President Joe Biden met with and delivered remarks before more than 1,000 service members, first responders, and their families at a military base in Anchorage, Alaska, on the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks against the United States.
"I join you on this solemn day to renew our sacred vow," Biden said. "Never forget."
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Biden declared, "Those terrorists could not touch what no force, no enemy, no day ever could — that is the soul of America."
"Each of us, each of those precious lives stolen too soon when evil attacked," he continued.
Biden compared looking at the ruins of the World Trade Center at ground zero in New York City to looking into "the gates of hell — it looked so devastated."
The president praised "the brave men and women of the American armed forces" as heroes who "never faltered, you never failed to defend our nation and our people and our values in times of trial."
"My fellow Americans, Sept. 11, 2001, tested our strength, our resolve, and our courage," Biden said. "Billowing smoke and ash darkened the clear blue sky that September day. The shredded steel and concrete slabs that rained down from the World Trade Center. The plume of fire that shot up from the sky at the Pentagon, I remember seeing as I got off the Amtrak train on my way to work at the United States Senate. The pit into the earth at Shanksville, a testament to the unbreakable courage and resolve of the American people."
In Hanoi, Vietnam, Biden expressed regret he was not able to commemorate the anniversary in New York City, Washington, D.C., or Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
"I’ll be going from here to Alaska to speak to several thousand of our troops in Alaska because I’m not going to be able to get back to the site where it occurred," he told Vietnamese Prime Minister Phạm Minh Chinh on Monday local time. "Every year, I’m usually at one of the sites where that act, where the terrorist act occurred. But you were generous to think of us."
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White House press secretary Karine Jean Pierre has defended Biden's decision not to be in the contiguous U.S. for the anniversary, with other aides underscoring his administration awarding $4 million in funds from the 9/11 Memorial Act grant program to the National September 11 Memorial & Memorial Plaza in New York City.
"Look, the president wanted to make sure that he, as the president, did something to commemorate 9/11, and that's what you're seeing," Jean-Pierre told reporters last month.