Armed Services Republicans commemorate 9/11 attacks

“Eleven years ago, our nation was forever changed in a single, fateful morning … [and] each morning since our strength and national resolve have been tested,” House Armed Services Committee Chairman Buck McKeon (R-Calif.) said in a statement. 

{mosads}In the decade since the 9/11 attacks the United States has waged wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and orchestrated a raid that killed al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden, the mastermind behind the terrorist strikes. 

However, Senate Armed Services Committee ranking member John McCain (R-Ariz.) warned that despite these events, Americans must never forget the incredible atrocities committed against the United States that day. 

“Our shock over the enormity of the attack has long passed,” McCain said in a statement released Tuesday. “But we have not lost, and we never will, our outrage at the inconceivable cruelty, the depravity, it took to plan, organize and execute” the 9/11 attacks. 

That outrage and subsequent resolve of the American people following the attacks continues to fuel efforts “to remain the moral opposite of our enemies,” McCain said. 

That resolve continues among the thousands of U.S. soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines carrying out combat operations in Afghanistan, McKeon added, saying Tuesday’s commemoration is as much for them as those who died in New York, Virginia and Pennsylvania. 

“We must remember the brave men and women still serving overseas and reaffirm our unwavering support for them and their mission,” the California Republican said.  

McKeon and McCain’s statements, unlike those made by House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.) and House Majority Whip Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), did not use the terrorist attacks as way to slam the Obama administration on looming defense cuts. 

Speaking to reporters on Capitol Hill, Cantor said, “The best thing that we can do … to honor those individuals” who died during the 9/11 attacks is to ensure the drastic defense spending cuts under the Obama administration’s sequestration plan do not go into effect. 

McCarthy echoed that sentiment, saying the best way Congress can commemorate the thousands of Americans killed 11 years ago was to is  “to come together on sequestration.”

— Russell Berman contributed to this report.