“Freedom was attacked this morning.” said George Bush in the aftermath of a national tragedy. For certain groups that day, the freedom to make choices was limited in the extreme.
Assuming the perpetrators of this evil deed were Muslim extremists, they had one transfixing choice before them, the debatable glory of Islamic martyrdom and pleasures for evermore. What a soul wrenching shock they have now received.
The people on the top floors of the WTC had two choices, succumb to the fiery hell behind them or jump to a less agonising death. What tales of bravery and self-sacrifice went on up there will remain unsung. I grieve for the latter group but not the former.
Down below, in a typical act of shutting the barn door after the horse has bolted, the U.S. government will move to impose strict controls on security at domestic airports. They needn’t have bothered; I believe the terrorists had played their last trump card in the sad history of plane hijackings.
That is because another group had choices that fateful day – the passengers on those four ill-fated planes. In their understandable ignorance, they assumed these knife-wielding criminals would land at some airport, negotiate a settlement with the State or be taken out by a SWAT team with minimal casualties to the passengers. After all, how many people can you kill with improvised knives and cardboard cutters?
How tragically wrong that risk assessment turned out to be. Be assured that airline passengers will not make the same mistake again. If a hijacking occurs again, they will have to assume it means a fiery, horrible death. The risk of tackling an armed terrorist in-flight now looks the more favoured option. Death by bullet is preferable to death by aviation fuel.
I think the terrorists know that too and have played the grand finale of the hijack scenario. If that is indeed what some passengers did on the Pennsylvania crash, then the bravery of the common individual once again stands above anything the State has done during this watershed week, or ever has, for the State lays down its life for no one.
Now, if I can deduce that, so can the strategic thinkers in the FBI, CIA and Pentagon. Airports, I suggest, are going to be a lot safer now, but no thanks to State edicts about heightened security. It’s the old adage of being seen to do something – anything.
Neither need the British government be so public about their plans to shoot down any hijacked plane flying over London. It may happen; I just cannot see it now.
This is a war the U.S.A. cannot win head on; these fanatics are always one step ahead of the game. While people are rushing to tighten airport security, these criminals are working on the next surprise. The State has to be lucky all the time; these people only need to be lucky once. The worry is that if they have knowingly exhausted the hijack tactic with such a brazen display, then what is next on the terrorist tactical list?
By leaving behind this tactic, the terrorist also raised the stakes. With an unprecedented death toll in the potential tens of thousands, they have shown that their collective conscience is no barrier to them using even more deadly weapons such as biological weapons. If the State cannot stop a hijacked plane ploughing into a skyscraper, I doubt they could stop a small, but determined team of people with anthrax spores hidden in any American city of however many millions. These terrorist groups are too dispersed and virtually impenetrable by Western spies. They employ the efficiency of a militia to a murderous degree and they are virtually untouchable.
Believe me, we Brits know what we are talking about. The British government fought the IRA to a stalemate over 30 years. The British government was too big to defeat and the IRA was too nebulous to overcome. The IRA only had the area of Ireland to hide in, so what chance has anyone of tracking down terrorists in an area stretching from Libya to Afghanistan? It is a task too great, and even though I also wish those who perpetrated this crime be punished, I fear that they will remain beyond earthly justice.
It is time to sue for peace before this escalates beyond our worst fears. I would not say that if I thought there was a chance of overcoming terrorism. But it is time to cut the losses on both sides before something not witnessed since the Black Death stalks Western civilisation again.
September 14, 2001
