Bush's
Speech at the National Cathedral
9/14/01
| George W. Bush
We are
here in the middle hour of our grief. So many have suffered so great a loss,
and today we express our nation's sorrow. We come before God to pray for the
missing and the dead, and for those who loved them.
On
Tuesday, our country was attacked with deliberate and massive cruelty. We have
seen the images of fire and ashes and bent steel.
Now
come the names, the list of casualties we are only beginning. They are the
names of men and women who began their day at a desk or in an airport, busy
with life. They are the names of people who faced death and in their last
moments called home to say, be brave and I love you.
They
are the names of passengers who defied their murderers and prevented the murder
of others on the ground. They are the names of men and women who wore the
uniform of the United States and died at their posts.
They
are the names of rescuers -- the ones whom death found running up the stairs
and into the fires to help others. We will read all these names. We will linger
over them and learn their stories, and many Americans will weep.
To the
children and parents and spouses and families and friends of the lost, we offer
the deepest sympathy of the nation. And I assure you, you are not alone.
Just
three days removed from these events, Americans do not yet have the distance of
history, but our responsibility to history is already clear: to answer these
attacks and rid the world of evil.
War
has been waged against us by stealth and deceit and murder.
This
nation is peaceful, but fierce when stirred to anger. This conflict was begun
on the timing and terms of others; it will end in a way and at an hour of our
choosing.
Our
purpose as a nation is firm, yet our wounds as a people are recent and unhealed
and lead us to pray. In many of our prayers this week, there's a searching and
an honesty. At St. Patrick's Cathedral in New York, on Tuesday, a woman said,
"I pray to God to give us a sign that he's still here."
Others
have prayed for the same, searching hospital to hospital, carrying pictures of
those still missing.
God's
signs are not always the ones we look for. We learn in tragedy that his
purposes are not always our own, yet the prayers of private suffering, whether
in our homes or in this great cathedral are known and heard and understood.
There
are prayers that help us last through the day or endure the night. There are
prayers of friends and strangers that give us strength for the journey, and
there are prayers that yield our will to a will greater than our own.
This
world He created is of moral design. Grief and tragedy and hatred are only for
a time. Goodness, remembrance and love have no end, and the Lord of life holds
all who die and all who mourn.
It is
said that adversity introduces us to ourselves.
This
is true of a nation as well. In this trial, we have been reminded and the world
has seen that our fellow Americans are generous and kind, resourceful and brave.
We see
our national character in rescuers working past exhaustion, in long lines of
blood donors, in thousands of citizens who have asked to work and serve in any
way possible. And we have seen our national character in eloquent acts of
sacrifice. Inside the World Trade Center, one man who could have saved himself
stayed until the end and at the side of his quadriplegic friend. A beloved
priest died giving the last rites to a firefighter. Two office workers, finding
a disabled stranger, carried her down 68 floors to safety.
A
group of men drove through the night from Dallas to Washington to bring skin
grafts for burned victims. In these acts and many others, Americans showed a
deep commitment to one another and in an abiding love for our country.
Today,
we feel what Franklin Roosevelt called, "the warm courage of national
unity." This is a unity of every faith and every background. This has
joined together political parties and both houses of Congress. It is evident in
services of prayer and candlelight vigils and American flags, which are
displayed in pride and waved in defiance. Our unity is a kinship of grief and a
steadfast resolve to prevail against our enemies. And this unity against terror
is now extending across the world.
America
is a nation full of good fortune, with so much to be grateful for, but we are
not spared from suffering. In every generation, the world has produced enemies
of human freedom. They have attacked America because we are freedom's home and
defender, and the commitment of our fathers is now the calling of our time.
On
this national day of prayer and remembrance, we ask almighty God to watch over
our nation and grant us patience and resolve in all that is to come. We pray
that He will comfort and console those who now walk in sorrow. We thank Him for
each life we now must mourn, and the promise of a life to come.
As
we've been assured, neither death nor life nor angels nor principalities, nor
powers nor things present nor things to come nor height nor depth can separate
us from God's love.
May He
bless the souls of the departed. May He comfort our own. And may He always
guide our country.
God
bless America.
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