No. They were discovered after they were airborne and nobody put the pieces together, no one stopped them. Having separate cells there was nothing to connect one team to another, no time to and no time to find the "missing" planes. If they had had crews on every plane in the air at that one time in the morning most would have succeeded. It would have just increased the confusion.
And 9/11 cost us more money than we will know.
What makes you think I am any less aware of how much it cost than you are? I know it cost us immensely. My point was that similar strikes in every other major U.S. city would have increased that cost exponentially and irrecoverably.
It also would have destroyed confidence in our government instead of unifying it. Congress would have reflected that by breaking down into squabbling groups. Not right vs left groups but groups of hawks, groups of appeasement weenies and groups of "let's calm down and assess this" weenies. Those groups would have manifested in both the Dem and Republican Parties and no decisions would have been possible. Public confidence would then drop even further. The President would have been neutered by a Congress and country in emotional chaos.
They had one shot, they were stupid not to try it. Praise be that Muslims are morons.
These guys even trained at our flight schools...I’d say they had little fear of their plan being detected, which clearly did not happen.