On the twentieth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, US President Joe Biden will visit the three sites of the tragedy. He will go to Ground Zero in Manhattan, where the Twin Towers stood up to that day, to the Pentagon and to Shanksville in Pennsylvania, where one of the planes used by al-Qaeda to hit the US, United Airlines 93, crashed.
The hijacking of the flight by the terrorists was thwarted by the passengers, which likely prevented its crash into the target, Washington. Those passengers, therefore, perhaps saved the life of Biden himself, as well as hundreds of other people who were in Congress, the White House and elsewhere in the capital.
His predecessors George W. Bush and Barack Obama will also attend the commemorations, which come during the pandemic and after the takeover of power in Afghanistan by the Taliban following the withdrawal of US troops. Thus bringing together, in those symbolic places, all the presidents of the post-September 11 era, except Donald Trump.
The Republican will be engaged in a completely different occupation, far from memorials or gatherings of the families of the nearly 3 thousand victims. He will be in Florida, live commentator of a boxing match also broadcast via streaming.
Last year, while in office, Trump recalled the attacks with a moment of silence aboard Air Force One and spoke in Shanksville, honoring the 40 dead passengers.
“I love great fighters and great fights,” said Trump announcing his presence at the match between two boxing veterans. He was accused of being insensitive to snubbing the day he marked the nation for a boxing match. Some outlets suggest that, controversial as it is, it is a move ahead of the 2024 elections.
Biden will not be giving public speeches. He will lay wreaths at memorials, respect minutes of silence and appear in a video produced by the White House. His silence, according to CNN, “reflects a change that has occurred over time, as the leaders who served in the years after the attack found themselves entangled, often against their expectations, in its lasting effects.”
Biden made it one of his goals to get out of two decades of overseas conflict, a war that defined the 21st century, and his position took shape in the recent withdrawal. After the Taliban took power in a few weeks, Biden defended his decision. But the chaos following the withdrawal has hit his popular approval hard, while fear is high that the country will once again become a terrorist base.