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Remembering 9/11, 20 years on

Twenty years after the world was upended, the day marking the grim anniversary of 9/11 was observed in the U.S.. The anniversary comes at a particularly difficult time for President Joe Biden, who has been criticised in recent for the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which ended a U.S. presence that began less than a month after the September 11 attacks; left the country in chaos and achieved little. The Taliban captured Kabul even before the withdrawal of U.S. from the country.

In a video released on the eve of the 20th anniversary, the President paid tribute all those who who lost their lives. “We honour all those who risked and gave their lives in the minutes, hours, months and years afterwards,” Mr Biden added, speaking of the emergency workers who responded to the attacks. In his address on Friday, he said: “No matter how much time has passed, these commemorations bring everything painfully back as if you just got the news a few seconds ago.”

President Joe Biden (C) waves as he is joined by (L-R) former President Bill Clinton, former First Lady Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, former First Lady Michelle Obama, First Lady Jill Biden and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, during the annual 9/11 Commemoration Ceremony at the National 9/11 Memorial and Museum on September 11, 2021 in New York.

The attacks, which were planned by al-Qaeda from Afghanistan, saw four U.S. passenger jets hijacked by suicide attackers — two of which were rammed into the Twin Towers. Another plane struck the Pentagon, just outside the U.S. capital, Washington D.C., and a fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania after passengers fought back.

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said pn Friday that the perpetrators of the attack had failed to destroy Western values. “We can now say with the perspective of 20 years that they (the jihadists) failed to shake our belief in freedom and democracy,” he said in the message delivered ahead of the anniversary on Saturday. “They failed to drive our nations apart, or cause us to abandon our values, or to live in permanent fear,” Johnson said as reported by the BBC.