From Washington, DC
Twenty years. On September 11, 2001, at 8:46 a.m. EDT, a plane was deliberately crashed into the north tower of the Wall Trade Center complex in New York City. The beginning of an attack that would mark a before and after in the North American country. The anniversary, a round number, does not come at any given moment. It comes weeks after the chaos and the return of the Taliban in Afghanistan, a nation invaded almost immediately after the attack.
US President Joe Biden traveled to Manhattan on Friday to be at the so-called “Ground Zero” and participate in a commemoration ceremony for the attack. “To the families of the 2,977 people from more than 90 nations, murdered on September 11, 2001 in New York City, Arlington, Virginia, and Shanksville, Pennsylvania, and the thousands who were injured: America and the world commemorate you and your loved ones, “said the president in a video disseminated through social networks one day before the anniversary. “It doesn’t matter how much time has passed. These commemorations bring everything to memory in a painful way, as if they had received the news a few seconds ago, “he added.
The video aimed at the families of the victims of the attack is not accidental. In recent weeks, it was precisely some relatives of those who died 20 years ago who raised their voices against the presence of Biden at the commemorative events of the attack. Just a week ago, they told the head of state that would not be welcome at commemoration ceremonies if he did not declassify the files that the Government has on what happened in 2001, convinced that they show some kind of support from Saudi Arabia towards those who committed the attack. These relatives maintain that this is not disclosed because the Middle Eastern country is one of the main allies of the United States in that region.
Coinciding with the claims, Biden announced during the week leading up to the anniversary that he was declassifying some files. “The American people deserve to have a more complete picture of what their government knows about these attacks,” he said on September 3. The decree orders the Department of Justice and various government agencies of the North American country to review the documents and gives them a period of up to six months to release them.
As announced by the White House, this Saturday Biden will be first in New York. Then he will go to Shanksville, the site where United Airlines Flight 93 fell twenty years ago. Supposedly destined to crash into the Capitol in Washington, the plane ended up in the middle of rural Pennsylvania. All the people on board died.
Finally, the president will be at the Pentagon, located in Virginia, in front of the US capital, which was also hit by a plane on September 9. Also former President Barack Obama will be in New York, while George W. Bush, who was ruling the United States at the time of the attack, will go to Shanksville.
The anniversary of the attack always darkens the climate in the North American country. Older generations remember what they were doing at the exact moment they learned that planes had hit the Twin Towers. Younger girls learn it in history classes and Google it. For all of them, it is the moment when something changed.
Security became extreme, from controls at airports to eavesdropping by the National Security Agency. Hate crimes against people of the Middle East and of Asian origin in general increased: the first reported murder came just four days after the attack, that of an Indian man from Arizona. Speeches by former President Bush also appeared to justify invasions in Asian countries. Afghanistan first, with the aim of searching for Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda, the organization he commanded. Iraq later, with the supposed search for non-existent weapons. A Brown University project argues that the human cost of the wars in the Middle East that came after September 9, 2001 reached 929,000 victims.
This anniversary, 20 years after the whole world saw live how the second plane hit the south tower of the Wall Trade Center, comes at a time when the country is still shaken by the news of the return of the Taliban to power in Afghanistan.
When Biden announced in April that he was going to comply with the agreement to withdraw the troops from Afghanistan and that they would all be out of the Asian country by August 31, he already had in mind the anniversary of the two decades of the attack and insisted that they had to be repatriated before 9 September. I did not know that the last weeks of the US presence in Kabul were going to be so chaotic. Days after the last military flight took off from the Afghan capital, the US government insists that it works to provide its citizens “safe transit” out of the country. “Today’s departures show that we are giving Americans clear and safe options to leave Afghanistan from different locations,” said a spokeswoman for the National Security Council on Friday, referring to the Qatar Airways flight that left Kabul.
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