Yes, it could have been prevented. See Ann Coulter’s response to 11 Sep 2001:
“Airports scrupulously apply the same laughably ineffective airport harassment to Suzy Chapstick as to Muslim hijackers. It is preposterous to assume every passenger is a potential crazed homicidal maniac. We know who the homicidal maniacs are. They are the ones cheering and dancing right now.
We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity. We weren’t punctilious about locating and punishing only Hitler and his top officers. We carpet-bombed German cities; we killed civilians. That’s war. And this is war.”
[Town Hall, September 14, 2001]
Which is exactly what we did. Even tried to convert them to Christianity. That didn’t work out too well when Bush tried.
So that brings us to now. Which country do we start bombing to get rid of their leaders? Syria? France? The U.K.? The United States? Iraq? Iran? Australia? Portugal? Germany? Spain?
Or just the countries we don’t like? Because they have big-wig leaders in all those countries and more.
I know that sounds “Snarky” (hence the name) but it is an unfortunate truth.
We CAN in fact bomb them though. Once we remove our collective heads out of our butts and step up the Intel to know where they are and when they are there. It won’t be as easy as just line the crosshairs and bomb the crap out of Paris and Egypt (since the flight originated there and was supposed to land in the other).