Executive Calendar

Floor Speech

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Mr. LANKFORD. Mr. President, 18 years ago today, in my office in Oklahoma City, a fellow staff member poked her head into the office and said to me: There is a freak accident that has happened in New York. A plane flew into the World Trade Center.

She went down the hallway and pulled in a rolling cart--the younger generation will have no idea what that is--but a rolling cart with a TV on top of it, and we plugged it in and watched it. As the second plane flew in, both of us stood there silently, thinking: That is no accident. That is murder on a massive scale and terror like I have never witnessed with my own eyes.

What I didn't know at that moment is how many thousands of lives would be affected and how much our Nation would be changed. That morning, 18 years ago, seven Oklahomans died, but our Nation was forever changed. Common terms we think about today like ``TSA,'' or ``terror watch list,'' or ``Department of Homeland Security,'' or ``Global Entry,'' or ``body scanners,'' or ``PATRIOT Act''--those didn't exist on September 10, 2001. They have all come since then as our Nation learns how to do more security, learns how to engage, and has learned a painful lesson that what people think in an isolated village in a remote country--what they think matters to us because what they may carry out, if left alone and ignored, could kill our family members and our fellow Americans.

Almost 3,000 Americans died that day, but since that time period, we have pushed back not against the people of Afghanistan or the people of Iraq, not against Muslims or a faith but against a specific ideology that intensely hates the freedom of America and who intentionally plans to kill Americans they have never met.

We learned a new ideology as a nation that day; that we have to not only take it seriously but that we must not wait until they carry out a fight. If they are planning it, if they are preparing it, if they have the capability, we should assume they are actually going to do it.

Since that time period, American men and women have taken the fight to people who want to come and kill more Americans, but it has also been at a great cost of American blood and treasure: 4,432 Americans have died in Iraq; 2,353 Americans have died in Afghanistan. Fifty-one of those are my fellow Oklahomans in Afghanistan; 72 of those are my fellow Oklahomans in Iraq.

Today, I pulled out of my closet a specific tie that I rarely wear. It was a tie given to me by a Gold Star Wife who never ever wanted to be a Gold Star Wife. She just wanted to be the wife of Chris Horton, whom she intensely loved, who went to Afghanistan to serve his country in the Oklahoma National Guard and died for our freedom. Two years later, she handed me this tie and said: He hated wearing ties, but you have to wear them all the time. Just remember him.

We, as Americans, will not forget, and we have not forgotten. There are flags out all over America today just to remember. There are moms and dads who really hugged their kids tight this morning before they left for school, and the kids didn't even know why. They just did. There are places where people are gathering to pray for peace because as a nation we are a nation of peace, and we have no desire for war. In fact, we detest the pain and penalty and blood and loss of war, and we have no desire to be at war across the world, but it came to us, and we look forward to the day when guns are silent again and this finally concludes and a time of peace can be restored again.

Today, though, we are just a nation remembering and praying for that time of peace that will come, and we are telling Gold Star families and families who have sent their loved ones around the world to places they had never seen before: We have not forgotten, and we are grateful that we serve together as a nation.

I yield back.

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