honor them
by doing our part for the loved ones our fallen heroes have left behind
and looking after our military families,” Obama said in his weekly
address Saturday. “By making sure the men and women serving this
country around the world have the support they need to achieve their
missions and come home safely. By making sure veterans have the care
and assistance they need. In short, by serving all those who have ever
worn the uniform of this country — and their families — as well as they
have served us.”

{mosads}The president praised “the steadfast
commitment to serve, to fight and, if necessary, to die” of those who
had died in conflicts throughout the country’s history, including
ongoing ones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“It’s a commitment witnessed at each defining moment
along the journey of this country,” Obama said. “It’s what led a
rag-tag militia to face British soldiers at Lexington and Concord. It’s
what led young men, in a country divided half slave and half free, to
take up arms to save our union. It’s what led patriots in each
generation to sacrifice their own lives to secure the life of our
nation, from the trenches of World War I to the battles of World War
II, from Inchon and Khe Sanh, from Mosul to Marjah.”

Obama
will lay a wreath to commemorate fallen members of the military on
Memorial Day at Abraham Lincoln National Cemetery in Elwood, Ill. Vice
President Joe Biden will be at the wreath-laying ceremony at Arlington
National Cemetery, which presidents have often attended.

Obama noted in his address that the idea for the
holiday came from Civil War veterans, who chose a date in spring when
flowers had already bloomed.

“So this weekend, as we
commemorate Memorial Day, I ask you to hold all our fallen heroes in
your hearts and, if you can, to lay a flower where they have come to
rest,” Obama said.