The United States on Sunday marked the 21st anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks that left nearly 3,000 dead and launched the United States into the decades-long war in Afghanistan.
President Joe Biden on Sunday morning laid a wreath at the Pentagon building in Arlington, Virginia.
“America itself changed that day,” Biden told the crowd near the building, which houses the Department of Defense and U.S. intelligence agencies. “But what we will not change, and never will, is the character of this nation that the terrorists thought they could wound.”
“We regain the light by reaching out to one another, and finding something all too rare: a true sense of national unity,” Biden added, although it came just over a week after he denigrated tens of millions of Trump supporters in a polarizing speech. “To me, that’s the greatest lesson of September 11th.”
A tolling bell and a moment of silence began the commemoration at ground zero in New York, where the World Trade Center’s twin towers were destroyed by the hijacked-plane attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Victims’ relatives and dignitaries also convened at the two other attack sites, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
First Lady Jill Biden attended a memorial for Flight 93 at an event in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where Flight 93 crashed in the midst of a hijacking.
“This is the legacy we must carry forward: hope that defies hate. Love that defies loss. And the ties that hold us together through it all,” she said.
The hijacked plane went down after passengers and crew members tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers headed for Washington. Alleged Al-Qaeda conspirators had seized control of the jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles.
Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff joined the observance at the National Sept. 11 Memorial in New York, but by tradition, no political figures speak at the ground zero ceremony. It centers instead on victims’ relatives reading aloud the names of the dead.
Briefly United
Some commentators and officials noted that in the aftermath of the Sept. 11 attacks, the United States experienced a period of brief unity.
“Twenty-one years ago this morning, terrorists launched a brutal attack on our homeland and changed the course of American history,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) in a statement. “Though they murdered thousands of innocent people, they failed to rip apart the sacred American ideals they intended to destroy. Instead, in the hours, days, and years following the attacks, the American people rallied together, stood by our values, and unleashed our military might.”
Then-Mayor Rudy Giuliani won national praise for his handling of the crisis and steady leadership.
But during a news conference last week, the Republican mayor wondered whether the United States could ever be that united again as it was in the aftermath of the attacks, which also targeted the Pentagon building in Washington. Another plane crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
“With all of the division and all of the turmoil we have, could we do it again?” Giuliani, who represented former President Donald Trump following the 2020 election, asked. “All of a sudden, our country was in mortal peril. And everything stopped and we all came together. I think that would happen again.”
One survivor of the terror attacks recalled escaping one of the World Trade Center towers after a plane slammed into the side of the building.
“At first I thought it was an earthquake because the building shifted one way and then back the other, and then it started to shake,” survivor David Paventi told Fox News Digital late last week. “I started to go under the table because I didn’t want the light to fall on me, but everyone rapidly started exiting the room.”
“In the stairwell, there were not a lot of people coming from upstairs,” Paventi recalled, adding that it “tells you what was going on a few flights up.”
When trying to get down the long flight of stairs, he said that there was a crowd of people who amassed.
“A couple of times we’d sit there, and we’d look at each other thinking, should we try another stairwell?” Paventi said of the group, adding that “there was one point when everyone got over so the firemen could run up. Here we were all trying to get out and all these guys coming up in full gear, carrying hoses.”
“I couldn’t imagine running up to this fire, running upstairs, and knowing you still have 40–50 flights to go,” he said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
From The Epoch Times
