The nation on Monday will mark the 22nd anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks and for the first time, the president won’t be anywhere in the contiguous 48 states to mark the occasion.
President Biden will observe the anniversary at Alaska’s Joint Base Elmendorf-Richardson in Anchorage, where he’ll stop on his way home from the Group of 20 summit in India.
Mr. Biden will meet with service members and their families, the White House announced, and won’t make it back in time to mark the anniversary at any of the Sept. 11 memorial sites.
Instead, Vice President Kamala Harris will participate in New York City’s annual ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial Museum in lower Manhattan and first lady Jill Biden is scheduled to lay a wreath at the Pentagon’s Sept. 11 memorial.
Mrs. Harris was initially slated to travel with husband Doug Emhoff to the New York City event but the White House has diverted the second gentleman to attend a Sept. 11 ceremony in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, where one of the four commercial planes hijacked by terrorists crashed that day, killing everyone aboard.
Nearly 3,000 people were killed in the Sept. 11 attacks, which were carried out by al-Qaeda suicide terrorists under the direction of Osama bin Laden.
The terrorist hijacked two American Airlines jets and two United Airlines jets that morning, aiming two of the planes at the World Trade Center twin towers, causing them to collapse within hours.
Another jet tore into the Pentagon, causing a partial collapse.
The fourth jet was likely headed to the U.S. Capitol or the White House but crashed into a field in Shanksville after the passengers fought back against the hijackers.
The U.S. responded with a military attack against Afghanistan, launching the nation’s longest-running war. It ended 20 years later with a chaotic and deadly military withdrawal in August 2021.
Bin Laden was killed in a U.S.-led military operation in 2011.
The impact of the attacks has had lasting health effects on those involved in the rescue and cleanup.
In 2022, Congress pumped $1 billion into a program that provides medical treatment and monitoring for Sept. 11 responders and survivors exposed to the toxins at Ground Zero, where the Twin Towers collapsed.
House and Senate lawmakers this year introduced a new bill they say is needed to address a long-term funding shortfall and to expand the program to include those who responded to the attack on the Pentagon and the Shanksville crash.
“We are working to make sure this program never runs out of the dollars it needs to ensure our Ground Zero heroes receive the treatments they need and the healthcare they deserve,” said Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer, New York Democrat.
The bill hasn’t come up for a vote in either chamber.
Sept. 11 also marks the 11th anniversary of the 2012 terrorist attacks on the U.S. Embassy in Libya, which killed four Americans including U.S. Ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.
The attacks triggered a House investigation into the Obama administration’s handling of the attack and the oversight of then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. It concluded intelligence officials and the Obama administration wrongly blamed the attack on a protest that grew out of control. The House investigation also concluded the military had acted appropriately in their response to the attack but that State Department officials denied requests by the embassy for additional security.
• Susan Ferrechio can be reached at sferrechio@washingtontimes.com.