Secretary of State Antony Blinken marked the 20th anniversary of 9/11 with a call for diplomats “to try and see around the corner” to identify emerging threats.
The somber message was one of several 9/11-themed addresses delivered by U.S. officials Friday and came as America faces a resurgent Taliban in Afghanistan, where al Qaeda terrorists were once given safe harbor to plan the historic attack on U.S. soil.
“Part of our responsibility as diplomats is to perpetually reflect on how we engage with the rest of the world and to ask some very basic questions: Are we making our nation safer, more secure? Are we advancing our interests? Are we living up to our values?” Blinken said at the State Department.
Those remarks came at what the administration hopes is a transitional moment, less than two weeks after the withdrawal of the last U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Blinken acknowledged the “13 men and women who were killed in a terrorist attack a few weeks ago as we brought that war to an end,” in addition to more than 2,600 other members of the U.S. military who died in the war.
“We have a responsibility to continue asking them now to more effectively tackle the challenges that we face today, to try and see around the corner to the crises and challenges of tomorrow, to make sure we’re doing all we can to deliver for our fellow citizens,” he said.
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The rapid exit from Afghanistan over the last several months, which devolved into the chaotic evacuation operation in which those 13 service members died, contributed to an uneasy note in other leaders’ statements aired across Washington on Friday.
“We must recommit ourselves once again to understanding the reality in which we live,” Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican, said on the Senate floor. “Twenty years later, terrorists still wish us harm. Determination and vigilance are still our duty. And the pledge ‘Never Again’ must remain our solemn commitment.”
Ambassador Matthew Klimow, an Army combat veteran who was in the Pentagon on Sept. 11, recalled the resolve that characterized then-President George W. Bush and then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s response to the attack. He described a meeting in a secure room of the Pentagon that was interrupted as officials began to feel the symptoms of oxygen deprivation. An admiral told Klimow, then a colonel, to find an air monitor, and Klimow delegated the task to the Army captain subordinate to him, Chris Donahue. They soon learned that oxygen levels in the room had plummeted, and a local fire department expert advised them to evacuate.
Rumsfeld and Air Force Gen. Richard Myers refused. “And they said, ‘We cannot leave. The Pentagon is the symbol of America’s military power,’” said Klimow, now the U.S. ambassador in Turkmenistan. “And then something remarkable happened. He turned to me and pointed at Chris Donahue and myself, and he said, ‘You two, get the word out: Tomorrow is a normal workday at the Pentagon. Everybody gets to work on time as usual.’”
That memory keyed Klimow’s exhortation two decades later.
“President Harry Truman said, ‘America was not built on fear. America was built on courage and imagination and on unbeatable determination,’” he said. “We could have that spirit again today. We need that spirit today. Let that spirit of determination be what we hold to and what we take from this day of remembrance. That and the fact that life is a precious gift and we ought to spend what time we have on Earth in pursuit of a noble purpose.”
Klimow emphasized that Donahue, the captain on the scene that day, is the same officer who rose to the rank of major general in command of the 82nd Airborne Division — famously photographed on Aug. 31 as he became the last U.S. soldier to leave Afghanistan. Blinken, for his part, noted that would-be foreign service officers cannot take the entrance exam before the age of 20.
“It means that starting tomorrow, the first volunteers born after 9/11 will start the process of becoming foreign service officers,” he said, adding that they will be taking on the vocations that position them to serve in such crises.
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“No matter how wrenching and terrifying those first moments and first days felt, [State Department officials who served on Sept. 11] appreciated that they were in a place to do something about it,” Blinken said. “That’s an extraordinary privilege, and it’s one that all of us in this department have right now as well. So on this day of all days, we remember that privilege and the responsibility, as well as the opportunity, that comes with it.”
