On Sunday, President Joe Biden delivered remarks at the Pentagon to honor and remember the victims of the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
“When future generations come here to sit in the shade of the maple trees that shelter the memorial have grown tall and strong with passing years, they will find the names of patriots. They will feel the connection…and how our country was forever changed,” Biden said. “I hope they will think about all those heroes. Ordinary Americans responding in extraordinary and unexpected ways. I hope we’ll remember that in the midst of these dark days, we dug deep, we cared for each other, and we came together.”
“You know, we regained the light by reaching out to one another and finding something all too rare: a true sense of national unity. To me, that’s the greatest lesson of September 11th. Not that we will never again face a setback. But that in a moment of great unity, we also had to face down the worst impulses – fear, violence, recrimination – directed against Muslim Americans, as well as Americans of Middle Eastern and South Asian heritage,” he continued. “It’s that for all our flaws and disagreements, in the push and pull of all that makes us human, there is a nation that cannot accomplish – there’s nothing this nation cannot accomplish.”
During his speech on the terrorist attacks of 9/11, Biden quoted Queen Elizabeth II, who died on Thursday at age 96.
“I remember a message sent to the American people from Queen Elizabeth. It was on September 11. Her ambassador read a prayer of service at St. Thomas church in New York, where she poignantly reminded us, quote, ‘Grief is the price we pay for love,'” Biden said.
A day after the terrorist attacks in 2001, Queen Elizabeth II broke with 600 years of British royal tradition by having the royal band play the “Star Spangled Banner” during a changing of the guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace.
