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We must never forget that many around the globe are denied the basic rights we enjoy as Americans. If we are to continue enjoying these privileges and freedoms we must accept our mission of expanding democracy around the globe.

We must never forget or diminish the sacrifices of those who gave everything for this nation.

I wish we would all remember that being American is not just about the freedom we have; it is about those who gave it to us.

We should not forget, no matter how we quantify it: 'Freedom is not free.' It is a painful lesson, but one from which we have learned in the past and one we should never forget.

We will never forget and we will not relent until our job is done.

America has become amnesiac, a country in which forms of historical, political, and moral forgetting are not only willfully practiced but celebrated.

And a democracy can't exist without free speech and the right to assemble. And that's what Americans tend to forget. And they're born into a culture where they take all of their freedoms for granted.

The steep decline in America's image and standing after 9/11 is a direct reflection of global distaste for the instruments of American hard power: the Iraq invasion, Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib, torture, rendition, Blackwater's killings of Iraqi civilians.

No one remembers how the American people responded day-to-day, week-to-week, or month-to-month about the decisions that Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower made during the most dangerous decades in American and world history. But we know now that they did what was right, and we honor them for it.

We can best honor the memories of those who were killed on September 11 and those who have been killed fighting the war on terrorism, by dedicating ourselves to building a free and peaceful world safe from the threat of terrorism.