9/11, 20 years later: Joe Biden visits sites of attacks as US remembers victims of terrorism
- ‘No matter how much time has passed, these commemorations bring everything painfully back’, US president says in video message
- Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband, Doug Emhoff, were with the president as he laid a wreath at the Pentagon 9/11 memorial
“No matter how much time has passed, these commemorations bring everything painfully back as if you just got the news a few seconds ago,” Biden said in a video released by the White House as part of the memorial activities.
The ceremony, attended by Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, as well as other current and former senior officials, was held under a sunny blue sky at the 9/11 memorial site in New York City, where the 110-storey twin towers of the World Trade Centre once stood. In their place now are two square reflecting pools where water flows down into voids in the ground.
The attacks of that day killed 2,977 people, injured thousands more, and launched the US into a two-decade war in Afghanistan that only ended late last month.
Bruce Springsteen and Broadway actor Kelli O’Hara sang at the commemoration, but by tradition, no politicians spoke there.
“We learned that unity is the one thing that must never break,” said Biden in his video message. “To me, that’s the central lesson of September 11. It’s that at our most vulnerable, in the push and pull of all that makes us human, in the battle for the soul of America, unity is our greatest strength.”
The events of 9/11 upended American domestic politics and foreign policy, from airport security, to debates about the government’s use of surveillance and torture, to political campaigns won and lost over support for the “forever wars” fought in the years since.
