May 11, 2021 - Rudy Giuliani
10:01
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| Time | Text |
|---|---|
| My fellow citizens and all those who love freedom, September 11, 2001 is a date all Americans, alive and aware at the time, will remember where they were and what they were doing. | |
| The impossible happened. | |
| The continental United States, protected by two huge oceans, was attacked by a foreign force for the first time since the War of 1812. | |
| The casualties exceeded Pearl Harbor. | |
| The confidence we all felt being impregnable to foreign attack was shattered. | |
| And like the assassination of John F. Kennedy did to a prior generation, it robbed us of whatever innocence we had left. | |
| America got to confront evil face to face. | |
| The evil of Islamic extremist terrorism. | |
| An evil and hatred of America so great that these terrorists even sacrificed their own lives to kill innocent people. | |
| These people were not soldiers. | |
| They're not intelligence agents. | |
| They weren't even politicians. | |
| They were innocent working people beginning their day of work. | |
| Their lives extinguished in an inferno. | |
| Their families were left with wounds that cannot be healed. | |
| And a nation at first frightened of further attacks, and then in shock, reflecting on the damage done and the future ahead. | |
| It could have been a day of just pure horror, but the heroism of our first responders and citizens restored our confidence. | |
| When I saw my firefighters putting up the American flag on a massive pile of debris with fires burning 2,000 degrees Fahrenheit below the debris, I knew then that the sons and daughters of the greatest generation had the same courage as those who liberated the world from Nazism and fascism, and then had the same determination that won the Cold War and liberated millions from the tyranny | |
| of godless socialism and communism. | |
| The breathtaking courage of the firefighters, police officers, and civilians that ran into | |
| the blazing building to help the maximum number of people escape saved the spirit of America. | |
| There's no nation on earth that has liberated millions and millions | |
| of others in foreign lands and asked for nothing more in return than friendship based on a mutual | |
| regard for the values of human life and freedom. | |
| Americans have a unique ability, since the rights granted to them come from God. | |
| It seems that God has given Americans the courage and dedication to protect those rights, not only for themselves, but for others. | |
| Americans of every generation can look evil in the face. | |
| Nazism, fascism, communism, Islamic extremist terrorism, domestic terrorism, and say no matter how long it takes or how much the sacrifice is involved, in the words of President Ronald Reagan, we win, you lose. | |
| Today there are those who, based on a misguided ideology of socialism, internationalism, and appeasement, want us to forget September 11th. | |
| New York City tried to cancel the beautiful light ceremony because they said it might spread COVID-19. | |
| This same city permits protesters and rioters Wearing few masks and not socially distancing to gather without any concern for COVID-19. | |
| This New York City government has actually permitted now the canceling of an 18-year tradition of reading each of the names of those who were murdered by the Islamic extremist terrorist and reading those names live. | |
| And now it's going to be done pre-recorded. | |
| They want to deal with this ongoing threat by denial and appeasement. | |
| This is just a part of their attempt to extinguish our proud history and convince us we're an evil country in need of their radical reform. | |
| We say to them in answer to that, as long as we who witnessed this barbaric attack on innocent people are alive, as long as we have a voice, as long as we can take a breath, we will never forget We'll never give in. | |
| We'll never deny. | |
| We'll never take a knee. | |
| And we will never appease. | |
| We know the result of appeasement in the 1930s because we know our history. | |
| And no matter their attempt to wipe it out, we'll never forget. | |
| We must never be intimidated by so-called political correctness to deny that this attack took place and from whence it came. | |
| To deny is to encourage another attack. | |
| We must remember that the September 11th attack is not confined to history. | |
| Like Pearl Harbor, the Civil War, the War of 1812, or the War for Independence. | |
| They're part of our history. | |
| Our former adversaries are now our friends. | |
| But the enemies of September 11th are still a real and present danger, an ongoing threat to us. | |
| As we meet today, Islamic extremist terrorists, many funded by the Islamic Republic of Iran, the regime of terror, are training and planning to attack us here and in other parts of the world. | |
| It's particularly dangerous to our nation that there are many in the Democratic Party Throughout the United States that are calling for and are defunding the police, or in the words of their candidate, reprogramming the police. | |
| The very police who ran into the inferno and gave up their lives to save others. | |
| If we're ignorant enough to present this as a possibility to these hardcore Islamic extremist terrorists, they will be even more encouraged to attack. | |
| They attack when they detect weakness. | |
| They're deterred by strength. | |
| The city of New York is still recognized as the number one target of Islamic extremist terrorism. | |
| The far left anti-police rhetoric accepted as political correctness in New York City has accepted defunding the most professional and best police force in the world. | |
| And they're defunded by $1 billion. | |
| This has not only unleashed riots in a city that has not had a riot in 28 years, that's the last time we had a Democrat mayor, but it has resulted in historic increases in shootings, homicides, and other violent crimes. | |
| No one asked what this will do to our defenses against anti-terrorism and what kind of targeted weakness does it present. | |
| To defund police in the face of an enemy that is patient and will strike and will wait to strike when we least expect it. | |
| The Islamic extremist terrorist ideology that destroyed 2,977 innocent Americans | |
| on September 11, 2001 and more in the years after is still alive, very alive. It awaits patiently | |
| for an opportunity to accomplish what it failed to do on September 11, break our spirit and destroy | |
| our way of life. | |
| We must fund our police to show we will spare no expense to defend our citizens. | |
| We must remain aware of the threat. | |
| We must be able to say the name of our enemy, Islamic extremist terrorism, despite the intimidation of the left and the prior Obama-Biden administration. | |
| So we must never forget. | |
| We must never let it happen to us again, ever again. | |
| Ignore those who burn our flag, defame our founders and kneel during our national anthem. | |
| Don't follow the crowd because you're afraid of losing business or a job or a customer or a friend. | |
| There's a lot more at stake than that. | |
| When we look back at this period of our history, the pride and accomplishment will be with those that did not bend a knee or support a violent hate group, but for those who helped to preserve the history and traditions and heroes of the greatest nation on earth. | |
| We say that not in arrogance, but as a prayer of thanksgiving To the God who guides us all. | |
| Today, our prayers go to our 9-11 heroes and their families. | |
| Their names are etched in our minds and burned into our souls. | |
| We remember them. | |
| We love them and we will never forget them. |
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