D Day Humbling experience over the Channel

Heads of state and dignitaries will gather from across the globe this week, together with those few veterans left, to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the D-Day landings in Normandy, the start of Operation Overload.
On speaking with a friend about this he commented on how inappropriate it might be to use the word "celebrate", and on reflection, I find that I am inclined to agree.
While there must surely be a sense of relief, pride, and a good deal of satisfaction in having conquered the enemy, whatever one's views, and I'm a bit of a battler myself, there must be time for reflection at the futility and consequences of conflict; and whether or not it is realistic for any of us to expect that there will ever be peace.
While conflict over oil supplies has dominated much of our time and energy in recent years, in third world countries flood and famine have been the key triggers for uprisings.
In considering this, I am aware that democracies rarely go to war with one another; perhaps this is a key feature of what we understand to be a democracy in the national sense; nations in which everyone is treated equally and has equal rights.
It is in this context that the justification for war must be seen, when our own values and moral standards are threatened, from outside, or from within.
Under those circumstances it must surely be right to fight to uphold what we know to be worth fighting for. Yet, we must also consider the personal toll that such actions take on the individuals, and their families.
I wasn't alive in the Second World War, but to arrive in Caen this week, to see the "Welcome to our Liberators" banners, and to be approached by strangers asking to shake my hand and say "Thank you", brought tears to my eyes. Awesome and humbling.