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Remarks by President McAleese at US Embassy Event to Commemorate the Tenth Anniversary of 9/11 RDS

RDS, Dublin, Sunday, 11th September, 2011

Ambassador Rooney, Taoiseach, Lord Mayor, friends from New York, Ladies and Gentlemen:

Ten years have passed too quickly. The horror of that evil day, now known as 9/11, still has a chilling immediacy. The television pictures are etched on our minds and the tide of grief has never ebbed. Ireland stood then, as we stand today, shoulder to shoulder with our friends and family in the United States. 

We share our remembering as an act of solidarity with all those who were bereaved or injured and with all those who gave their lives or sacrificed their health in order to help, for if terrorism manifested the meticulously planned worst of human nature that day, there were surely so many others who with no more than a heartbeat to decide, displayed a selfless generosity and spontaneous courage of astounding depth.

9/11 is not and never will be defined by the people who demolished the fundamental human rights of those who died or were injured or bereaved. It will forever be defined by those men and women whose decency and determination stood strong and valiant in defence of the human values and human dignity which are the bedrock of true democracies.

An old Irish proverb says ‘ar scath a cheile a mhaireann na daoine' - we live in one another’s shadow  and, as 9/11 showed, the victims came from all over the world, including here in Ireland and the sickening sadness drew us together then as the memory of it does today.

On behalf of the Irish people and on my own behalf, I offer once again our renewed condolences and prayers to the bereaved and injured and our abiding respect to the emergency personnel, some of whom are here today. We have always been so proud of Ireland’s longstanding association with America’s police and fire departments. On that day of days your ready heroism showed us so clearly the source of that pride.

Dr. Martin Luther King once said “Out of the mountain of despair, a stone of hope”. The sensitive and moving memorial that now marks the mountain of despair that was Ground Zero in New York is a reassuring witness to the enduring stone of hope, the stone that did not fall asunder even when the very foundations seemed to tremble.

Certainly things changed but the American people did not fall apart, nor did the world. Innocence was lost but not fortitude. And on this day those of us who believe in the right of every human being to live in peace, in equality, in dignity, protected by the shield of  invincible civil and human rights, commit ourselves anew to the task of building - stone of hope by stone of hope - a better and a safer world.

That surely is the best memorial we can give to those innocent lives that were so wastefully and unconscionably sacrificed on the altar of hatred this day ten years ago.