Vice President Kamala Harris, in her January 6 address, compared the Capitol insurrection to the attack on Pearl Harbor (1941) and 9/11. She further said that the riots showed Americans what the country would look like if democracy were to be demolished. 

“Certain dates echo throughout history, including dates that instantly remind all who have lived through them where they were, and what they were doing, when our democracy came under assault. Dates that occupy not only a place on our calendars, but a place in our collective memory: December 7th, 1941, September 11th, 2001, and January 6th, 2021,” Harris said. 

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The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise aerial strike by the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service upon the United States in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii that killed 2403 Americans. 

On September 11, 2001, Islamist terrorist group Al-Qaeda conducted coordinated terrorist attacks in the United States, killing close to 3000 people. 

The highest-ranking female official in US history further went on to emphasize on how the ‘fragility and strength’ of democracy were represented on the day of the Capitol siege.

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“The fragility of our democracy is this: if we are not vigilant, if we do not defend it, democracy simply will not stand,” Harris said. “It will falter, and it will fail.”

She recalled how her staff was “converting filing cabinets into barricades” after she and other lawmakers were evacuated from the Senate and House chambers.

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“What the extremists who roamed these halls targeted was not only the lives of elected leaders. What they sought to degrade and destroy was not only a building, hallowed as it is. What they were assaulting were the institutions, the values, the ideals, that generations of Americans have marched, picketed, and shed blood to establish and defend,” she said. 

“If we don’t defend it, democracy wont stand. It will faulter and fail,” she warned the nation.