9/11: Anniversary of Twin Towers injury comes just weeks after Afghanistan injury | United States 20 years after the attack

From Washington, DC

Twenty years. On September 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m. EDT, a plane deliberately crashed into the North Tower of the Wall Trade Center complex in New York City. The start of an attack that would mark a before and after in the North American country. The birthday, a round number, does not come at a certain time. It comes weeks after the chaos and the return of the Taliban to Afghanistan, an invaded nation almost immediately after the attack.

US President Joe Biden traveled to Manhattan on Friday to go to “Ground Zero” and participate in a commemoration ceremony for the attack. “To the families of the 2,977 people from over 90 nations murdered on September 11, 2001 in New York City, Arlington, Virginia and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and to the thousands of injured: America and the world commemorate you and your loved ones. those ”, declared the president in a video posted on social networks one day before the birthday. “It doesn’t matter how much time has passed. These commemorations bring everything back to memory in a painful way, as if they had received the news a few seconds ago, “he added.

The video intended for the families of the victims of the attack is not accidental. In recent weeks, it is precisely some relatives of people who died 20 years ago who have raised their voices against Biden’s presence at the events commemorating the bombing. Just a week ago, the head of state was told he would not be welcome at commemoration ceremonies if he did not declassify government records on what happened in 2001 , convinced that they show some support from Saudi Arabia towards those who committed the crime. Those close to them argue that this is not disclosed because the Middle Eastern country is one of the main allies of the United States in this region.

Coinciding with the allegations, Biden announced in the week leading up to the anniversary that he was downgrading some files. “The American people deserve to have a more complete picture of what their government knows about these attacks,” he said on September 3. The executive order directs the Department of Justice and various government agencies across the North American country to review the documents and gives them up to six months to release them.

As announced by the White House, this Saturday Biden will be first in New York. Then he will travel to Shanksville, the site where United Airlines Flight 93 fell twenty years ago. Supposedly destined to crash into the Capitol in Washington, the plane ended up in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. All the people on board are dead.

Finally, the president will be at the Pentagon, located in Virginia, in front of the American capital, also hit by a plane on September 9. Former President Barack Obama will also be in New York, while George W. Bush, who was ruling the United States at the time of the attack, will visit Shanksville.

The anniversary of the attack still darkens the climate in the North American country. Older generations remember what they were doing the exact moment they learned that planes had struck the Twin Towers. Young girls learn it in history lessons and on Google. For everyone, this is the moment when something has changed.

Security has become extreme, from checks at airports to eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Hate crimes against people of the Middle East and of Asian descent in general have escalated: the first reported murder occurred just four days after the attack, that of an Arizona Indian. The speeches of former President Bush also seemed to justify the invasions in Asian countries. Afghanistan first, with the aim of finding Osama bin Laden and Al-Qaeda, the organization he commanded. Iraq later, with the supposed search for non-existent weapons. A Brown University project argues that the human cost of wars in the Middle East after September 9, 2001 reached 929,000 victims.

The anniversary, 20 years after the whole world saw live how the second plane crashed into the South Tower of the Wall Trade Center, comes at a time when the country is still shaken by news of the Taliban’s return to power. . in Afghanistan.

When Biden announced in April that he was going to comply with the agreement to withdraw troops from Afghanistan and that they would all be out of the Asian country on August 31, he already had in mind the two-decade anniversary of the ‘attack and insisted that they had to be repatriated by September 9. I had no idea that the last weeks of the American presence in Kabul were going to be so chaotic. Days after the last military flight took off from the Afghan capital, the US government insists it is working to provide its citizens with “safe transit” out of the country. “Today’s departures show that we are offering Americans clear and safe options to leave Afghanistan from different locations,” a National Security Council spokesperson said on Friday, referring to the Qatar Airways flight which left Kabul.