Opaque Lucidity

The Rumble

Peggy Noonan is one of the greatest opinion writers of our day, and after five years, she can still talk about an aspect of 9/11 that is new to many of us. If you haven't read anything touching today, here you go.

No one said anything unneeded, extraneous or small. Crisis is a great editor.

This is what I get from the last messages. People are often stronger than they know, bigger, more gallant than they'd guess. And this: We're all lucky to be here today and able to say what deserves saying, and if you say it a lot, it won't make it common and so unheard, but known and absorbed.

I've often wondered how I would've behaved had I been on one of those flights that morning. Flight 93 was a little different because I believe they knew what had happened in New York and that's why they tried to take the plane back. I imagine that most people's first reaction would be shock, then fear, but what then?

I think anger would come next for me. Sort of a "who the hell do you think you are?" kind of anger. The anger that allows unarmed men to face armed men and beat them. And I know that I'm not alone. Since 9/11, I have told people that no person or groups of people will ever be able to hijack an American aircraft over American airspace again without the passengers fighting back. The days of hijackers flying to Cuba and asking for asylum are over. If you are on a plane and a bunch of sub-human islamo-fascists take over the flight, they're going to fly it into something.

Faced with this knowledge, I think most Americans would face a thing with a box cutter.