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Is Bin Laden, like Hitler, a man so vital to events that they would not have happened without him? I think something like 9/11 was going to happen sooner or later, and when Bin Laden is gone, terrorism is still going to be a problem. Taking out Hitler may well have prevented the horrible excesses of fascism from taking the tragic shape they took; perhaps Germany would have found a gentler and less destructive way out of its problems than invading its neighbors again. I hate to say it, but Bin Laden is a monster but he's not the mind and soul of terrorism. Sooner or later, somebody was gonna get us good; he just happened to be the first. It is Islamic fundamentalism, not Osama Bin Laden personally, that provided the impetus for these attacks against us.

But I don't believe that Bin Laden is that necessary to the shape of things that are happening now. However, Todd Beamer and the others who fought back on the Hero Flight were necessary. They took the right action at the right moment and completely changed the year. They set an example for all of the rest of us that makes FURTHER attacks of this sort less likely to succeed. They reinforced the image we have of ourselves as a brave and heroic nation, an image that has taken one heck of a battering during the wussy years between Reagan and G. W. Bush. More than that--the hero flight may well have saved our orderly government and its capacity to respond to the very crisis they were part of. IMAGINE if we were still trying to put an effective government back together! That to me is the most important event so far. We're not out of year yet, of course.