9/11 attacks still reverberate as US marks 21st anniversary
New York: Americans remembered 9/11 on Sunday with tear-choked tributes, and pleas to never forget," 21 years after the deadliest terror attack on U.S. soil.
Bonita Mentis set out to read victims' names at the ground zero ceremony wearing a necklace with a photo of her slain sister, Shevonne Mentis, a 25-year-old Guyanese immigrant who worked for a financial firm. It's been 21 years, but it's not 21 years for us. It seems like just yesterday," Mentis said. "The wounds are still fresh.
No matter how many years have passed, nobody can actually comprehend that what happened that very day, she added.
Victims' relatives and dignitaries also convened at the other two attack sites, the Pentagon and a field in Pennsylvania.
More than two decades later, Sept. 11 remains a point for reflection on the hijacked-plane attacks that killed nearly 3,000 people, reconfigured national security policy and spurred a U.S. war on terror worldwide. Sunday's observances, which follow a fraught milestone anniversary last year, come little more than a month after a U.S. drone strike killed a key al-Qaida figure who helped plot the 9/11 attacks, Ayman al-Zawahri.
Pierre Roldan, who lost his cousin Carlos Lillo, a paramedic, said we had some form of justice when a U.S. raid killed Osama bin Laden in 2011.
Now that Al-Zawahri is gone, at least we're continuing to get that justice, Roldan said.
The Sept. 11 attacks also stirred for a time a sense of national pride and unity for many, while subjecting Muslim Americans to years of suspicion and bigotry and engendering debate over the balance between safety and civil liberties. In ways both subtle and plain, the aftermath of 9/11 ripples through American politics and public life to this day.
Speaking at the Pentagon on Sunday, President Joe Biden recalled seeing smoke rise from the stricken U.S. military headquarters on 9/11, when he was a senator. He vowed that the US would continue working to root out terrorist plots and called on Americans to stand up for democracy on days beyond the anniversary. We have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, preserve and protect our democracy the very democracy that guarantees the right to freedom that those terrorists on 9/11 sought to bury in the burning fire, smoke and ash, the Democrat said.
First lady Jill Biden was scheduled to speak in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the hijacked planes went down after passengers and crew members tried to storm the cockpit as the hijackers headed for Washington. Al-Qaida conspirators had seized control of the jets to use them as passenger-filled missiles.
Vice President Kamala Harris and husband Doug Emhoff joined the observance at the National Sept. 11 Memorial in New York, but by tradition, no political figures speak. The observance centers instead on victims' relatives reading aloud the names of the dead.
