Posted on 09/15/2002 3:33:15 AM PDT by joesnuffy
September 11th was, according to CBS' special commemoration, "The Day That Changed America." Fox, slightly less passive, has gone with "The Day America Changed." But the best proof that nothing has changed are the networks' day-that-everything-changed specials themselves. My pleas not to Dianafy September 11th have fallen on deaf ears. The all-star sob-sisters will be out in force with full supporting saccharine piano accompaniment. The networks have decided America's anger needs to be managed. It's a very September 10th commemoration of September 11th.
So be it. Nations do not change in a day. The only change that occurred on September 11th was a simple one. When Osama bin Laden blew up the World Trade Center, he also blew up the polite fictions of the pre-war world. At Ground Zero, they've been working frantically to clear away the rubble. Likewise, at the UN, EU and all the rest, they've also been working frantically not so much to clear away the mess but to stick it back together and reconstruct the great fantasy world as it existed on September 10th, that bizarro make-believe land where NATO is a "mutual defence alliance" and Egypt and Saudi Arabia are "our staunch friends." Even in America, some people are still living in that world. You can switch on the TV and hear apparently sane "experts" using phrases like "Bush risks losing the support of the Arab League."
The easiest way to understand how little has changed is to consider this: A few weeks ago, Libya was elected to chair the UN Human Rights Commission. Washington doesn't expect much from the UN, but why did it have to be Libya? Okay, it's never going to be America or Britain, but how about Belize or Western Samoa? Why did it have to be something so utterly contemptible of reality as the elevation of Colonel Gaddafi's flunkey? If the multilateral world is irrelevant, it's because its organs -- the UN, EU, NATO -- are diseased and it has shown no willingness in the last year to address the fact.
So, whether or not the world changed, America's relationship with it did. A year on, there's still no agreement as to the meaning of September 11th. To some of us, it was an act of war. To European columnists, it was the world's biggest "but": Yes, it was regrettable, but it was also a logical consequence of America's "cowboy arrogance" blah blah. To the Muslims who celebrated openly in Ramallah, in Copenhagen, in Yorkshire and at Concordia University in Montreal, it was the most spectacular blow yet against the Great Satan. To other Muslims, it was obviously the work of Mossad. To John Lahr, theatre critic of the New Yorker, it was possibly the work of George W. Bush trying to distract attention from Democrat criticism of his missile-defence plans.
When an opinion-former's caught unawares, he retreats to his tropes, however lame, as Lahr and the other reflex lefties did. But the clearest way to understand the meaning of the day is to look at those who were called upon to act rather than theorize. We now know that the fourth plane, United Flight 93, the one that shattered across a field in Pennsylvania, was heading for the White House. Had they made it, it would have been the strike of the day. It might have killed the Vice-President and who knows who else, but, even if it hadn't, think of the symbolism: the shattered façade, smoke billowing from a pile of rubble on Pennsylvania Avenue, just like the money shot in Independence Day. Those delirious Palestinians and Danes and Montrealers would have danced all night.
But they were denied their jubilation. Unlike those on the first three flights, the hostages on 93 knew what their fate would be. They understood there would be no happy ending. So they gave us the next best thing, a hopeful ending. Todd Beamer couldn't get through to anyone except a telephone company operator, Lisa Jefferson. She told him about the planes that had smashed into the World Trade Center. Mr. Beamer said they had a plan to jump the guys and asked her if she would pray with him, so they recited the 23rd Psalm: "Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil: For thou art with me ..."
Then he and the others rushed the hijackers. At 9.58 a.m., the plane crashed, not into the White House, but in some pasture outside Pittsburgh.
The most significant development of September 11th is that it marks the day America began to fight back: Thanks to the heroes of Flight 93, 9/11 is not just Pearl Harbor but also the Doolittle Raid, all wrapped up in 90 minutes. Those passengers were the only victims who knew what the hijackers had in store for them, and so they acted. The improvisations of Flight 93 foreshadowed the extraordinary innovations of the Afghan campaign, when men in traditional Uzbek garb sat on horses and used laser technology to guide USAF bombers to their targets. The B2s dropped their load and flew back to base -- Diego Garcia or Mississippi.
The Flight 93 hijackers might have got lucky. They might have found themselves on a plane with John Lahr ("You guys are working for Bush, right?") or an Ivy League professor immersed in a long Harper's article about the iniquities of U.S. foreign policy. They might have found themselves travelling with Robert Daubenspeck of White River Junction, Vermont, who the day after September 11th wrote to his local newspaper advising against retaliation: "Someone, someday, must have the courage not to hit back but to look them in the eye and say, 'I love you.' " But, granted these exceptions, chances are any flight full of reasonably typical Americans would have found a group of people to do the right thing, to act as those on Flight 93 did. When you face these terrorists, when you "look them in the eye," you see there's nothing to negotiate. Flight 93's passengers were the first to confront that -- to understand that what they were up against was not "courage" (as I erroneously identified it a year ago) but a psychotic death-cultism in which before committing mass murder one carefully depilates and cleans one's genitalia because paradise is a brothel. They are dangerous only insofar as they're used by wily dictators, cheered on by many of their fellow Muslims and regarded ambivalently by much of the rest of the world.
But, on Flight 93, Todd Beamer, Jeremy Glick, Thomas Burnett, Mark Bingham and others did not have the luxury of amused Guardianesque detachment. So they effectively inaugurated the new Bush Doctrine: When you know your enemies have got something big up their sleeves, you take 'em out before they can do it.
Everything that mattered after September 11th -- Bush's moral clarity, the Afghan innovations and the crystal-clear understanding that this is an enemy beyond negotiation -- was present in the final moments of Flight 93. They're the bedrock American values, the ones you don't always see because everyone's yakking about Anna Nicole or the new "reality-based" Beverly Hillbillies. But we know that when you need them in a hurry they're always there.
Bush will need them in the years ahead because he has chosen to embark on the most ambitious change of all, a reversal of half-a-century of U.S. policy in the Middle East. The polite fictions -- Prince Abdullah is "moderate," Yasser Arafat is our "partner in peace," the Syrian Foreign Minister is as respectable as New Zealand's -- will no longer do. They led to slaughter.
Europe, for one, hasn't caught up to September 11th: When it comes to Saddam, the Continentals are like the passengers on those first three planes; they're thinking he's a rational guy, just play it cool and he won't pull anything crazy.
But America learned the hard way: it's the world of September 10th that's really crazy.
© Copyright 2002 National Post ======================================= Naomi Ragen Please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com and subscribe to my mailing list by sending an empty email to: naomiragen-on@mail-list.com email:Naomi@NaomiRagen.com
I hope we can move forward with a fitting memorial for these heroes ... one that millions will visit and pass the word of their deeds on to the rising generations.
BUMP for the Heroes of Flight 93.
Common, every-day, decent folks. Folks who were simply going about their life were faced with tyranny and terror. They were faced with individuals trained from their youth to hate and to mercilessly kill these Americans. But those terrorist learned a hard lesson ... just like the Hitler Youth and the Japanese imperialists learned in the 40's.
When it comes to the eternal values and commitment to Liberty ... there is no ideological training of hate that can match the ferocity of one's own desire to live in freedom. Those passengers came to it ... when the pressure was on ... when the choices were clear ... they acted.
... and they didn't need a pollster, or a lobbyist, or a advisor (other than their God and the voice from within) to tell them what to do. Armed with that knowledge, they went forward and did what had to be done ... as generations of Americans have done when faced with similar challeneges.
It is something our enemies ... both extrenal and internal cannot plan for, cannot think tank their way out of, cannot overcome.
It is the faith that drives me in my own day to day sourjourn.
A Re-Arm-the-Pilots rolling bump.
"When you face these terrorists, when you "look them in the eye," you see there's nothing to negotiate."
That only leaves one option for settlement, and it's time we recognize the gauntlet that has been thrown at our feet.
Yes...Let's Rock!!
FReegards...MUD
In the context of a world war going on inside the confines of an airplane, everyday people minding their own business were transformed into intelligence gathering, soldiers on a mission within minutes. Information received, decision made, action taken. The stand against terrorism started with the heroes of flight 93. Unbelievable, extraordinary individuals whose lives epitomize the greatest concepts of this nation.
See post number 26 for my thoughts along a similar line.
FRegards.
Time to take out that trash ... time to get don to business.
Always remember, never forget. Liberty has a price and these folks on Flight 93 were willing to pay it in full. We, in our turn must also stand and insure that what they paid was not in vain. It wasn't!
An opportunity to put aside all politically correct, cultural diversity (which is just a fancy way of keeping people from all becoming Americans IMHO) notions and go for the jugular with respect to these terrorists and any nation that harbors them.
Iraq, Iran, Syria, Lybia ... they have all been training and abetting terrorists that have been killing Americans for twenty-five years or so. We should take each and everyone of them down IMHO.
Then, if N. Korea and Red China get their dander up and want to thwart or stop our efforts ... we take them down as well. It will be long, tough and costly, but I'd just as soon get it done now than have my kids and grandkids face an even more monumental struggle.
BUMP again for the HEROES OF FLIGHT 93
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