Posted on 04/09/2002 6:50:13 PM PDT by Bad~Rodeo
"I don't think we're going to get out of this thing. I'm going to have to go out on faith."
It was the voice of Todd Beamer, the passenger -- and Wheaton College graduate -- who said "Let's roll" as he led the charge against the terrorists who had hijacked United Flight 93, the one, you will remember, that crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside.
The whole world knows how brave Beamer and his fellow passengers were on September 11. But this week we learned more fully what buttressed the bravery: Faith in Jesus Christ. Todd died as he lived, a faithful evangelical believer.
In an article titled "The Real Story of Flight 93," Newsweek reveals gripping new details from the actual transcripts of the now-recovered cockpit voice recorder. "Todd had been afraid," Newsweek relates. "More than once, he cried out for his Savior."
After passengers were herded to the back of the jet, Beamer called the GTE Customer Center in Oakbrook, Illinois. He told supervisor Lisa Jefferson about the hijacking. The passengers were planning to jump the terrorists, he said. And then he asked her to pray with him.
As Newsweek relates, "Beamer kept a Lord's Prayer bookmark in his Tom Clancy novel, but he didn't need any prompting. He began to recite the ancient litany, and Jefferson joined him: Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed be thy name."
As they finished, Beamer added, "Jesus, help me." And then, Beamer and his fellow passengers prayed a prayer that has comforted millions down through the centuries -- the prayer that David wrote in a time of great anguish: The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want . . . Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil.
And then the famous last words: "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."
We now know from the cockpit voice recorder that Beamer and other passengers wrestled with the hijackers and forced the plane to crash into the ground, killing themselves but foiling what was believed to have been the hijackers' plan to fly Flight 93 into the Capitol or the White House.
As Christians, we know that God can bring good out of evil. In Todd Beamer, the world witnesses a faith that held up in the extremity of fear. A faith that is even now comforting his widow and two young sons.
Lisa Beamer told NBC's Dateline, "You know, in the Lord's Prayer, it asks us to forgive our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us." As Todd prayed this prayer in the last moments of his life, in a way, Lisa said, "He was forgiving those people for what they were doing, the most horrible thing you could ever do to someone."
It wasn't Todd Beamer's job to fight terrorists. He was just a passenger who along with several others did what he didn't have to do but foiled a terrible evil that might have been done to his country.
As Flight 93 hurtled towards destruction, Todd Beamer could not have known that his quiet prayers would ultimately be heard by millions -- that the story of his last acts on earth would be a witness to the Lord he loved and served and a lasting example of true heroism.
Origins:
Exactly what happened to United Airlines Flight 93 on 11 September 2001 remains -- to the general public, at least -- a mystery. We know it was hijacked, along with three other flights that day, by terrorists who planned to crash it into something, possibly the White House or the U.S. Capitol. We know that because Flight 93 was forty-five minutes late in departing, its passengers learned from their cell phones en route that they were to be part of a fourth September 11th suicide attack on America. And we know that a group of passengers decided over the skies of Western Pennsylvania that they had to try to take control of the plane back from the terrorists -- not only to save their own lives, but to prevent an even greater loss of life should the Boeing 757 reach its hijackers' intended destination. The courage and resolution of those passengers has been epitomized by the final recorded ones of one of them, Todd Beamer, who, after telling a GTE operator of their plans over his cell phone, signed off with, "Are you guys ready? Let's roll."
What happened afterwards is the mystery. The cockpit tapes reveal a struggle between passengers and hijackers, but just why the plane crashed into a Pennsylvania field remains unclear. Newsweek wrote that the tapes "strongly suggest that the hijackers flew the plane into the ground under a ferocious assault from the passengers," but the evidence is insufficient for that conclusion to be more than speculation. Did the passengers deliberately crash the flight to foil the terrorist plot? Did both sides inflict so much damage on each other that no one was in control of the plane at the end? Did the terrorists set off the bomb one of them claimed to be carrying? Or was Flight 93, as some have suggested, shot down by Air Force fighters scrambled to intercept it? We just don't know.
We do know the final thoughts and words of Todd Beamer, a 32-year-old Oracle Corporation account manager from Cranbury, N.J., with a wife and two young sons (and a third child on the way), who was travelling to California for a September 11 business meeting on Flight 93. Somehow, Beamer's cell phone call from Flight 93 was routed to Lisa Jefferson, a supervisor with the GTE Customer Center in Oakbrook, Illinois. As Mrs. Jefferson proceeded down the checklist in GTE's "distress call" manual, Beamer relayed the details of their situation: number of passengers, number of hijackers, weapons carried by the hijackers, etc. As reported in Newsweek's "The Real Story of Flight 93," Beamer's last words to Lisa Jefferson included a recitation of the Lord's Prayer:
Up to this moment, Beamer had been all business. "Lisa," he said suddenly. "Yes?" responded Jefferson. "That's my wife," said Beamer. "Well that's my name, too, Todd," said Jefferson. "Oh, my God," said Beamer. "I don't think we're going to get out of this thing. I'm going to have to go out on faith." Jefferson tried to comfort him. "Todd," she said, "you don't know that." Beamer asked her to promise to call his wife if he didn't make it home. He told her about his little boys and the new baby on the way. Then he said that the passengers were going to try to jump the hijackers. "Are you sure that's what you want to do, Todd?" asked Jefferson. "It's what we have to do," he answered. He asked her to pray with him. Beamer kept a Lord's Prayer bookmark in his Tom Clancy novel, but he didn't need any prompting. He began to recite the litany, and she joined him:
Our Father which art in heaven, Hallowed by thy name Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. Give us this day our daily bread. And forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil: For thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, for ever. Amen.
"Jesus help me," Beamer said. He recited the 23d Psalm. Then Jefferson heard him say:
"Are you guys ready? Let's roll."
Todd Beamer was one of many heroes on Flight 93 that day. Whether his heroism was inspired by a love of God, faith in Jesus, characters in Tom Clancy novels, childhood memories of Superman, or just a plain fear of dying, what matters most is that, in the end, he did act heroically. As the coda to the Newsweek piece declared, "In daring and dying, the passengers and crew of Flight 93 found victory for us all."
This is significant and a point lost on many.
There is significant physical evidence and eyewitness accounts to suggest that a bomb or military intervention played a significant role in ending Flight 93 but this does't detract from the heroism of Beamer and others on the flight.
Nothing with alter Beamer's heroism or witness to personal access to God and the Lordship of Jesus Christ as the only way to eternal life with God the Father.
But what happened?
Terrorist in the cockpit cabin: They're coming...
You've posted a great story, but the statement above simply isn't true. One of the prices of liberty is the willingness to defend our country against attack. We defend the Second Amendment by saying that all able-bodied males are the true militia, but we must not forget what that means. While Mr. Beamer and others were not professionals in the fight against terrorists, it's every American's job to fight our enemies when they attack. Being in "the militia" means that we fight our enemies at a moment's notice. In some cases, I understand that the right decision is to do nothing and wait for help, but we must not be fooled into thinking that passivity is always the proper response.
The September 11 attacks succeeded because the terrorists figured out that the passengers would sit passively even though they had at least a 10 to 1 advantage in numbers on every plane. That kind of numerical superiority should always be sufficient to beat a couple of thugs armed with box cutters. I'm not blaming the people on those planes for not fighting. We have all been conditioned to passivity. I probably would have acted just as they did. However, we need to recognize that we have been conditioned wrongly and that the attacks succeeded because the terrorists understood our conditioning better than we do. We must never be conditioned that way again.
I think that is a first.
Nahh. They've got plenty of things posted as true. You should go check it out. Makes for some fun reading.
The best and possibly only sources for information where the online reports of local (Shanksville, PA) television and print media during the period September 11 thru 13. These reports were quickly deleated from their servers when speculation began regarding the demise of Flight 93.
At that time eyewitnesses (usually unreliable) reported an inflight explosion and "military" aircraft in the vacinity. More reliable evidence was debris from the aircraft scattered across a golf course some 8 miles from the point of impact. This debris was reported (and guarded) by local authorities until collected by the FBI some few hours later. No pictures of the debris was ever published online by the local media but the local golfers termed this debris as "substantial".
I've never heard these details, I guess the TV and cable news doesn't care to let the world know a hero was a Christian. Great post and story indeed!
Incidentally, Wheaton is a great Christian college.
All of what you've said is completely true and completely beside the point. With a huge numerical advantage and facing only box cutters, the passengers should have been able to overtake the hijackers without loss of life if they had resisted early in the attack. Those planes probably had a couple of hundred soft drinks in aluminum cans. A couple of guys who used to play ball probably could have put some major bruises on the hijackers by throwing the cans at them. Some reports claim that as the plan was made to rush the hijackers on Flight 93, the flight attendants started boiling water to throw on the hijackers. The planes would have had dozens of little blankets. If one guy wraps his hands in a blanket and grabs the box cutter, another guy could overpower the terrorist. Laptop computer cases generally have straps that could be removed and used to tangle the terrorists arms. Even if the straps couldn't be removed, the case could be swung as a weapon. The terrorists likely killed a few people early, but the counterattack could have been accomplished with no further loss of American life.
Everyone mentions that the people probably thought that they would just be taken somewhere else, but what would they have thought their ultimate destination to be and what would they have thought would happen when they arrived? If they ended up in a country controlled by a government friendly to the terrorists, they wouldn't have been released anytime soon. If the terrorists were able to control where they landed, they likely would have made plans to have someone there supply them with guns. Once they had guns, the chances of them killing more passengers is very high. If there had been a confrontation on a tarmac somewhere, the terrorists likely would have killed a few hostages because that's what terrorists do. Again, all of these outcomes could have been prevented if the passengers had simply beaten the terrorists into submission in the first moments of the attack.
Americans shouldn't believe that letting terrorists to take them captive and parade them all over the world is better than active resistance. We particularly shouldn't believe this when the active resistance has such a great chance of success. Even an hour of my life is too much to spend tolerating some raghead thug waving a box cutter in my face. I hope that if it ever happened to me with those numerical odds in my favor, I would be the first to break the little freak's arm. If the raghead were standing in front of another passenger and that passenger acted, I hope I'd be the first to join the fight against the terrorist.
Sadly and stupidly, the pilots had been trained to open the cockpit door to hijackers to try to establish a "rapport." It sickens me that some fuzzy-brained psychologist sold this stupid idea to the government and airlines. It sickens me that after 20 years of suicide attacks by Muslims, we never revisited this stupid policy and changed it. For all of the prattle about cockpit door strength, stronger doors wouldn't save any plane if the pilots are trained to open the door to a hijacker.
When was the last time a plane was hijacked prior to 9/11? There was a spate of hijackings in the 70s where the hijackers wanted to be taken to Cuba, and where the passengers were released very quickly, but hijackings weren't something that had happened in a long time. It's easy to play Rambo and say what you would have done, but we can't expect the passengers to have done the same thing.
A 757 which is put into a power dive may break the sound barrier. Since a 757 is not designed to withstand the stresses involved, however, they would pretty well destroy the aircraft even before it hit the ground.
I don't remember all of the hijackings exactly, but I believe that several planes were hijacked in the 80's. I remember one in particular sitting on the tarmac in Beiruit. While it wasn't a plane, that cruise ship (Achille Largo?) was hijacked during that time as well. I remember hearing of several other incidents. One feature that all of them had in common was that the hijackers executed at least one passenger while waiting for their demands to be met.
I agree that hijackings are not common, but Muslim terrorism is common. One common feature is that when they have a group of people in their power, they can execute one or two without really hurting their position. To be left in their power is almost a guarantee that you or someone sitting on the plane with you will be killed just to make a point. I realize that many people enjoy burying their head in the sand and forgetting that these things ever happen. Those people have likely forgotten every hijacking that has ever occurred, but their ignorance is a luxury that we can no longer afford.
As I said previously and repeat, I'm not criticizing the passengers who were on those planes. They did what people in our society are taught is the right thing to do. They did it calmly, and their calm in the face of that situation shows tremendous courage.
I am criticizing our society for having the attitude that passivity is the right response to that situation. You called it "playing Rambo" and meant that expression in a derisive way. I'm criticizing the attitude that you are expressing. If we look at our history with Muslim terrorists, we would have good reason to believe that leaving the terrorists in control of the plane would lead to more death. On the other hand, with the terrorists' crude weapons and small numbers, the passengers could probably have counterattacked and retaken any plane without further loss of life as long as they did it before the terrorists gained control of the cockpit. The realization of these facts and willingness to act on them is not machismo. Instead, it is quiet, rational realism. Unfortunately, our society scorns this kind of realism because it leads to the inescapable conclusion that sitting passively is the worst thing to do.
I said previously and will repeat that I don't know what I would have done. I likely would have reverted to doing what my society has taught is right even though rationally I know that it is wrong. However, I can hope that I would have acted differently, and I can certainly be a voice in favor of our society changing its wrongful views on this issue. We cannot afford to be passive in the face of our enemies' evil. We cannot rely on more security measures to keep these things from happening again. We must be prepared to fight our enemies when they attack even those of us who are not professionals in the use of force.
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