Posted on 04/29/2006 4:39:58 AM PDT by fanfan
United 93, the just-released movie about the passengers who fought back against their hijackers on 9/11, is being recognized as one of the most terrifying films to come out of Hollywood in recent years.
My colleague Peter Simpson, the Citizen's arts and entertainment editor, was so affected after Monday's advance screening that he wrote a front-page assessment for the next-day's paper. The horror, he correctly noted, stems from the astonishing realism and the awful sense of inevitability: The audience knows how the story ends. My other colleague Jay Stone gave United 93 five stars in his review yesterday.
I too attended the advance screening, not as an arts critic but as a student of terrorism and militant Islam. Jay and Peter are right that the movie is effective as a piece of drama, but I took away three political lessons.
1) Soldiers, not lunatics: 9/11 was so sensational in conception and execution, so wholly out-of-the box, that many people assumed it was the product of disordered minds. What kind of madmen fly aircraft into buildings?
United 93 makes clear that the hijackers, though on a suicide mission, were not madmen. They were disciplined, well-trained and committed, in other words, soldiers. True, they believed their cause was worth dying for, but other soldiers on other battlefields in history have approached their missions that way.
There are strategic implications. If we characterize jihadists as crazed sociopaths, we risk dismissing them as aberrations or freaks and minimizing the threat they represent. We risk making 9/11 into a unique criminal event, like a random school shooting or the Paul Bernardo murders.
Sociopathic criminals like Paul Bernardo are interested in self-gratification and pose a danger mainly to individuals who come into their personal orbit. But the 9/11 hijackers had broader ambitions: They belonged to a political movement larger than themselves. Criminal acts are different from acts of war, and we need to understand the difference if we are to protect ourselves.
2) Terrorism is easy: In an operational sense, 9/11 was a complex affair. Most notably, the conspirators needed to learn how to fly commercial jets. Yet as a matter of general principle, it's easy to be a terrorist. Terrorism is the deliberate targeting of non-combatants -- the targeting of unarmed people and institutions. Anyone can commit an act of terrorism at any time.
United 93 helps us understand the total vulnerability of what security experts call soft targets. There are no missile-defence systems around civilian skyscrapers. The movie captures the profound feeling of helplessness that engulfed the air-traffic and military command centres when they realized that the United States was under attack that morning. The whole country was suddenly one big target.
Anything and anybody is a terrorist target -- a day-care centre, a shopping mall, a corner church -- and it's impossible to protect them all. The political lesson is that defensive measures alone are not sufficient to fight militant Islam, not when Islamists define their struggle as a war against civilians. In the short term we can harden some obvious targets, but softer ones will always remain.
So we have to look at anti-terrorism as an offensive and long-term effort. The U.S. invasion of Iraq was a radical attempt to reboot the Middle East, to spark a re-ordering of dysfunctional Arab-Muslim societies in a way that would make room for democratization. The Iraq gamble may ultimately prove too ambitious, but the Americans were right to try.
3) You do what you got to do: United 93 was the only hijacked plane that did not reach its target, and that's because the passengers rose up and tried to storm the cockpit. Why did they rise up? As the movie shows, the passengers learned from phone calls to family on the ground that the other planes had been commandeered into the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. It was then that the United 93 passengers knew they weren't turning back to the airport for negotiations. When the enemy is on a suicide mission, your only hope is to destroy him before he destroys you. And so the men and women of United 93 died fighting.
If the Islamists -- those seeking to transform Islam from a religion into an expansionist, messianic, violent, political movement -- gain ascendancy in the Middle East, then the suicide bomber "will become a metaphor for the whole region," as the historian Bernard Lewis has put it. Islamists cannot be negotiated with, mainly because their demands, that we become Muslim or we die, are impossible to meet.
Currently the most dangerous Islamist is Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's apocalyptic-minded president who is holding the West hostage with his quest for nuclear weapons. Right now the world is scared, yet still hoping Mr. Ahmadinejad will turn back to the airport, so to speak.
Very soon we will have our United 93 moment and realize this is one airplane we'll have to land ourselves.
Leonard Stern is the Citizen's editorial pages editor.
Excellent article. One issue the movie brings to light (as pointed out) is that Americans must be prepared to defend themselves. We cannot stop each attack but, in the future, we can recognize them for what they are and fight back. Had the people on EVERY plane realized what the goals of the terrorists were, there would most likely be different outcomes with one or two more planes. Knowledge gives us an edge.
Pretty good piece except for one thing. His reference to islamists. Where, in the last 1400 years, has islam been spread by anything but the sword?
They are all islamists! They should all be exterminated!
Not sure what to make of the article. I disagree that any target soft or hard, has to be vulnerable. Targeting muslims first is the way to stop this, and there is much more that can be said. The world has become a much more dangerous place because of the aspirations of one group of people.
The writer is on the Ottawa Citizen editorial board.
A very lefty newspaper.
http://www.letsroll911.org/articles/flight93shotdown.html
This site was posted by an idiot on another forum I go to.
There are people who dont believe flight 93 passengers did anything. There are those that believe 911 was perpetrated by the Bush administration,there are those who dont belivee a plane went into the pentagon. These people exist and they vote Democrat. They walk around looking sane for the most part,then they line up to vote for people like Pelosi, Kerry and fat Ted.
Overall, I think this article is brilliant. It's just the kind of logic that might pierce the fog of the liberal mind, so am sending to my son (originally sourced of course; his eyes glaze if I send it from FR).
What can we do to protect and fight against this religion?
What can we do? There are a many things, but here is just a few:
1) VOTE - your politicians need to hear what you think.
2) Fight political correctness. Let's stop strip searching 90 yr old ladies at the airports. We know who we need to target, so let's do it.
3) Listen to your children. They hear a lot of crazy stuff in their classrooms. Education should not be limited to the classroom. You need to balance what they hear with reality.
4) Write congress about securing our borders. Mexicans are not the only illegal immigrants. Terrorists are too. They know that they can cross easily from the south AND the north.
These are just starters, but something we all need to do.
The best most effective weapon is on your knees in prayer that their hearts will be turned from the trap and enslavement of the lie of islam. It is a spiritual battle which we are in, first and foremost.
Second, be a missionary. Tell others who don't know about the love of God demonstrated through the sacrificial death of Jesus Christ. You cannot force someone to turn away from islam to Christ, but after doing the work of prayer, the Holy Spirit goes before you and makes a person's heart soft toward God and ready to receive the Word which a missionary implants.
This is all a miracle. I cannot explain why God chooses to juxtapose His workings through our prayers and actions but the Bible tells me He does. Steps one and two work together.
And Third, don't be a victim. Do not let the culture of death and enslavement impose itself on you or your family. Stand up for and act upon your rights.
eeewwww - I must go take a shower with strong soap after visiting that website. And you are right - these demented people are among us.
Outlaw it?
I wonder if this would work on the RINOs who have hijacked the GOP?
Suppose you own a large farm. You have thousands of animals and they are being randomly killed and destroyed by a single new animal killer; call it an Istook. This Istook is an efficient killer with a relentless appetite, but it is also a shape shifter. You know that not only your animals, but also your entire large family are at risk. It is only a matter of time before one of your children disappear.
How do you protect your family and your livelihood?
You could reinforce all the windows in your house. You can build a double entry and isolate all visitors until you are certain that it's what or who you think it is; you could hire thousands of bodyguard to constantly watch every animal and human potential victim on your farm. And still they are disappearing one by one.
You add guard towers every 50 feet; 3000 of them. The Istook evades them all and the killing continues...
Finally, when a significant portion of your animals are dead, half your family is gone, and your entire existence, your time and now your non-existent wealth is consumed, it dawns on you...
The only "lesson" that matters:
You could simply have hunted it down and killed it.
First we must recognize that is not a race or a religion. It is every bit a form of government as communism is. It is an ideology that promotes the conversion of all mankind to islam. Non converts are to be eliminated.
From the article: "[Islamists cannot be negotiated with, mainly because their demands, that we become Muslim or we die, are impossible to meet.]"
We must make sure that everybody realizes this, otherwise we will either be muslim or we will be dead.
What people don't understand is that they do not need to do any more major terrorist acts to accomplish this.
There are already over 100 mosques in New Jersey alone.
It should be illegal to practice islam because it advocates the overthrow of our government
:)Easy Does It:)
Islam is not a religion, it is a political/societal control system and therefore deserves no protection under the first amendment.
Anyone advocating the replacement of the US Constitution with Sharia Law is committing the crime of sedition if they are not a citizen, and committing treason if they are a citizen. ALL MUSLIMS BELIEVE THIS SHOULD BE DONE! It's in the Koran in several places.
Don't hold your breath for any enforcement of these laws that are as old as our Republic though. The government is too busy buying votes with our money, coddling communists, ensuring cattle feed contains fungicide, supporting environmental hoplophobes' views to gain more power over private property (i.e. global warming, auto emissions inspections, etc.), overflying your house two or three times a year to be sure you aren't growing anything they say you shouldn't............
Terrorists elevated by the title of soldier. It sounds wrong to me.
5) Reduce your use of oil such that the $$$$$$$$ and other wealth flowing to help support this center of militarism is cut off. Make them go back to the Stone Age.
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