Obama: Despite decade of turmoil, Americans are resilient

Sep 12, 2011, 0:58 GMT

Washington - US President Barack Obama late Sunday vowed that people who hurt the United States will be tracked down, and delivered an upbeat message of American resilience in the daunting face of disaster.

After a day of commemorating the 10th anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, in New York, Pennsylvania and Arlington, Virginia, Obama waited until returning to Washington and the Kennedy Center to speak. His only other public words on Sunday were reading Psalm 46 at the New York commemoration that opened the National September 11 Memorial.

'These past 10 years have shown America's resolve to defend its citizens, and our way of life,' Obama told his audience at the Kennedy Center.

The 2 million Americans who have gone to war since 9/11, in places unknown to many Americans a decade ago such as Kandahar and Mosul, demonstrated that 'those who do us harm cannot hide from the reach of justice, anywhere in the world,' Obama said.

But he added that American strength was 'not measured in our ability to stay in these places' but rather from a 'commitment to leave those lands to free people and sovereign states.' The United States intends to withdraw its remaining 100,000 troops from Afghanistan by 2014, and still has 47,000 non-combat troops in Iraq that are to leave by the end of this year.

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