America: In a short video, President Joe Biden honoured the victims of the September 11 terror attacks address on Friday, saying ahead of the attacks’ 20th anniversary that the “central lesson” of 9/11 is that national unity is America’s greatest strength. He remembered the events as a moment defined not only by heroism but “unity and resilience”.
Biden said in a six-minute video released by the White House on the eve of the anniversary of the attacks, “We saw heroism everywhere, in places expected and unexpected. We also saw something all too rare: a true sense of national unity. Unity and resilience — a capacity to recover and repair in the face of trauma. Unity in service — the 9/11 generation stepping up to serve and protect in the face of terror to get those terrorists responsible, to show everyone seeking to do harm to America that we will hunt you down and make you pay. That will never stop, today, tomorrow, ever, from protecting America.” He added, “To the families of the 2,977 people from more than 90 nations killed on September 11, 2001, in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the thousands more who were injured — America will commemorate you and your loved ones. Along with witnessing acts of heroism and unity, Americans witnessed the darker forces of human nature: fear and anger, resentment and violence against Muslim Americans, true and faithful followers of a peaceful religion.”
At New York’s Ground Zero, where two pools of water now stand where the Twin Towers used to, relatives will read out the names of the nearly 3,000 people killed, in a four-hour-long service starting at 8:30 am (1230 GMT).
Six moments of silence will be observed, corresponding with the times the two World Trade Center towers were struck, and fell, and the moments the Pentagon was attacked and Flight 93 crashed.
