NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The world solemnly marked the 20th anniversary of 9\/11 on Saturday, grieving lost lives and shattered American unity in commemorations that unfolded just weeks after the bloody end of the Afghanistan war that was launched in response to the terror attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Victims\u2019 relatives and four U.S. presidents paid respects at the sites where hijacked planes killed nearly 3,000 people in the deadliest act of terrorism on American soil.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Others gathered for observances from Portland, Maine, to Guam, or for volunteer projects on what has become a day of service in the U.S. Foreign leaders expressed sympathy over an attack that happened in the U.S. but claimed victims from more than 90 countries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt felt like an evil specter had descended on our world, but it was also a time when many people acted above and beyond the ordinary,\u201d said Mike Low, whose daughter, Sara Low, was a flight attendant on the first plane that crashed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cAs we carry these 20 years forward, I find sustenance in a continuing appreciation for all of those who rose to be more than ordinary people,\u201d the father told a ground zero crowd that included President Joe Biden and former presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In a video released Friday night, Biden said Sept. 11 illustrated that \u201cunity is our greatest strength.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unity is \u201cthe thing that\u2019s going to affect our well-being more than anything else,\u201d he added while visiting a volunteer firehouse Saturday after laying a wreath at the 9\/11 crash site near Shanksville, Pennsylvania. He later took a moment of silence at the third site, the Pentagon.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The anniversary was observed under the pall of a pandemic and in the shadow of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, which is now ruled by the same Taliban militant group that gave safe haven to the 9\/11 plotters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s hard because you hoped that this would just be a different time and a different world. But sometimes history starts to repeat itself and not in the best of ways,\u201d Thea Trinidad, who lost her father in the attacks, said before reading victims\u2019 names at the ceremony.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Bruce Springsteen and Broadway actors Kelli O\u2019Hara and Chris Jackson sang at the commemoration, but by tradition, no politicians spoke there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At the Pennsylvania site \u2014 where passengers and crew fought to regain control of a plane believed to have been targeted at the U.S. Capitol or the White House \u2014 former President George W. Bush said Sept. 11 showed that Americans can come together despite their differences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cSo much of our politics has become a naked appeal to anger, fear and resentment,\u201d said the president who was in office on 9\/11. \u201cOn America\u2019s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab their neighbor\u2019s hand and rally to the cause of one another. That is the America I know.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt is the truest version of ourselves. It is what we have been and what we can be again.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Calvin Wilson said a polarized country has \u201cmissed the message\u201d of the heroism of the flight\u2019s passengers and crew, which included his brother-in-law, LeRoy Homer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t focus on the damage. We don\u2019t focus on the hate. We don\u2019t focus on retaliation. We don\u2019t focus on revenge,\u201d Wilson said before the ceremony. \u201cWe focus on the good that all of our loved ones have done.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Former President Donald Trump visited a New York police station and a firehouse, praising responders\u2019 bravery while criticizing Biden over the pullout from Afghanistan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt was gross incompetence,\u201d said Trump, who was scheduled to provide\u00a0commentary at a boxing match\u00a0in Florida in the evening.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The attacks ushered in a new era of fear, war, patriotism and, eventually, polarization. They also redefined security, changing\u00a0airport checkpoints,\u00a0police practices and the\u00a0government\u2019s surveillance\u00a0powers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A \u201cwar on terror\u201d led to invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, where the longest U.S. war ended last month with a hasty, massive airlift punctuated by a\u00a0suicide bombing\u00a0that killed 169 Afghans and 13 American service members and was attributed to a branch of the Islamic State extremist group. The body of slain Marine Sgt. Johanny Rosario Pichardo\u00a0was brought Saturday to her hometown\u00a0of Lawrence, Massachusetts, where people lined the streets as the flag-draped draped casket passed by.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. is now\u00a0concerned\u00a0that al-Qaida, the terror network behind 9\/11, may regroup in Afghanistan, where\u00a0the Taliban flag once again flew\u00a0over the presidential palace on Saturday.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Two decades after\u00a0helping to triage and treat injured colleagues at the Pentagon\u00a0on Sept. 11, retired Army Col. Malcolm Bruce Westcott is saddened and frustrated by the continued threat of terrorism.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI always felt that my generation, my military cohort, would take care of it \u2014 we wouldn\u2019t pass it on to anybody else,\u201d said Westcott, of Greensboro, Georgia. \u201cAnd we passed it on.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
At ground zero, multiple victims\u2019 relatives thanked the troops who fought in Afghanistan, while Melissa Pullis said she was just happy they were finally home.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe can\u2019t lose any more military. We don\u2019t even know why we\u2019re fighting, and 20 years went down the drain,\u201d said Pullis, who lost her husband, Edward, and whose son Edward Jr. is serving on the USS Ronald Reagan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The families spoke of lives cut short, milestones missed and a loss that still feels immediate. Several pleaded for a return of the\u00a0solidarity that surged for a time after Sept. 11 but soon gave way.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn our grief and our strength, we were not divided based on our voting preference, the color of our skin or our moral or religious beliefs,\u201d said Sally Maler, the sister-in-law of victim Alfred Russell Maler.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Yet in the years that followed, Muslim Americans\u00a0endured\u00a0suspicion,\u00a0surveillance\u00a0and\u00a0hate crimes. Schisms and bitterness grew over the balance between tolerance and vigilance, the meaning of patriotism, the proper way to honor the dead and the scope of a promise to \u201cnever forget.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Trinidad\u00a0was 10 when she overheard her dad, Michael, saying goodbye to her mother by phone\u00a0from the burning trade center. She remembers the pain but also the fellowship of the days that followed, when all of New York \u201cfelt like it was family.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow, when I feel like the world is so divided, I just wish that we can go back to that,\u201d said Trinidad, of Orlando, Florida. \u201cI feel like it would have been such a different world if we had just been able to hang on to that feeling.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
___<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Associated Press writers Michael Rubinkam in Shanksville, Pennsylvania; David Klepper in Providence, Rhode Island; Jill Colvin in New York; and Alexandra Jaffe in Shanksville and Washington contributed to this report.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NEW YORK (AP) \u2014 The world solemnly marked the 20th anni […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":835,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-834","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=834"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":836,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/834\/revisions\/836"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/835"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=834"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=834"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.viewworld.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=834"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}