President Biden on Monday commemorated the September 11 anniversary in Alaska, removed from Ground Zero in Manhattan or different websites memorializing the two,977 Americans who died that day.
The president was pressured to clarify his choice to take journeys overseas and solely make it to Alaska to set foot on U.S. soil for a commemoration.
Mr. Biden stated that though the bottom was positioned removed from Ground Zero, it was nonetheless key to that day’s historical past as a result of planes had been scrambled from there to defend U.S. airspace.
“We know that distance did not dull or diminish the pain we felt all across the nation on September 11,” he stated.
It was the primary time {that a} sitting president didn’t mark the tragedy at one of many assault websites at New York’s World Trade Center, the Pentagon, Shanksville, Pennsylvania, or from the White House.
Instead, Mr. Biden delivered his remarks on the twenty second anniversary of the fear assaults from the Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson army base in Anchorage. The remarks had been delivered whereas Air Force One stopped to refuel on Mr. Biden’s journey again from Vietnam and the G20 summit in New Delhi, India.
During his remarks to mark the somber anniversary, Mr. Biden defended the visits even when it left him removed from the tragic websites of the terrorist assaults on such a darkish day in historical past.
“These trips are a central part of how we’re going to ensure the United States is flanked by the broadest array of allies and partners who will stand with us and deter any threat to our security, to build a world that is safer for all of our children,” Mr. Biden stated. “Something that today of all days, we’re reminded is not a given.”
Mr. Biden’s choice to skip 9/11 ceremonies on the assault websites or the White House drew a pointy rebuke from Republicans and two of New York’s largest newspapers. He is the primary president to mark September 11 outdoors the contiguous U.S.
“Yes, Biden was in India this weekend for the G20 conference. But he couldn’t arrange his schedule to make it back for a 9/11 ceremony, instead doing a flyby on the remotest part of US soil?” wrote Andrea Peyser, a New York Post columnist. “It may have been 22 years, but New Yorkers remember.”
Leonard Greene, opinion author for the New York Daily News, stated Mr. Biden was spending the day “about as far away from New York City as one can get.”
Rep. Corey Mills, Florida Republican, savaged Mr. Biden for not going to a memorial website or not less than holding an occasion on the White House.
“Instead, Biden is having Vice President Harris, and her husband, going. He also has his wife, Jill Biden, going to lay the wreaths. I don’t think Joe Biden has the mental competency to do it himself, but it’s again, one more snub to the American people,” Mr. Mills wrote on social media.
Mr. Biden mentioned the 9/11 assaults throughout his remarks.
“We’ll never forget that when faced with evil and an enemy that sought to tear us apart, we endured,” Mr. Biden stated. “While every year we mark this hallowed day, it’s never easy.”
The White House dispatched Vice President Kamala Harris to the National September 11 Memorial and Museum at Ground Zero in Manhattan. She attended the memorial service for about an hour earlier than leaving whereas the victims’ names had been nonetheless being learn to hop on a airplane again to Washington.
First girl Jill Biden laid a wreath on the 9/11 memorial on the Pentagon and Ms. Harris’ husband Doug Emhoff attended an occasion on the Flight 93 National Memorial in Stoystown, Pennsylvania, which commemorates passengers who died in a airplane crash there after preventing the hijackers.
Mr. Biden visited all three 9/11 memorial websites in 2021 to commemorate the twentieth anniversary of the assaults. Last yr, he delivered remarks from the Pentagon memorial.
While in workplace, Presidents George W. Bush, Barack Obama and Donald Trump participated in memorial providers at one of many three assault websites.
In 2005, Mr. Bush opted to not attend the assault websites and as an alternative held a memorial service on the White House. And in 2015, Mr. Obama participated in a second of silence on the White House garden after which addressed U.S. troops from Fort Meade in Maryland.
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