US President Donald Trump talks at the Pentagon in Washington, DC yesterday during the 25th anniversary commemoration of the September 11, 2001 attacks.
President Donald Trump yesterday said the US would never forget the September 11, 2001 attacks, and hinted that the country was continuing the “war on terror” 25 years later by attacking Iran.
Republican Trump also blasted out at domestic “fanatics” in an apparent dig at Democrats, speaking at the Pentagon after avoiding the main 9/11 commemorations in New York, reported AFP.
“Today we reaffirm the solemn promise we first made in their names a quarter of a century ago. We shall not forget, not. That’s why we fight today,” Trump said in a speech.
We have no option. There can be only victory. We really fight hard. “We fight to win,” said the president, joined by First Lady Melania Trump.
One of the planes hijacked on September 11 crashed into the Pentagon in Washington, killing 184 people, who were commemorated by a single tolling bell as their names were read aloud.
But presidents have honoured big anniversaries in the past by travelling to many sites, including New York, where most of the 2,977 victims were killed in the assaults on the World Trade Center.
Trump linked the US-Israeli war on Iran to the fight against Al-Qaeda, begun by former Republican President George W. Bush, now in its seventh month.
Today we honour all members of the U.S. military who served in the ‘War on Terror.’ It’s a war against sick, evil terror,” Trump remarked.
We also applaud the service men on duty today making sure the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s leading sponsor of terror, will never, ever get a nuclear weapon.
Iran was also targeted by US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth in his speech at the Pentagon ceremony.
“We have devastated the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism over the past six months. “Our warriors have fought an Islamic theocracy that has wanted us dead for almost half a century,” Hegseth remarked.
The Iran war has become a stalemate, with Iran maintaining much of its control on the Strait of Hormuz and keeping oil prices high, despite occasional exchanges of fire with the United States.
Trump also took aim at the home front, a day after a Republican convention for the US midterm elections where Trump and Vise President JD Vance blasted Democrats of sympathising with the 9/11 perpetrators.
“A generation later, after 9/11, we also know that the final response to those atrocities, and the eventual victory over the perpetrators, will not be on a foreign battlefield,” Trump added.
Trump told the story of a firefighter slain in the attacks whose son went on to become a US Navy veteran, saying it showed that ‘we can be a society whose heroes are not fanatics for an abstract cause’.
Trump used the same word in his speech to the Republican convention Wednesday: “With your vote in this election, you can tell these far-left lunatics and fanatics that America is not for sale to them or to anybody else.”
At the convention, Republicans regularly singled out left-wing Democratic Senate candidate Abdul El-Sayed for past social media posts on 9/11.
The September 11 attacks were a series of coordinated suicide assaults by the terrorist group al-Qaeda against the United States on September 11, 2001.
Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners. Two planes smashed into the Twin structures of the World Trade Center in New York City causing both structures to fall.
A third aircraft slammed into the Pentagon outside Washington, D.C.
Passengers on the fourth jet fought back against the hijackers, and the plane crashed to the ground in a field outside Shanksville, PA, before it could reach its planned target.
On the day of the attack, about 3,000 people died. Since then, many more have perished from ailments associated to 9/11, including disorders due to exposure to the poisonous dust.
About the Author
