After the 9/11 terrorist strikes, the United States resolutely showed the world that "Americans do not scare," Defense Secretary James Mattis said on the 17th anniversary of the attacks.
At the annual memorial at the Pentagon, where 184 people were killed when a hijacked American Airlines plane slammed into the building on Sept. 11, 2001, Mattis delivered a message the mixed both defiance and remembrance, Military.com reported.
Since the attacks, the men and women of the military have "nailed our colors to the mast, giving their last full measure of devotion, declaring proudly that Americans do not scare," Mattis said.
"We commit ourselves to remembering and honoring the lives that might have been," he added, the military news outlet reported. "They endowed us forever with an enduring sense of purpose" and "in their passing they empowered us" to sacrifice and commitment in the generational fight against "hatred disguised in false religious garb."
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