Remarks on the second anniversary of September 11, 2001,
delivered this morning by Solicitor General Theodore B. Olson in
the courtyard of the U.S. Department of Justice in
Washington.
We gather today to remember and pay tribute with our hearts and our
tears to the loved ones, friends, colleagues and fellow Americans
who were savagely murdered on this date two years ago.
We are still stunned and bewildered by the depraved fanaticism
that planned and executed the slaughter that day of thousands of
helpless, unsuspecting innocent lives, and the infliction of
excruciatingly painful and unhealable damage on thousands more. The
audacity of the attack, the breathtaking scope of the damage
inflicted, and the depth and intensity of the inhuman rage that
propelled the attackers is simply incomprehensible to us. Each of
us that day was in some way a victim of a level and quality of
violence that most of us had never even imagined in our lives. And
we each suffer today in different ways from those September 11
moments when the ground beneath us trembled and our lives forever
changed.
On that day we Americans were forced to recognize that we are
inseparably bonded to others in Israel, India, Africa, Indonesia
and other countries who have reaped the same bitter harvest of
anguish, emptiness and grief sowed by twisted minds that know no
emotion but hate, no motive but malevolence, and no goal but
destruction. Nearly every day now, we read stories and see
photographs of the devastation and cruelty inflicted by terrorists
who attack restaurants, hospitals, office buildings, weddings and
school buses. Mindless, senseless, cruelty and hate, and
irreparable pain and loss.
Remembering and honoring the victims of September 11 is
therefore not remotely sufficient. We must engrave their faces and
tragically-shortened histories on our hearts and in our souls. We
must commit ourselves to the only goal that is worthy of their
memories: to eradicate the disease that killed them, wherever it is
and however long is takes. Their suffering and deaths must fuel our
dedication to stamp out this cancer, and, in doing so, save those
we love, and those who come after us, from future September Elevens
and the pain, loneliness and helplessness we experienced on that
day two years ago and have lived with every day since then.
We can never forget, but we can never even rest until that debt
is paid, and September 11 can be remembered not as a beginning of a
slide into chaos, but as the beginning of the end of blind,
ruthless, random brutality, and the tears of orphaned children, the
screams of hideously burned bodies, and the numbing grief that
terrorism delivers.
We cannot give up until that goal is attained, whether it comes
in our lifetime or not. If we do not persevere, we will be haunted
for eternity by the memories of those who were taken from us on
September 11. We cannot forget them or let them down.
We do not have to be a president, soldier, attorney general,
prosecutor or intelligence agent to wage this battle and win this
war. Everyone of us, in little ways, in thoughts and words and
spirit, can pull an oar, however small or seemingly slight. Each of
us can make a difference. But it will take all of us, in our own
individual lives, to lead or somehow, in some way, support the
achievement of this goal. If we do not, we will pay a tragic price
in our neighborhoods, our schools, and our homes. None of us, no
matter where we live, no matter how carefully we live our lives, is
immune from terrorism. We will either root it out and extinguish it
wherever it may hide, or it will find us and strip us of our
safety, happiness and everything we cherish.
But we can succeed if we have the strength, resolution and the
willingness to persevere.
In the words of William Faulkner, “Man will not merely endure:
he will prevail. He is immortal, not because he alone among
creatures has an inexhaustible voice, but because he has a soul, a
spirit capable of compassion and sacrifice and endurance.”
We shall decline to accept terrorism in our lives or in the
lives of our brothers and sisters in other countries on other
continents. We shall fight this terrible, contagious, borderless,
boundless disease.
And we shall prevail.
