The Bible tells us — “weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the morning.”
Ten years ago, America confronted one of our darkest nights. Mighty towers crumbled. Black smoke billowed up from the Pentagon. Airplane wreckage smoldered on a Pennsylvania field. Friends and neighbours, sisters and brothers, mothers and fathers, sons and daughters — they were taken from us with a heartbreaking swiftness and cruelty. And, on September 12, 2001, we awoke to a world in which evil was closer at hand and uncertainty clouded our future.
In the decade since, much has changed for Americans. We’ve known war and recession, passionate debates and political divides. We can never get back the lives that were lost on that day or the Americans who made the ultimate sacrifice in the wars that followed. These past 10 years have shown that America does not give in to fear. The rescue workers who rushed to the scene, the firefighters who charged up the stairs, the passengers who stormed the cockpit — these patriots defined the very nature of courage. Over the years we’ve also seen a more quiet form of heroism — in the ladder company that lost so many men and still suits up and saves lives every day, the businesses that have been rebuilt from nothing, the burn victim who has bounced back, the families who press on.
Last spring, I received a letter from a woman named Suzanne Swaine. She had lost her husband and brother in the Twin Towers, and said she had been robbed of “so many would-be proud moments where a father watches their child graduate, or tend a goal in a lacrosse game, or succeed academically.” But her daughters are in college, the other doing well in high school. “It has been 10 years of raising these girls on my own,” Suzanne wrote. “I could not be prouder of their strength and resilience.” That spirit typifies our American family. And, the hopeful future for those girls is the ultimate rebuke to the hateful killers who took the life of their father.
These past 10 years have shown America’s resolve to defend our way of life. Two million Americans have gone to war since 9/11. They have demonstrated that those who do us harm cannot hide from the reach of justice, anywhere in the world. America has been defended not by conscripts, but by citizens who choose to serve — young people who signed up straight out of high school, guardsmen and reservists, workers and business-people, immigrants and fourth-generation soldiers. The sacrifices of these men and women, and of our military families, reminds us that the wages of war are great; that while service to our nation is full of glory, war itself is never glorious. Our troops have been to lands unknown to many Americans a decade ago — to Kandahar and Kabul; to Mosul and Basra. But our strength is not measured in our ability to stay in these places; it comes from our desire to move from a decade of war to a future of peace.
Debates — about war and peace, about security and civil liberties — have often been fierce these last 10 years. But it is precisely the rigour of these debates, and our ability to resolve them in a way that honours our values and our democracy. These past 10 years underscores the bonds between all Americans. We have not succumbed to suspicion, nor have we succumbed to mistrust. After 9/11, to his great credit, President George Bush made clear what we reaffirm today: The US will never wage war against Islam or any other religion. Immigrants come here from all parts of the globe. And, in the biggest cities and the smallest towns, in schools and workplaces, you still see people of every conceivable race and religion and ethnicity — all of them pledging allegiance to the flag, all of them reaching for the same American dream — e pluribus unum, out of many, we are one. The Pentagon is repaired, and filled with patriots working in common purpose.
Shanksville is the scene of friendships forged between residents of that town, and families who lost loved ones there. New York remains the most vibrant of capitals of arts and industry and fashion and commerce. Where the World Trade Center once stood, the sun glistens off a new tower that reaches towards the sky. Our people still work in skyscrapers. Our stadiums are still filled with fans, and our parks full of children playing ball. Our airports hum with travel, and our buses and subways take millions where they need to go. And, families sit down to Sunday dinner, and students prepare for school. This land pulses with the optimism of those who set out for distant shores, and the courage of those who died for human freedom.
Edited excerpts from US President Barack Obama’s speech at Washington DC on September 11