Anniversary of 9/11 is over-shadowed by Joe Biden’s grotesque betrayal

Day of sorrow

EVERYONE over about 25 recalls where they were that day.

You may have been at work, at home, at school, at university, maybe in the pub, when the news broke.

But you remember the moment.

Here at The Sun on September 11, 2001 we stood traumatised as this mass slaughter, this atrocity on a scale beyond comprehension, unfolded on our TVs.

We called it the “Day That Changed The World” on our front page 20 years ago and it certainly did that.

But there were no winners from Osama Bin Laden’s diabolical outrage, nor its aftermath.

Indeed President Joe Biden’s rash, sudden exit from Afghanistan has ensured there are only losers.

Bin Laden’s fanatics gained nothing from the murder of almost 3,000 people and the suffering they inflicted on countless others.

They galvanised the West.

They triggered a continuous focus on our security lasting to this day.

Multiple further attacks have been foiled. Others succeeded, though not on the scale of 9/11.

As Boris Johnson will say today, the terrorists failed “to shake our belief in freedom and democracy, to drive our nations apart or cause us to live in permanent fear”.

He is right about that.

But what, for our part, did the West achieve?

The “war on terror” drove al-Qaeda from Afghanistan and their Taliban enablers from power.

For a time there were human rights and democracy.

A generation of girls received an education and enjoyed freedoms previously forbidden.

We took revenge on Bin Laden.

But the Iraq War proved a catastrophe.

Now even the gains in Afghanistan, for which thousands of American troops and 457 Britons died, are gone.

So we take issue with Boris when he says “liberty and democracy will always prevail over every foe”.

We wish it were true. They have not done so over the Taliban.

Biden’s reckless haste to get out before the 9/11 anniversary has left the Islamist fanatics more powerful than ever and armed to the teeth with US weaponry.

So this most poignant of days is over-shadowed by his grotesque betrayal …

Of a nation he abandoned to tyranny — and the notion that the values we cherish will always triumph.

Our smash hit

THERE are giant-killers. And there is Emma Raducanu.

It is hard to take in what the Kent teen has done at the US Open.

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Fresh from her A-levels, the recent World No343 is a win away from a Grand Slam title.

It is no fluke.

She has simply steamrollered top players and looked every bit as good as they are and more.

She’s almost upstaged the second coming of Cristiano Ronaldo today.

Can she go all the way tonight in New York?

Win or lose, Emma’s a superstar already.