Obama Dedicates 9/11 Memorial Museum

President Obama on Thursday dedicated the long-awaited museum commemorating the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, with a mournful elegy to the victims, a stirring tribute to the heroes and a firm resolve to never let terrorists shatter the spirit of America.

“No act of terror can match the strength or the character of our country,” Mr. Obama told a crowd that included family members of those slain and other invited guests in the cavernous underground hall of the National September 11 Memorial Museum. “Like the great wall and bedrock that embrace us today,” he added, “nothing can ever break us. Nothing can change who we are as Americans.”

The president’s remarks highlighted a somber ceremony at the new institution marking the worst foreign attack on American soil, one that shocked the world and ushered in a new era of fear, war, determination and clashes of values while redefining America’s place in the world. Surrounded by the twisted and graffiti-inscribed steel remnants of New York’s twin towers, the president and the other guests vowed never to forget.

Former Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg played host for the event, joined by a plethora of other major figures from the region, including Govs. Chris Christie of New Jersey and Andrew M. Cuomo of New York, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York, former Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani and former Gov. George E. Pataki.

Outside, flags were at half-staff on the memorial plaza, where bronze panels bear the names of the nearly 3,000 people who perished in New York, Northern Virginia and Pennsylvania on Sept. 11, and in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

Inside, the event was held in the museum’s Foundation Hall, 70 feet beneath ground level, at bedrock, with around 700 invited guests attending.

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