Raymond F. Burghardt Speeches

Patriot Day Remarks by Ambassador Raymond F. Burghardt

American Club
Hanoi, Vietnam
September 11, 2003

Good morning. Welcome to this ceremony to remember the 3,000 innocent victims of the attack on New York and Washington and in Pennsylvania on September 11, 2001.

We are holding this ceremony in the morning in Hanoi, eleven hours before the actual second anniversary of the first attack, on the North Tower, at 8:46 a.m. in New York.

For those of us who were in the U.S. at the time, a morning commemoration evokes very clearly our memory of that terrible day. It was a beautiful morning, bright, clear, full of hope.

It instantly became a day of terror, confusion, drama, tragedy and heroism - the heroism of the New York firemen and policemen, the New York Transit, authority employees who led people out of the buildings, and of many ordinary citizens.

That day marked a profound shift in the way America thought about itself. We finally recognized our vulnerability. We are not a safe island in a turbulent world.

Not too long ago a researcher from Georgetown University, writing a paper on post-September 11 U.S. Foreign Policy, asked for my definition of terrorism. I said that for me terrorism was the committing of an act of violence against innocent people for political purposes.

The big word is "innocent" - people who have no connection with the terrorists' political agenda.

As I answered I was thinking of the one person I knew who died that day, a young Chinese-American woman from Hawaii who was a newly hired chef at the Windows on the World Restaurant at the top of the North Tower. She was a bright, energetic person who was loved by all who knew her. Her father is a friend of mine. He also is a friend of Greg Wong, who recently left our embassy to go back to the U.S.

Someone killed her because he wanted to make a point against America, against the modern world, against the secular world, against something which filled the fanatic's twisted mind as he drove a plane into this symbol of the world he hated.

And I multiply that terrible crime by 3000, with all the people I didn't know but who were equally innocent of any relationship whatsoever with the murderers' fanatical cause.

Those victims were not only Americans. They came from dozens of countries. Today, let us remember all of them, all of the families they left behind, all the thousands of children who lost parents.

And as we honor the memory of those lost, we reaffirm our commitment to build a peaceful and secure world. We will strive to increase understanding. We will strive to eliminate the origins of hatred. We also will recognize that we never can eliminate all the reasons why someone, somewhere might hate his fellow man, so we will do what we must do to defend ourselves.

Thank you.