WASHINGTON – United States President Joe Biden has urged Americans to show unity, “our greatest strength”, in a video yesterday, on the eve of the 20th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks.
“To me, that’s the central lesson of September 11. It’s that at our most vulnerable, in the push and pull of all that makes us human, in the battle for the soul of America, unity is our greatest strength,” he said in a six-minute message from the White House.
Today, he and First Lady Jill Biden will go to the three locations of the September 11, 2001 attacks: New York, the Pentagon, and a field in Pennsylvania.
But the president, much criticised for his management of the US withdrawal from Afghanistan and struggling to contain the Covid-19 pandemic, is not expected to speak in public during the ceremonies.
“Unity doesn’t mean we have to believe the same thing, but we must have a fundamental respect and faith in each other and in this nation,” he said in the video.
In London, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, also in a video message yesterday, said the perpetrators of 9/11 attacks failed to destroy Western values.
“We can now say with the perspective of 20 years that they (jihadists) failed to shake our belief in freedom and democracy.
“They failed to drive our nations apart, or cause us to abandon our values, or to live in permanent fear.”
Johnson, who was born in New York, said the 67 Britons who died in the attacks are “a symbol of the eternal friendship between the United Kingdom and the US”.
He insisted that Britain’s resolve to uphold the values of freedom and democracy is not shaken by last month’s withdrawal of Nato forces from Afghanistan, which saw the Taliban regaining power.
The previous Taliban regime sheltered Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda movement, which carried out the 9/11 attacks.
“The recent events in Afghanistan only strengthen our determination to remember those who were taken from us,” said Johnson.
The fact that Britons and Americans are coming together to mourn the dead in 2001 “demonstrates the failure of terrorism and the strength of the bonds between us”.
The US presented the UK with a sculpture made of twisted metal debris from the remains of the World Trade Centre in New York.
As mayor, Johnson unveiled the sculpture in London in 2011, but it was later removed and is now on display at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in the city’s east. – AFP, September 11, 2021
