#ศาสตร์เกษตรดินปุ๋ย : ขอบคุณแหล่งข้อมูล : หนังสือพิมพ์ The Nation.
On another 9/11, a temporary pause in presidential hostilities to honor the fallen
InternationalSep 12. 2020
President Donald J. Trump and first lady Melania Trump lay a wreath during a ceremony and “Moment of Remembrance” on Friday in Shanksville, Pa. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Jabin Botsford
By The Washington Post · Matt Viser, Philip Rucker · NATIONAL, POLITICS, NATIONAL-SECURITY
SHANKSVILLE, Pa. – The divisive and combustible presidential campaign took a brief pause on Friday as President Donald Trump and Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden dropped their political antagonism to focus on the somber anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
In place of a fearful pandemic, an economic disruption and an epic political clash centering on both crises, the day became one of wreaths laid, prayers offered and families consoled. In an exchange rarely seen in today’s political environment, Biden and Vice President Pence swapped pleasantries at a ceremony near the site where the World Trade Center towers once stood in New York, greeting one another by briefly bumping elbows.
“We were united by our conviction that America was the world’s most exceptional country, blessed with the most incredible heroes, and that this was a land worth defending with our very last breath,” Trump said in Shanksville, Pa., during a ceremony at the site where United Airlines Flight 93 crashed that day after passengers and crew rebelled against hijackers aiming the craft toward Washington.
Members of Congress and staff stand for a moment of silence for the victims and family of 9/11 at the U.S. Capitol on Friday. MUST CREDIT: Washington Post photo by Demetrius Freeman
At the same site a few hours later, Biden echoed Trump’s remarks.
“My mom used to say, ‘Joey, bravery resides in every heart and someday it will be summoned. The question is, will you respond?’ ” said Biden, who flew to Pennsylvania after the ceremony in New York. “People responded. It is absolutely incredible. . . . This is a country that never, never, never, never, never gives up. Ever.”
While paying tribute to a day that 19 years ago shattered the country’s sense of serenity, Friday played out with a feeling unfamiliar in the current campaign: normalcy. The candidates paused for reflection and rituals, visited firehousesand offered, however temporarily, messages of unity and patriotism.
Shortly after he flew from Washington to Pennsylvania, Trump participated in a moment of silence on Air Force One at 8:46 a.m., the time the first hijacked plane hit the first Manhattan tower.
Trump, first lady Melania Trump and staff gathered in a conference room on the plane.
“God bless America,” White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows said when the moment of silence concluded.
“God bless America,” Trump repeated.
In Shanksville, he delivered a solemn tribute under cloudy skies, speaking directly to families who lost loved ones in the attacks.
“Today every heartbeat in America is wedded to yours,” Trump said. “The heroes of Flight 93 are an everlasting reminder that no matter the danger, no matter the threat, no matter the odds, America will always rise up, stand tall and fight back.”
Trump said the al-Qaida attacks were orchestrated and executed by “radical Islamic terrorists,” and he recounted conquests during his administration in the war against Islamic terrorists, including the January killing of Qasem Soleimani and the 2019 death of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Neither man was responsible for the 2001 terrorist attacks, however, and Trump made no mention of Osama bin Laden, the mastermind of the attacks who was captured and killed in 2011 during a raid overseen by former president Barack Obama.
Trump paused his caustic campaign rhetoric to recall how the nation came together in the days following the attacks.
“It was a unity based on love for our families, care for our neighbors, loyalty to our fellow citizens, pride in our flag, gratitude for our police and first responders, faith in God – and a refusal to bend our will to the depraved forces of violence, intimidation, oppression and evil,” he said.
About 12 hours earlier, during a rally in Michigan, Trump had alleged that Biden would open the country to terrorists, invite members of the loosely organized far-left group antifa to live in suburban neighborhoods, and that “no city, town or suburb will be safe.” Biden, in an interview that aired Thursday on CNN, had said he was in better physical shape than Trump, questioned the president’s intelligence and said, “Unrelated to my running, he should not be the commander in chief of the United States military.”
But on Friday, Biden’s campaign pulled all of its advertising as a sign of respect for those lost – and the former vice president started the day remarking that he would avoid any political debate.
“I’m not going to talk about anything other than 9/11,” Biden said. “We took all our advertising down. It’s a solemn day. That’s how we’re going to keep it.”
Biden traveled early Friday from his home in Wilmington, Del., to New York for the ceremony at the National September 11 Memorial and Museum in Lower Manhattan.
“It takes a lot of courage for someone that lost someone to come back today,” Biden told a reporter. “I know from experience – losing my wife, my daughter, my son – you relive it, the moment as if it’s happening. It’s hard. It’s a wonderful memorial, but it’s hard. It just brings you back to the moment it happened, no matter how long, how much time passes. So I admire the families who come.”
At one point, he moved close to comfort a woman in a wheelchair who said her son died on 9/11 at age 43. She held a picture in her lap. Biden picked it up and examined it, reflecting aloud on losing his son, Beau, to brain cancer in 2015.
“It never goes away,” Biden said. The woman repeated the phrase, while in the background the names of those who died on Sept. 11, 2001, wereread aloud.
The woman, 90, and perhaps joking, told Biden she was entering her “last year,” at which point her daughter suggested she knock it off. “You don’t know that, Mom!” she said. “You’re still kicking!”
“You and I will be here next year,” Biden assured the woman.
Biden left that service early to travel to Shanksville, where he laid a white wreath at the foot of a marble column honoring First Officer LeRoy Homer Jr., one of the 40 victims of the plane crash. Biden and his wife, Jill, then stood for a moment of silence before greeting members of Homer’s family.
Biden also stopped by a fire station in Shanksville, delivering a cake that Jill Biden had baked and six packs of Bud Light and Iron City Beer that he had vowed to deliver on a previous visit.
“I keep my promises!” Biden said.
Pence, too, made a stop at a firehouse, one adjacent to the World Trade Center site that was the first to respond to the attack in 2001.
“Like every other American, I watched,” Pence said. “I watched as the towers burned. I watched as people rightly ran out and you ran in.”
Pence commended the firefighters for considering the lives of those in the towers “more important than your own” and offered condolences for those who died that day.
“I know for many of you they weren’t just other members of the department – they were family, they were friends,” he said.
Democratic vice-presidential nominee Sen. Kamala Harris spent the morning in Fairfax, Va., where she thanked a small group of first responders.
Joined by her husband, Douglas Emhoff, and Sen. Mark Warner, D-Va., Harris of California stood for a moment of silence and a bagpiper’s rendition of “Amazing Grace” before offering brief remarks.
Harris told the few dozen service members and an accumulation of onlookers from nearby buildings that she was at the gym, working out early on a California morning when she saw planes hit the World Trade Center 19 years ago.
“Everyone stopped, got off their equipment and we all just watched in utter disbelief,” Harris said. “Strangers were hugging each other. People who had never spoken to each other before were holding each other.”
Harris said that Americans’ first instinct was “to hug and hold each other – perfect strangers – understanding at our core, without reflection, without thinking about it, that we’re all in this together.”
“What our attackers failed to understand was that the darkness they hope would envelope us on 9/11 instead summoned our most radiant and defined human instincts – the instinct to care for one another, to transcend our divisions and see ourselves as fellow citizens,” Harris said. “The instinct to unite.”
By late afternoon, Trump’s instinct was, once again, to divide. He was back on Twitter, criticizing congressional Democrats and claiming they wanted money to help Democratic states.
“Pelosi and Schumer want Trillions of Dollars of BAILOUT money for Blue States that are doing badly, both economically and in terms of high crime, as a condition to making a deal on stimulus – But the USA is coming back strong!” he tweeted.
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