WASHINGTON – United States President Joe Biden visited a 9/11 memorial at the Pentagon yesterday, concluding his tour of all three sites hit in the hijacked jetliner attacks 20 years ago to the day.
Along with his wife Jill, Biden saluted as a bugler played Taps, the US military funeral tune, at the sprawling five-sided building that is the seat of US military power.
Vice-President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff were also with the president as he laid a wreath at the Pentagon 9/11 memorial.
One of the planes hijacked by al-Qaeda members on September 11, 2001 slammed into one side of the complex, killing 125 people.
Earlier yesterday, Biden attended memorial events in New York, where planes crashed into and eventually brought down the World Trade Centre twin towers, and in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where a commandeered jetliner crashed into a field after passengers overpowered the hijackers as the plane flew towards Washington.
Speaking unexpectedly during a visit to the Pennsylvania site, Biden again defended the widely criticised withdrawal from Afghanistan, saying the US could not “invade” every country where al-Qaeda is present.
“Could al-Qaeda come back (in Afghanistan)?” he asked in an exchange with reporters outside a Shanksville fire station.
“Yeah. But guess what, it’s already back (in) other places.
“What’s the strategy? Every place where al-Qaeda is, we’re going to invade and have troops stay in? C’mon.”
He said it had always been a mistake to think Afghanistan could be meaningfully united.
US forces achieved their central mission when a special forces team killed al-Qaeda founder Osama bin Laden on May 2, 2011 in a compound in Pakistan, he said.
The US intervention in Afghanistan began after the 9/11 attacks, eventually drawing the US – joined by key allies – into its longest war. – AFP, September 12, 2021
