This is an excerpt from former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld’s address on Patriot Day, Sept. 11, 2003:
Straight ahead, beyond the open space that lies just beyond the trees, lie America’s most recent patriots, the heroes of Afghanistan and Iraq. And I thank the other heroes of those battles who are with us today, patriots every one. Each of those who have fallen gave their lives for something larger than themselves. They are important. They are important because without such patriots, freedom cannot exist. Freedom is the birthright of every American. We know that to be so. But it is the birthright as well of every person, a gift of God, given to all but denied to many by tyrants, by dictators who place their own power above human dignity and even human life. To those millions in those places, America is truly the light of liberty and the hope of the world. This is something we’ve always known to be true.
Thomas Paine said during the American Revolution, “America shall make a stand not for itself alone, but for the world.” And from that day to this, the voices of other patriots in other times have rung out in support of human freedom. President Ronald Reagan telling Mr. Gorbachev to “tear down that wall.” President Bush atop the rubble at the World Trade Center telling the terrorist that they would “hear from all of us soon.”
They did hear from us, and the fight for freedom continues, because we know that if we do not fight the terrorists over there in Iraq, in Afghanistan and across the world, then we will have to face them here, and many more innocent men, women and children, as well as the patriots defending them, will perish. That’s why we will prevail.
In 1834, Daniel Webster told the Senate, “God grants liberty only to those who love it and are always ready to guard and defend it.” Fortunately for our nation, there continues to exist a long, unbroken line of patriotic defenders who rise up from this land we call America and take their place on freedom’s walls. And so today, let us remember all those who died in New York, in Pennsylvania, here at the Pentagon, in the mountains of Afghanistan, in the deserts of Iraq. And let us recommit ourselves to their cause and to our mission: the triumph of freedom over tyranny.
And let this day always be a reminder to our nation and to the world why we fight in freedom’s cause and why we must fight and win this global war on terror.
May God bless and protect our patriots, and may he continue to bless the United States of America.
