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Biden Under Fire As Tearful US Remembers 9/11

By Stefan J. Bos, Chief International Correspondent Worthy News

NEW YORK (Worthy News) – U.S. President Joe Biden came under fire Monday for becoming the first American president in 22 years not to visit an attack site or be at the White House as the country remembered the 9/11 terror attacks.

With tolling bells, personal tributes, and tears, Americans looked back Monday on the 9/11 anniversary of the acts of terrorism
that impacted the nation for generations.

From ground zero in New York, where once the Twin Towers stood, to small towns, people gathered at memorials, firehouses, city halls, campuses, and elsewhere to observe the 22nd anniversary of the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil. “For those of us who lost people on that day, that day is still happening. Everybody else moves on. And you find a way to go forward, but that day is always happening for you,” Edward Edelman said as he arrived at ground zero to honor his slain brother-in-law, Daniel McGinley.

Yet Biden, who returned to Washington, D.C., following a trip overseas to India and Vietnam, left it to Vice President Kamala Harris to be among the elected officials attending events at the National September 11 Memorial in New York City.

Instead, Biden chose to speak later at a ceremony at Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, Alaska.

“It’s no surprise to me that he’s not coming to Ground Zero or any of the 9/11 sites,” Retired Air Force Lt. Col. Donald Arias, who lost his brother Adam during the attacks, told Fox News television.

“And quite frankly, I prefer he stay away anyway. We will be spared one of his stories of how he can relate like he did with the people of Lahaina, how he can relate because of a kitchen fire. We can do without that,” he added in the Fox & Friends First” program on Monday.

WHITE HOUSE REACTS

However, the White House made clear that the president will take time to remember the victims of the 9/11 attacks carried out by al Qaeda group terrorists under the leadership of Usama bin Laden.

On that fateful Tuesday, September 11, 2001, hijackers crashed the first two planes into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City, two of the world’s five tallest buildings at the time. They aimed the next two flights toward targets in or near Washington, D.C., in an attack on the nation’s capital.

The third team succeeded in crashing into the Pentagon, the headquarters of the U.S. Department of Defense in Arlington County, Virginia, while the fourth plane crashed in rural Pennsylvania following a passenger revolt.

The attacks claimed the lives of 2,977 victims and changed the national security and foreign policy landscape for decades.

[President Biden] plans to honor the lives lost and the families of loved ones who still feel the pain of the terrible day,” his press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.

“This is something he feels is very important to do. We can only imagine the heartbreak and pain that the 9/11 families have felt every day for the past 22 years.”

Terry Strada, who lost her husband Tom at the World Trade Center, criticized Biden’s decision not to attend personally any attack site as “it’s the opposite of what we’ve all pledged never to forget.”

“He is now just saying flippantly that he doesn’t have to come to any of the sites and commemorate the loss with the families. That’s terrible,” she told Fox News.