Heroism

This seems wrong to me. In a pre-9/11 world, the cardinal rule in hijacking was to sit tight and do what you’re told. Most (if not all) hijackings prior to that ended with most of the passengers surviving. (Note, this does not apply to the government, who had all sorts of evidence suggesting the use of planes as weapons).

When the people of flight 93 found out the truth, they acted. It’s easy to sit here and suggest that, if they had somehow discovered their ‘courage’ half an hour later they might have survived. Or maybe, instead of a field, they would have crashed into a neighborhood.

Heroism isn’t action without reflection. It isn’t merely overpowering others. It’s about responding to a bad situation as best you can. Ordinary people doing extraordinary things. The people aboard flight 93 certainly meet that definition in my eyes.

One of the reasons we’re struggling, both with our war on terror, as well as our image with friends and foe alike, is the we acted without enough thought. We picked a fight with someone we thought would be easy to beat – without much cause.

There may be some validity to striking first before you’re struck – even on an international scale. When we struck Iraq, we did it for the wrong reasons and in the wrong way. We thought (if you believe the current story) we were fighting the war on terror, but instead we merely created chaos.