Ambassador
James B. Cunningham

Biography

Speeches

September 11 – Seven Years Ago
Remarks by James B. Cunningham
U.S. Ambassador to Israel
To The ICT World Summit on Counter-Terrorism, Herzliya
September 11, 2008

Thank you, Jonathan Davis, for that kind introduction.  And thank you Minister Dichter for your remarks this evening.

I am honored to address the distinguished guests gathered here tonight.  This of course is the seventh anniversary of the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

That this is your eighth annual conference attests to your prescience in gathering international experts to focus on the global threats posed by terrorists and the challenges of elaborating effective counter-terrorism strategies.

Seven years ago, I was serving as the Acting Permanent Representative of the United States to the United Nations when American Airlines Flight 11 and United Airlines Flight 175 thundered into the Twin Towers in lower Manhattan.  The attacks occurred just as the staff at my mission were preparing for Security Council meetings and just days before the high-level debate of the UN General Assembly. 

I vividly remember how sparkling blue the sky was on my way to work that morning.  And later, how scarred the southern skyline looked in the jarring absence of the Twin Towers, whose only remains were the jagged, black clouds of smoke bearing down on Brooklyn.  My French colleague, Ambassador Jean-David Levitte, actually saw the planes hit the World Trade Center from his vantage point in a neighboring mid-town skyscraper. 

F. Scott Fitzgerald described Manhattan in The Great Gatsby: “The city seen from the Queensboro Bridge is always the city seen for the first time, in its first wild promise of all the mystery and the beauty in the world.”  That description of hope and promise still remains among resilient New Yorkers.  Indeed, the reaction of New Yorkers, Americans and people around the world was a heartening thing to behold.   

America of course had suffered terror attacks before, as had many others around the world.  But there is no doubt that one day changed the way many Americans looked at, and thought of, the world around us. 

On a personal level, the three attacks – on the Twin Towers in New York, Flight 93 over Pennsylvania, and the Pentagon on the banks of the Potomac River literally hit home, as I am a native of Pennsylvania, my wife comes from New York State, and we have lived for long periods in both New York City and Washington, D.C. 

In the hours and days that followed that awful morning, indeed on the actual afternoon of September 11, I worked with the United Nations to formulate an international response in the Security Council and the General Assembly.  At that moment in history, citizens of many nations had become “all New Yorkers” affected by the death and destruction caused by terrorism.  Nearly three thousand people from over 90 countries – including five Israelis [ALONA ABRAHAM, DANNY LEWIN, HAGI SHEFEY, SHAI LEVINHAR, LEON LEBOR] – died in the attacks of September 11.

As an American, I am grateful to those Israelis, such as Dov Shefi and many others, who have commemorated all the victims of 9/11 with memorials and parks in towns and cities throughout Israel: from Ashdod, Ashkelon, Beer Sheva and Eilat in the south, to Herzliya, Ness Ziona, Or Yehuda, Rishon Lezion, and Yehud-Neve Monoson in the center of the country.  Thank you. 

I will never forget accompanying the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan to the site of the still-smoldering ruins of the Trade Center.  Later, we took Ambassadors from the Security Council, and others whose citizens had perished in the attack.  I remember how profoundly shaken my Jamaican colleague was – shocked that four Jamaicans had also died in the attack alongside thousands of other people.  Ambassador Curtis Ward later became a key member of the UN’s newly-created Counter-Terrorism Committee – a body which the United States conceived of and took the lead in creating.

From my vantage point in New York, and more recently in Hong Kong on the other side of the world, I have been able to assess first-hand the lasting global impact of the events of September 11.  “9/11” changed the way Americans and many others around the world look at, and respond to, terrorism.  

On one level, 9/11 brought the peoples of the world closer together.  Nations began to work together to stop terrorism.  I emphasized this point in my address to the General Assembly two days after 9/11:  “Because this attack struck at all of us, it is right that we should work toward a coalition to defend our shared values against terrorism. Working in coalition, we can multiply the effectiveness of our response.” Working together with most of the member countries of the United Nations, we condemned the terrorist attacks on the United States, and confronted the threat posed by the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and Al Qaeda around the world.  That work continues to this day.

Under U.S. leadership, the Permanent Members of the UN Security Council drafted a pioneering counter-terrorism resolution under the powers of Chapter VII of the UN Charter.  Resolution 1373, in the words of a prominent Israeli legal scholar – Tal Becker, who was a former colleague of mine at the United Nations, “represented the first time the Council used its Chapter VII powers to impose universally binding obligations without temporal or geographic limitations.”  This was important not because Security Council resolutions can stop terror.  They can’t.  I was historic because it set a new, obligatory standard for international effort and cooperation – a new international norm.    

Resolution 1373 has become a keystone in the international architecture for combating terrorism around the globe. For the first time, we established a comprehensive agenda to guide the efforts of each nation to combat terror.  For example, it called on all states to become parties to counter-terrorism conventions, and required that all States: 

-- Prevent and suppress the financing of terrorist acts;

-- Refrain from providing any form of support, active or passive, to entities
or persons involved in terrorist acts, including by suppressing recruitment of
members of terrorist groups and eliminating the supply of weapons to terrorists;

-- Take the necessary steps to prevent the commission of terrorist acts,
including by provision of early warning to other States by exchange of information;

-- Deny safe haven to those who finance, plan, support, or commit terrorist
acts, or provide safe havens;

-- Ensure that any person who participates in the financing, planning,
preparation or perpetration of terrorist acts or in supporting terrorist acts is brought
to justice; 

-- Afford one another the greatest measure of assistance in connection with
criminal investigations or criminal proceedings relating to the financing or support
of terrorist acts, including assistance in obtaining evidence in their possession
necessary for the proceedings;

-- Prevent the movement of terrorists or terrorist groups by effective border
controls and controls on issuance of identity papers and travel documents, and
through measures for preventing counterfeiting, forgery or fraudulent use of identity
papers and travel documents;

The UN Security Council then established a Counter-Terrorism Committee, which helped provide a common repository of information, best practices and assistance in addressing the challenge posed by diverse terrorist groups around the world. 

Despite the broad powers invoked in the resolution, the resolution is not self-enforcing and compliance has been complicated by the absence of an accepted definition of the word terrorism itself. Nonetheless, this resolution, and others that followed, have encouraged countries to sign on to more than a dozen international counter-terrorism conventions that spell out in great detail the many forms that terrorism takes.  

And international leaders have helped construct a coalition of like-minded countries and people who are now intolerant of terrorism.  Among the first to clearly frame the challenge was former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan, who told the world less than a month after 9/11 that "there is a need for moral clarity. There can be no acceptance of those who would seek to justify the deliberate taking of innocent civilian life, regardless of cause or grievance. If there is one universal principle that all peoples can agree on, surely it is this."

We are not there yet, but many of you gathered here this week have helped construct a world that is more intolerant of terrorism, and more effective in defeating it.  That work, unfortunately, is a long-term task, and requires long term commitment.  Israel lives with the threat of terror every day, as do people in other parts of the world.  Terror is still proximate and real for many.  But for others, it is not a clear and present danger – until it happens to them.  That is why the work of building effective international cooperation and structures, promoting international commitment, and gatherings like this, matter so much.

I would like to close with a quote from President Bush on the occasion of September 11, 2008.  He said, “We remember all those who were taken from us in an instant and seek their lasting memorial in a safer and more hopeful world. We must not allow our resolve to be weakened by the passage of time. We will meet the test that history has given us and continue to fight to rid the world of terrorism and promote liberty around the globe.”

I want to thank all of you who are joining Americans, and many others around the world, in that fight.

Thank You.