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President Biden on Sunday underscored the duty all Americans have to “preserve and protect our democracy” while paying tribute to those who lost their lives in the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001.
Mr. Biden marked the 21st anniversary of one of the darkest days in U.S. history during a wreath-laying ceremony held under a steady downpour at the Pentagon just over a year after the president marked the chaotic end to the two-decade war in Afghanistan launched in the wake of the terrorist attacks.
“There’s nothing this nation cannot accomplish when we stand together and defend with all our hearts that which makes us unique in the world: our democracy,” Mr. Biden said.
“That’s what those hijackers most hoped to destroy when they targeted our buildings and our people,” he said. “They failed.”
Mr. Biden extolled the courage of “ordinary citizens” who, in the face of the attacks and in the aftermath, rose to defend the “character of this nation.”
“We saw the police officers and firefighters who stood on the pile at ground zero for months amid that twisted steel and broken concrete slabs breathing in toxins and ash that would damage their health, refusing to stop the search through the destruction,” he said. “They never stopped.
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“No terrorist could touch the wellspring of American power,” Mr.
