“We all have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, to preserve, to protect our democracy.”īiden, who has previously marked 9/11 with visits to sites in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, the Pentagon, and Ground Zero in New York acknowledged that though Elmendorf Air Force Base is not “located at Ground Zero, we know the distance did not dull or diminish the pain we felt across the nation of September 11.” Biden was speaking at the base as he traveled back from Hanoi, Vietnam, his final stop on a whirlwind trip to Asia to meet with Vietnamese leaders and attend the G-20 summit in New Delhi. “We must not succumb to the poisonous politics of difference and division, must never allow ourselves to be pulled apart attending manufactured grievances, we must continue to stand united,” he said. President Joe Biden marked the 22nd anniversary of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on Monday, telling servicemembers gathered in Anchorage, “terrorism – including political and ideological violence – is the opposite of all we stand for as a nation.”
