Three presidents and their wives stood grimly beside the 9/11 National Memorial, sharing a moment of silence to mark the anniversary of the worst terrorist attack in the nation with a sample of unity.
President Joe Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton met at the site where the World Trade Center towers collapsed two decades ago. Each wore blue ribbons and held their hands over their hearts as a procession passed a flag through the monument, watched by hundreds of Americans gathered for remembrance, some carrying photos of loved ones lost in the attacks.
Before the event began, a plane flew over in a haunting echo of the attacks, directing a look from Mr. Biden at the sky.
President Biden was a senator when the hijackers ordered four planes and carried out the attack. It now marks the eleventh anniversary of 9/11 as Commander-in-Chief.
The president will spend Saturday respecting the trio of places where the planes crashed, but he left the speech to the others.
CHIP SOMODEVILLA / POOL / AFP via Getty Images
Instead, the White House released a recorded speech on Friday afternoon in which Biden spoke of the “true sense of national unity” that emerged after the attacks, seen in “heroism everywhere, in expected and unexpected places.”
“For me, this is the central lesson of 9/11,” he said. “Unity is our greatest strength.”
After the morning ceremony in New York City, Mr. Biden will visit the field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where a plane fell from the sky after heroic passengers fought terrorists to prevent it from reaching its destination in Washington. And finally, he will head to the Pentagon, where the most powerful military in the world suffered an unthinkable blow to his home.
Former President George W. Bush, who was reading a book to Florida schoolchildren when the planes crashed into the World Trade Center, paid tribute to Shanksville. He said Sept. 11 showed that Americans can come together despite their differences.
“Much of our policy has become a call to anger, fear and resentment,” said the incumbent president on 9/11. “On the day of trials and pain in the United States, I saw millions of people instinctively take the neighbor’s hand and come together for the cause of others. That’s what the United States knows.”
“It’s the truest version of ourselves. It’s what we’ve been and what we can be again.”
Former President Trump planned at least one stop in Manhattan and had to comment in the ring at a boxing match at a Hollywood, Florida casino.
Mr. Biden’s job, like his predecessors before him, was to mark the moment with a mixture of pain and resolution. A man who has suffered immense personal tragedy, Mr. Biden speaks of loss with power.
He voiced the pain of the 9/11 memories in his video message, saying, “No matter how much time passes, these commemorations all come back painfully as if they had just received the news a few seconds ago.”
On the twentieth anniversary of the attacks, Mr Biden now assumes the responsibility of his predecessors to prevent future tragedies and must do so against fears of rising terror following the hasty departure of the United States from Afghanistan, the country of which the attacks of 9/11 were plotted.
Evacuations continued Friday in Afghanistan with a 21 additional US citizens and 11 legal permanent residents fleeing the Taliban government, Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement. It came a day after the Taliban allowed a flight carrying Americans and other foreigners out of the country for the first time since U.S. forces withdrew last month.
The State Department did not say how many Americans remain in Afghanistan. On Tuesday, Blinken estimated that there were still about 100 Americans in the country who wanted to leave, adding that U.S. officials were in contact with all of them.