Joe Biden took advantage of his speech in tribute to the victims of 9/11 this Sunday to underline one of his fetish messages: having seen what has been seen, it is not convenient to take American democracy for granted. “We have an obligation, a duty and a responsibility to defend, preserve and protect our democracy. The same one that guarantees the freedom that those terrorists tried to bury in the burning fire, smoke and ashes. They didn’t make it,” he said at a ceremony held at the Pentagon Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, where on that late summer day in 2001 a group of jihadists hijacked and crashed American Airlines plane 77 into the US Army headquarters. . 184 people died.
“[Esa defensa] It is a commitment from all of us. It is not enough to remember our democracy once a year; that is a daily obligation. The great lesson of 9/11 is that united we are stronger”, stressed the president in one of the three solemn simultaneous celebrations organized by the White House on the occasion of the twenty-first anniversary of the attacks. Vice President Kamala Harris traveled to New York for a tribute at the foot of the Twin Towers, while First Lady Jill Biden traveled to the United Flight 93 Memorial in the Shanksville, Pennsylvania field. in which the aircraft that the terrorists wanted, as part of their macabre plan, to launch against the Capitol crashed. Its 40 passengers and crew prevented it. In total, 2,977 people lost their lives.
The president reiterated on several occasions that the United States “will never forget”, and as proof of this he cited the operation with a drone equipped with a high-precision Hellfire missile that killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, leader of Al Qaeda since the end of July. assassination in 2011 of Osama Bin Laden, and mastermind of 9/11. “We will follow them to the very gates of hell so they can’t do it again,” he warned. A year ago, Biden, who also lamented the “worst impulses” that were unleashed after the attack “against American Muslims and against American citizens from Southeast Asia”, ordered the withdrawal from Afghanistan, after two decades “war on terrorism”. ”, an unsuccessful and tragic crusade launched by George Bush Jr. from the ashes of 9/11.
Harris, for her part, participated with her husband, Doug Emhoff, in a ceremony at ground zero in Manhattan in which the names of all the victims killed in the attacks were read and two minutes of silence were observed, at the moments exact times when the planes hit the north tower (8:46 in the morning) and the south tower (9:03). The reading was inaugurated by Bonita Mentis, who that day lost her sister, Shevonne Mentis, a 25-year-old immigrant from Guyana who worked in the World Trade Center for a financial company, in the towers. “21 years have passed, but not for us. It seems like yesterday,” Mentis said, according to the Associated Press. “The wounds are still too fresh.”
“It took a tragedy for our country to come together. No one cared if you were a Republican, a Democrat, your age, or your race; we were united,” said another of the speakers, a cousin of a victim. “It is important that you [los politicos] do not forget”.
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Everyone remembers what he was doing that day. Also the first lady of the United States, Jill Biden, who for a long time feared for the life of her sister, Bonny Jacobs, a stewardess at United. Jacobs accompanied her this Sunday to the act of remembrance for the victims of the flight that crashed in Pennsylvania.
In his speech Biden, then a senator from Delaware, also recalled the “fear” he felt that day when he saw how “smoke was coming out of the Pentagon”, and winked at the news that disputed the spotlight on this Sunday morning, that It dawned rainy on the East Coast: the death of Elizabeth II. As the monarch’s long funeral procession got under way in Scotland with live feeds from every American cable channel, the president recalled that the monarch sent a telegram on 9/11 that read: “Sorrow is the price paid.” We pay for love.”
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Source: EL PAIS
