NEW YORK: President Barack Obama hailed the love and sacrifice he said was “the true spirit of 9/11” on Thursday as he inaugurated a haunting Ground Zero museum dedicated to the Al-Qaeda attacks which killed nearly 3,000 people.
Obama said the museum, in the footprint of the former Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, would ensure the horror and heroism of September 11, 2001 would not be forgotten by future generations.
The president, speaking slowly and somberly, told New York dignitaries and relatives of those killed in the attacks that it was an honor to recall “the true spirit of 9/11 — love, compassion, sacrifice — and to enshrine it forever in the heart of our nation.
“Obama said that he was grateful for such a “sacred place of healing and hope” in the bedrock of Manhattan island, and vowed “nothing can ever break us.
Nothing can change who we are as Americans.”Obama was an unknown state lawmaker in Illinois when the attacks shook the foundation of American life and drew the country into a still unfinished cascade of wars and anti-terror operations.
But the aftermath of September 11, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq which followed, and the thicket of legal snares laid down by the “war on terror” have cast a shadow over his presidency.
The president highlighted the courage of one red bandana-wearing young man called Welles Crowther, who helped people out of the flaming south tower and returned several times, only to perish when the building collapsed.
Before speaking, Obama toured the museum with First Lady Michelle Obama and former president Bill Clinton and former secretary of state Hillary Clinton, who was a senator for New York when the attacks took place.