Memorial Service for Victims of Bali Bombing

This city, this heartbroken city, which has seen in the past year a succession of miseries, today has only comfort and support to offer the people of Australia.

In the darkness of this day, there may be a temptation to believe that those who were lost on the 12^th of October did not have time to live a life full of meaning – and so instead to assign a grim significance to their deaths. That would be a tragic mistake. We must not allow this act of brutality to achieve its signal goal: to deprive the victims of their humanity; to destroy not just their futures but their past. These were not statistics. These were not symbols. These were vibrant, fully-realized human beings.

For Australia, as for America, your obligation as a people – as a nation – is to reject everything those who did this hoped to achieve. We will never forget our horror at the way your countrymen and women died, but we will always remember to honor the way they lived. Think not of the moment of that terrible, shattering explosion, but of all the moments that came before. Let those amber hues color your remembrance and wrap these children of Australia in the gentle light of their innocence. For they were caught in a full rapture for life and will never know the hard lessons of sorrow that time teaches us all. Let them live forever in our memories in paradise.

I know that words alone can never contain our grief, but I speak for my nation today when I say that America’s hand and heart go to the people of Australia. God bless us all.