President Obama and George W. Bush Speak at Dallas Memorial Service

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President Barack Obama and former President George W. Bush on Tuesday spoke at an interfaith memorial service in Dallas for the five police officers who were killed by sniper fire in the city late last week.

Bush, who now calls Dallas home, paid tribute to the nation’s law-enforcement community at large, saying, “Their courage is our protection and shield.” He also said he regretted that lately, “argument turns too easily into animosity. Disagreement escalates too quickly into dehumanization. Too often we judge other groups by their worst examples, while judging ourselves by our best intentions. This has strained our bonds of understanding.”

Bush went on to praise the slain officers – Lorne Ahrens, Michael Krol, Michael Smith, Brent Thompson and Patrick Zamarripa – as “the best among us,” calling the shooting attack “an ambush of hatred and malice.” “With their deaths we have lost so much,” he said. “We are grief-stricken, heartbroken and forever grateful.”

Obama later took the stage and began his remarks with a scripture reference.

“Scripture tells us that in our sufferings, there is glory. Because we know that suffering produces perseverance. Perseverance, character. And character, hope. Sometimes the truths of these words are hard to see,” Obama said. “Right now those words test us. Because the people of Dallas, people across the country are suffering.”

But the president urged Americans to “reject such despair” and disparity during these trying times.

“We turn on the TV or surf the Internet and we can watch positions harden and lines drawn and people retreat to their respective corners,” Obama said. “Politicians calculate how to grab attention or avoid the fallout. We see all this and it’s hard not to think sometimes that the center won’t hold. And that things might get worse. I understand. I understand how Americans are feeling. But, Dallas, I’m here to say we must reject such despair.”

“I’m here to insist that we are not as divided as we seem,” he continued. “And I know that because I know America. I know how far we’ve come against impossible odds. I know we’ll make it because of what I’ve experienced in my own life. What I’ve seen of this country and its people, their goodness and decency as president of the United States.”

Obama said he has seen protesters and police officers grieving side by side for the slain officers, as well as the two black men recently killed in police shootings, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile.

“In this audience I see what’s possible,” Obama said. “I see what’s possible when we recognize that we are one American family. All deserving of equal treatment. All deserving equal respect. All children of God. That’s the America I know.”

The president also criticized the instinct some have to dismiss the shared experiences of those in the black community, saying, “When all this takes place more than 50 years after the passage of the civil rights act? We cannot simply turn away and dismiss those in peaceful protests as troublemakers or paranoid. You can’t simply dismiss it as a symptom of police correctness or reverse racism. To have your experience denied like that, dismissed by those in authority, dismissed perhaps even by your white friends and co-workers and fellow church members, again and again and again? It hurts. Surely, we can see that. All of us.”

Obama also called on society to do its part to help ease racial tensions, echoing remarks made earlier this week by Dallas Police Chief David Brown. “So much of the tensions between police departments and minority communities that they serve is because we ask the police to do too much and we ask too little of ourselves,” Obama said. “As a society we choose to underinvest in decent schools. We allow poverty to fester so that entire neighborhoods offer no prospect for gainful employment. We refuse to fund drug treatment and mental health programs.”