September 11 ceremony at U.S. Embassy Kabul
On September 11, Ambassador Wood and the U.S. Embassy community, both American and Afghan staff, gathered on a beautiful morning in Kabul to commemorate the tragic events of 9/11. Ambassador Wood noted that the beautiful fall day in 2001 in New York and Washington changed in an instant when those airplanes flew into the twin towers and the Pentagon and killed not only thousands of Americans, but hundreds of foreigners from around the world. An Afghan colleague quoted the Holy Quran, which states that the “taking of the innocent life of a human being equals the killing of a generation of human beings.”
While 9/11 was a global tragedy, friends and colleagues in Afghanistan share with Americans the painful memories of that day. After all, the same terrorists who carried out that horrific plot had brutalized Afghanistan for years, and had assassinated the heroic Afghan leader Ahmad Shah Massoud just two days earlier on September 9. These sad days in early September binds the United States and Afghanistan.
But the spirit of the Americans and Afghans cannot be crushed and we are working together to re-build Afghanistan and create a world where the tragedies of September 9th and September 11th can never happen again.