President Obama, facing the challenge of
consoling Arizona and uniting the nation, urged
Americans on Wednesday not to point fingers of
blame but to "expand our moral imaginations"
and to "sharpen our instincts for empathy."
Speaking at a memorial for victims of the Tucson
shooting rampage that left six people dead and 13
wounded, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-
Ariz.), the president said the gunman's motives
were shrouded in mystery.
"The truth is that none of us can know exactly
what triggered this vicious attack. None of us can
know with any certainty what might have
stopped these shots from being fired, or what
thoughts lurked in the inner recesses of a violent
man's mind," Obama told a boisterous overflow
crowd at the service, held at the University of
Arizona's McKale Memorial Center.
"Yes, we have to examine all the facts behind this
tragedy. We cannot and will not be passive in the
face of such violence.... But what we can't do is
use this tragedy as one more occasion to turn on
each other."
As soon as he arrived in Tucson, Obama and his
wife, Michelle, traveled to University Medical
Center to visit victims of the attack. They met
privately for about 10 minutes with Giffords and
her husband, astronaut Mark E. Kelly, the White
House said.
At the memorial, Obama departed from his
prepared text to announce — with Kelly's
permission, the president said — that Giffords
had opened her eyes for the first time shortly
before the service.
"She knows we are here and she knows we love
her," Obama said. The crowd erupted.
Kelly, who was in the audience, received a hug
from Michelle Obama.
More than 13,000 people packed into the
auditorium, the university said, for a service that
was at turns somber and sorrowful, defiant and
triumphant. Another 13,000 who couldn't fit
inside watched from a nearby football stadium.
The crowd — students, retirees, parents and
children, Obama supporters, Obama opponents,
people who knew the shooting victims and many
more who did not — had waited more than 12
hours to get inside. Lines snaked for miles.
Joe Watkins, 50, a trial lawyer who attended with
his wife and a co-worker, said he was "sick to
death of the negativity that's been thrown around
the past few campaigns."
"Now everybody on both sides of the aisle has
stepped back and said, 'We have to think.' But will
it last?" he asked.
As the ceremony began, an elderly woman
unfurled a homemade sign that read: "We will
heal."
The event came four days after a gunman,
whom police identified as 22-year-old Jared Lee
Loughner, fired 31 shots outside a Tucson
Safeway. The dead included Arizona's chief
federal judge, John M. Roll.
Authorities said Loughner's primary goal
appeared to have been to assassinate Giffords.
She had been hosting a Congress on Your Corner
event, which the president called a
"quintessentially American scene" — a
congressional representative listening to
constituents.
The shooting plunged much of Arizona and
Washington into sadness, but also brought a
renewed focus on incivility and violent imagery in
politics.
Obama confronted that issue, saying that
although debates over gun control or mental
healthcare were important and proper,
Americans should debate "in a way that heals,
not [in] a way that wounds."
Incivility did not cause the attack, he said, but
added that our debates should be "worthy of
those we have lost" — not conducted "on the
usual plane of politics and point-scoring and
pettiness that drifts away with the next news
cycle."
Obama seemed to meld his customary austerity
with an emotional accounting of the attack's toll.
One by one, he told the stories of those killed — a
snowbird who often knitted under a tree; a
woman married to her high school sweetheart
for 50 years; a retired construction worker who
died while shielding his wife with his body; a
federal judge on his way home from Mass; a
Giffords aide who helped constituents.
Source: Http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-obama-memorial-20110113,0,4798008.story
0 comments:
Post a Comment