America began to meditate on Saturday for the twentieth anniversary of September 11, during ceremonies to pay tribute to some 3,000 dead from the Al-Qaeda attacks, in an atmosphere weighed down by the chaotic American withdrawal from Afghanistan.
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A solemn ceremony began around 8:40 a.m. at the Manhattan Memorial in New York, where the World Trade Center twin towers, destroyed by the deadliest jihadist attacks in the world, stood until the deadly morning of Tuesday, September 11, 2001. Story.
In the presence of US President Joe Biden, alongside his predecessors Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, a first minute of silence was observed at 8:46 a.m., precisely twenty years after the first plane hijacked by the Al Qaeda commando struck the north tower.
The reading until 12:30 pm of the names of the 2,977 people killed that day on the three sites of the attacks (including 2,753 in New York) then began, under the air of the flute. It will be punctuated throughout the morning by musical tributes, including a song on the dry guitar by American star Bruce Springsteen. More minutes of silence will follow: for the collapse of the New York towers, the attack on the Pentagon near Washington and the crash of one of the planes in Shanksville (Pennsylvania).
In Times Square, in the heart of Manhattan, the economic heart of the world’s leading power, where America’s victories are traditionally celebrated, a gathering and moments of contemplation are also planned.
Pearl Harbor
Every American, victim or witness of September 11, also pays tribute to a loved one who has disappeared. Frank Siller went further.
This brother of a Brooklyn firefighter who died in one of the towers has “walked 537 miles (864 km between Washington and New York) through Shanksville to + Ground Zero +” and is raising funds to support families of victims.
“America has never forgotten Pearl Harbor, it will never forget September 11,” Siller told AFP.
According to researchers, the cataclysm of September 11 turned American society and politics upside down and is now anchored in American history. Like Pearl Harbor, Hiroshima, the Landing or the Kennedy assassination.
This very special commemoration of September 11, Joe Biden, 78, has undoubtedly prepared many times since his victory in November against Donald Trump, whom he accused of having weakened and fractured America.
In a video message broadcast Friday evening, the Democratic president called for “unity, our greatest strength”.
But after eight months in office, he is widely criticized for the debacle of the end of the military intervention in Afghanistan, Washington having been taken aback by the meteoric advance of the Taliban.
In 20 years, the United States has lost 2,500 troops and spent over $ 2,000 billion in Afghanistan.
At the end of August, they abandoned the country to Islamic fundamentalists whom they had driven out of Kabul at the end of 2001, accusing them of harboring al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, who was finally killed in 2011 in Pakistan.
Generation September 11
And the attack of August 26, claimed by the Afghan branch of the Islamic State group, which killed 13 young American soldiers at the airport in Kabul – in the middle of an evacuation operation – has ulcerated part of the public opinion. These young women and men in uniform were mostly children on September 11, 2001.
Their death is a reminder that America is experiencing a caesura: between the memory still alive for tens of millions of American adults and a more partial historical awareness for young people born since the 1990s.
It is “important that they know what happened that day, because there is a whole generation which does not really understand it”, pleads Monica Iken-Murphy, widow of a broker who worked in the south tower.
Queen Elizabeth II of England paid tribute on Saturday to the victims of September 11, as well as to “the resistance and determination of the communities who united to rebuild” after the attacks.
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