The first and only lesson that should have been burned into the national skull is this: no airline hijacking involving Muslim fanatics has ever ended with the passengers walking off the plane. Not once. Criminals after money or attention sometimes negotiate, land, and walk away. Islamist suicide squads do not. With them, the only rational response is immediate, total, and violent resistance. Hesitate and you die. All of you.
Nineteen scrawny Islamic death-cultists seized four airliners. Two hundred forty-six passengers and crew outnumbered them more than twelve to one. Their arsenal? Box cutters and theatrical “bombs.” None of the hijackers stood taller than 5’8”. Most weighed less than the average American woman. I know because I pulled their driving records and photographs myself for the media. These were not Navy SEALs. They were mid-sized fanatics with hardware-store weapons.
The arithmetic is insultingly simple. Had the passengers risen as one and treated the cockpit door like the last barricade between life and a smoking crater, those planes would have landed with a few broken bones—mostly belonging to the hijackers. Instead, hundreds of adults sat quietly while nineteen lightweight zealots flew them into buildings.
We have become a nation of professional spectators. Twenty-five years later it is worse. We still recite the myth of Flight 93 as pure heroism. Those men were young, strong, and athletic. What did they do with that advantage? They held a meeting. They took a vote. While they debated parliamentary procedure, the monsters finished the job and the plane slammed into a Pennsylvania field—the very aircraft aimed at the Capitol. The only silver lining was the near-miss on term limits for Congress. Almost.
Today the occasional drunk or ranting passenger gets tackled by a couple of brave souls. Congratulations. Strip those same troublemakers of their phones, hand them box cutters, and announce that the cockpit is next, and watch how quickly the modern “heroes” rediscover the virtues of remaining seated and dialing for help.
The most grotesque detail of 9/11 remains the passengers who thought calling 911 from 30,000 feet would somehow summon a SWAT team through the clouds. Instead of standing up and ending the nightmare with their bare hands, they performed the national ritual: “Hello, operator? We’re being murdered. Could you send someone?” Television and movies trained an entire generation to believe that the cavalry always arrives if you just dial the right three digits. At altitude, the cavalry is you.
Somehow America turned into a society that outsources every crisis to a phone call and then acts surprised when the phone call cannot fly.
And the final, perfect absurdity: the worst attack on the American mainland in modern history occurred on 9/11. Of course it did. Even the calendar has a sense of humor.
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