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TerrorismUnited States of America

Biden urges national unity on 9/11 anniversary

September 12, 2023

US President Joe Biden spoke from Alaska on the 22nd anniversary of the September 11 attacks. Memorials were held across the country, including one in New York attended by Vice President Kamala Harris.

https://p.dw.com/p/4WDgt
Biden speaks in Alaska 22nd anniversary of the September 11.
Biden delivered his speech in Alaska after returning from a trip to India and VietnamImage: Evelyn Hockstein/REUTERS

Twenty-two years after the September 11 attacks, US President Joe Biden called upon Americans to unite during an address from the state of Alaska.

"That's how we truly honour those we lost on 9/11. By remembering what we can do together, to remember what was destroyed, what we repaired. Let us remember who we are as a nation. We never forget. We're never afraid. We endure we overcome. We are the United States of America. And there is nothing, literally, historically, nothing has been beyond our capacity. When we set our mind to it together," he said. 

Biden spoke from Alaska instead of New York because he was on the way back from a trip to Vietnam, accompanied by his wife Jill.

He participated in a wreath laying ceremony and spoke against a "rising tide of hatred, extremism and political violence" in the US.

"We must not succumb to the poisonous politics of difference and division. We must never allow ourselves to be pulled apart by petty manufactured grievances," he said.

People lay flowers at a 9/11 Memorial in New York.
Biden warned of rising extremism in the US and urged Americans not to succumb to divisionImage: Yuki Iwamura/AP/dpa/picture alliance

Memorials held across the country

People across the country gathered at several events to commemorate the victims of the attacks, which killed around 3,000 people on September 11, 2001. It was the worst ever terrorist attack on US soil.

In New York City, relatives of victims recited their loved ones' names at a memorial service which was also attend by Vice President Kamala Harris and her husband Doug Emhoff.

People gather at Tribute of Light, New York, on September 11.
Memorials were held across the country to mark the worst ever terror attack on US soilImage: David Dee Delgado/Getty Images

"I paused with the world that day to mourn. I do so again today," German Ambassador to the US Andreas Michaelis said on social media platform X, previously known as Twitter.

On September 11, 2001, Islamist terrorists hijacked three airliners, crashing two into the iconic Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City and another into the Pentagon in Washington DC. A fourth plane crashed in Pennsylvania. 

The attacks eventually led to the US invasion of Afghanistan, launched by former President George W. Bush, to find al- Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — the plotter behind the September 11 attacks. 

Bin Laden was eventually killed during a raid on his Pakistan compound in 2011 ordered by then-US President Barack Obama.

tg/nm (Reuters, AP)