LOL. 9/11 was just one manifestation of the threat AQ and militant Islamic fundamentalism poses to the US. Armed pilots could not have prevented WTC I, the attack against our embassies in East Africa, the attack against the USS Cole, and foiled plots like the Millenium bomber and the Ft. Dix six. The best defense against this enemy is intelligence, shared by all of the appropriate agencies of government. If we had had the tools provided by the Patriot Act prior to 9/11, it is quite possible that the perpetrators would never have even boarded those planes.
You know you list all those attacks and what did we do? Pretty much nothing. It wasn’t the patriot act that would save us. When Bin Laden declared war on us in 1996 we should have sent Jack Sparrow the Jihad hunter after him at a minimum.