Biden and Bush Urge Unity as Nation Remembers Sept. 11

Both President Biden and former President George W. Bush acknowledged that what has happened in the years since has only challenged the notion that Americans found strength in coming together.

WASHINGTON — As they traveled the country laying wreaths, strolling through crash sites in pastoral meadows and comforting families whose wounds are ripped open anew each year, two living presidents used the anniversary of the Sept. 11 attacks to urge Americans to come together in an effort to weather deep political and cultural divisions. “On America’s day of trial and grief, I saw millions of people instinctively grab for a neighbor’s hand and rally to the cause of one another,” former President George W. Bush said from the United Flight 93 memorial outside Shanksville, Pa. “That is the America I know.” But on Saturday, both he and President Biden acknowledged that what has happened in the years since has only challenged the notion that Americans prized coming together over choosing to grow hostile to one another’s differences. Mr. Bush’s decisions as president two decades ago led to a war in Afghanistan and another in Iraq, and he equated the ensuing rise of domestic extremism in the United States to the same poisonous beliefs that had inspired the hijackers.