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NEW YORK (AP) – President Joe Biden calls on the nation to recapture the spirit of cooperation that arose in the days following the 9/11 terrorist attacks as he commemorates those who died 20 years ago.
Biden was a senator when hijackers ordered four planes and carried out the nation’s worst terrorist attack in 2001. He now marks the anniversary of 9/11 for the first time as commander-in-chief.
The president planned to pay tribute to the three sites where the planes crashed, but left the speech to others.
Instead, the White House released a recorded speech Friday night in which Biden spoke of the “true sense of national unity” that emerged after the attacks, seen in “heroism everywhere – in places expected and unexpected “.
“For me, this is the central lesson of September 11,” he said. “Unity is our greatest strength. “
Biden arrived in New York City on Friday evening as the skyline was illuminated by the “Tribute to Light,” hauntingly marking where the towers once stood. Its first stop on Saturday was to be the National September 11 Memorial, where the World Trade Center twin towers were toppled as a horrified world watched on television.
From there he was to visit the field near Shanksville, Pa., Where a plane fell from the sky after heroic passengers battled terrorists to prevent it from reaching its destination in Washington. And finally, he was heading for the Pentagon, where the world’s most powerful army suffered an unthinkable blow in its own home.
Biden’s task, like his predecessors before him, was to mark the moment with a mixture of heartbreak and determination. A man who has suffered immense personal tragedy, Biden speaks of loss with power.
He expressed the pain that accompanies memories of September 11 in his video message, saying, “No matter how long ago these commemorations bring everything back painfully like you just heard the news a few seconds ago. . “
Robert Gibbs, who was President Barack Obama’s press secretary, said that for Biden, “It’s a time for people to see him not as Democratic president, but as president of the United States of America. “
“The American people are somewhat at odds over what they have seen in Afghanistan in recent weeks,” Gibbs said. “For Biden, it’s a time to try and reset some of that. Remind people what it is to be Commander-in-Chief and what it means to be the leader of the country at such an important time. “
On the 20th anniversary of the attacks, Biden is now taking on the responsibility assumed by his predecessors to prevent future tragedies, and must do so against new fears of a rise in terror after the last precipitous US exit. of the country from where September 11. 11 attacks were launched.
Biden will be the fourth president to console the nation on the anniversary of that dark day, which shaped many of the most important domestic and foreign policy decisions made by business leaders over the past two decades. .
The terrorist attack defined the presidency of George W. Bush, who was reading a book to schoolchildren in Florida when planes crashed into the World Trade Center. He spent that day being kept out of Washington for security reasons – a move then-Senator Biden urged him to reconsider, the current president wrote – and then gave a short, hesitant speech that night from the White House to a terrified nation.
The following year, Bush chose Ellis Island as the location to deliver his first anniversary speech, the Statue of Liberty over his shoulder as he swore, “What our enemies have started, we will finish.”
The wars in Iraq and Afghanistan were still deadly when President Barack Obama visited the Pentagon to mark his first term on September 11 in 2009.
“No words can soothe the pain in your heart,” Obama said.
“We remember the beauty and the meaning of their lives,” he said. “No passage of time, no dark sky can tarnish the meaning of this moment.”
By the time Obama spoke on the 10th anniversary, the mastermind of the Osama bin Laden attack was dead, killed in a Navy SEAL raid in May 2011. Although the nation remained entangled abroad and vigilant against terrorist threats, the anniversary has become more about healing.
President Donald Trump pledged to bring the United States out of Afghanistan, but his words at his first 9/11 anniversary ceremony in 2017 were a clear warning to terrorists, telling “these savage killers that” there is no dark corner beyond our reach, no sanctuary beyond our grasp, and nowhere to hide in this great great land.
As Biden made his way to the three locations on Saturday, Bush was due to pay homage in Shanksville while Obama did the same in New York. Trump had planned at least one stopover in Manhattan and was scheduled to comment at ringside during a boxing match at a casino in Hollywood, Florida.
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