MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Biden quotes 9/11 message from Queen Elizabeth

Biden also underscored the American people's character “of sacrifice and love, of generosity and grace, of strength and resilience”

US President Joseph Biden Sunday said in front of the Pentagon building that his administration was committed to unblocking the trials that have been pending for years at the maximum security prison at Guantanamo Bay because “we will never forget,” the Sept. 11 attacks.

There were a total of 2,977 people killed in the attacks on 9/11 with more than 6,000 others people injured at the sites where the planes crashed.

“I am honored to be here with the families of the victims once again, and to remember all those who died in the flames and ashes on that terrible September morning,” said Biden, who was joined by Gen. Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin.

“Pain is the price we pay for love,” he added quoting Queen Elizabeth II's message to the United States that day.

“I hope that we will remember that in the midst of those dark days, we dug deep, we cared for each other and we came together. You know, we regain the light by reaching out to one another and finding something all too rare -- a true sense of national unity,” Biden said.

“To me, that is the greatest lesson from Sept. 11 -- not that we will never again face a great setback but in a moment of great unity we also had to face down the worst impulses, fear, violence, recrimination directed against Muslim Americans as well as Americans of middle eastern and south Asian heritage.

”It's that for all our flaws and disagreements, in the push and pull of all that makes us human, there is nothing this nation cannot accomplish when we stand together and defend with all our hearts that makes us unique in the world: our democracy.“

”What is that character? The character of sacrifice and love, of generosity and grace, of strength and resilience,“ Biden said.

”In the crucible of 9/11, and the days and months that followed, we saw what stuff Americans are made of. Think of all of your loved ones, particularly those on that flight, ordinary citizens who said, 'We will not let this stand,' and risked and lost their lives so even more people would not die.“

At the Ground Zero memorial in New York was Vice President Kamala Harris, while First Lady Jill Biden spoke in Shanksville in western Pennsylvania at the site of the crash of United Flight 93, which was perhaps targeting the White House.

Biden also praised the heroic police officers and firefighters ”who stood on the pile at Ground Zero for months amid that twisted steel and concrete slabs breathing the toxins and ash that would damage their health, refusing to stop the search through the destruction.”