Obama Travels to Texas for Service at Fort Hood

Obama Travels to Texas for Service at Fort Hood
By JAMES C. McKINLEY Jr. and DAVID STOUT
Copyright by The New York Times
Published: November 10, 2009
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/11/us/11hood.html?ref=global-home


FORT HOOD, Tex. — President Obama mourned the victims of the rampage that took 13 lives last week, declaring in a visit to the base on Tuesday that the bloodshed was all the more tragic because it took place on American soil rather than a foreign battlefield.

“We come together filled with sorrow for the thirteen Americans that we have lost; with gratitude for the lives that they led; and with a determination to honor them through the work we carry on,” the president said.

“This is a time of war,” the president continued, in remarks released in advance by the White House. “And yet these Americans did not die on a foreign field of battle. They were killed here, on American soil, in the heart of this great American community. It is this fact that makes the tragedy even more painful and even more incomprehensible.”

But the president promised that the victims of last Thursday’s shootings, however senseless their deaths, would live on in memory.

“Your loved ones endure through the life of our nation,” Mr. Obama said. “Their memory will be honored in the places they lived and by the people they touched. Their life’s work is our security, and the freedom that we too often take for granted. Every evening that the sun sets on a tranquil town; every dawn that a flag is unfurled; every moment that an American enjoys life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness – that is their legacy.”

“Neither this country – nor the values that we were founded upon – could exist without men and women like these 13 Americans,” the president said. “And that is why we must pay tribute to their stories.”

The president and his wife, Michelle, arrived in Killeen just before noon Central time in brilliant sunshine. They visited privately with the families of those killed in the attack, and immediately afterward were to gather with some of the dozens of wounded and their family members.

Several thousand people were expected to attend the observance, and security around the base has been tightened since the shooting. The army constructed a three-story wall of grey steel containers around the area where the President was to speak. Hundreds of soldiers, hospital workers and army spouses arrived and were channeled through dozens of metal detectors on the south west side of the enclosure.

Companies of soldiers in their camouflage fatigues and berets marched to the event, singing their cadences, their banners flying at the end of the column. Others arrived with their children on their shoulders. Many of the civilians came dressed in black.

Some said they had come to see a president they had hoped would end the war; others said they had come to honor the dead. Others said they hoped President Obama, a great orator, would find the words to bring a sense of closure to a massacre that had struck them in the one place they felt safe: on the largest army base in the United States, Fort Hood.

Anthony Power, a retired sergeant who served for 27 years and fought in Vietnam, said he knew none of the people wounded or killed, but he still had to attend the service. “To me, if there is something I can do, lend my presence, to show sympathy for these who are lost and those who are injured, it is my moral duty to do so,” he said.

Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, commanding general of the Third Armored Corps and Fort Hood, said at a briefing on Monday that the ceremony was intended to help the people of Fort Hood move forward, just as memorial ceremonies in war zones are meant to do.

"The added benefit, of course,” General Cone said, “is having the president of the United States here, and all that represents."

Past presidents have helped the nation work through some of its most wrenching tragedies, often through soaring rhetoric that can leave a lasting mark at a time of deep pain.

When President George W. Bush grabbed a bullhorn while standing in the rubble of the World Trade Center shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorism attacks, the image of a strong and compassionate leader helped send his approval ratings to 90 percent.

President Bill Clinton similarly paid a moving tribute after the bombing of a federal building in Oklahoma City in 1995 in which 168 people died. “Let us let our own children know that we will stand against the forces of fear,” Mr. Clinton said at a memorial service there. “When there is talk of hatred, let us stand up and talk against it. When there is talk of violence, let us stand up and talk against it. In the face of death, let us honor life.”

The somber tributes President Ronald Reagan paid to the Marines killed in a Beirut truck-bombing in 1983 and to the seven astronauts who died in the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986, helped establish his reputation as a “Great Communicator.”

The job of conveying presidential empathy and compassion — but also projecting a reassuring calm in a storm — now falls to Mr. Obama.

His task is rendered all the more difficult because the suspected killer, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, is a Muslim at a time when Mr. Obama oversees wars in two predominantly Muslim countries — even while working to improve relations with the Muslim world.

Brian Knowlton contributed reporting from Washington.