His predecessor, George W. Bush, just three days after hijacked planes destroyed the World Trade Center’s Twin Towers, had stood bullhorn in hand in the smoldering wreckage to declare, “The people who knocked these buildings down will hear all of us soon.”
Almost a decade later, in a bookend to that historic visit, Obama came to New York to say that promise had been kept.
He said the killing of bin Laden told the world “that when we say we will never forget, we mean what we say.”
Obama visited Engine 54 in midtown, which with 15 deaths lost more members on 9/11 than any other firehouse, before heading to Lower Manhattan to talk with police and lay a wreath at Ground Zero, the Twin Towers site, where he also met with victims’ families.
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