| Home Front: Culture Wars |
| Steyn: FLIGHT 93, RE-HIJACKED |
| 2005-09-14 |
| sans my comments - I couldn't add anything better At 9.58am Eastern time, Tuesday September 11th 2001, United Airlines Flight 93 crashed in a field in Pennsylvania. Why? As UPIâs Jim Bennett wrote, âThe Era of Osama lasted about an hour and a half or so, from the time the first plane hit the tower to the moment the General Militia of Flight 93 reported for duty.â Exactly right. Six decades earlier, the American people had to wait four months between Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid. But September 11th was Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid wrapped up in 90 minutes. Flight 93 was supposed to be the fourth of Osamaâs flying bombs, its destination either the White House or the Capitol. Had it reached its target, the following morningâs headlines would have included âThe Vice-President is still among the missing, presumed deadâ. Had Flight 93 sheared the top off the White House, that would have been the dayâs âmoney shotâ, as it was in the alien-invasion flick Independence Day - the shattered façade, smoke billowing, the seat of American power reduced to rubble. But the dopey hijackers assigned to Flight 93 were halfway across the continent before they made their move and started meandering back east. And, by the time the passengers began calling home on their cellphones, their families knew what had happened in New York. Todd Beamer couldnât get through to his wife, so the last conversation of his life was with the GTE telephone operator, who stayed on the line with him and overheard his final words: âAre you ready, guys? Letâs roll!â And then a brave group of passengers jumped their hijackers and, at the cost of their own lives, prevented that dayâs grim toll rising even higher. At a terrible moment for America, their heroism was the only victory of the day. Four years on, plans for the Flight 93 National Memorial have now been revealed. The winning design, chosen from 1,011 entries, will be built in that pasture in Pennsylvania where those heroes died. The memorial is called âThe Crescent of Embraceâ. That sounds like a fabulous winning entry - in a competition to create a note-perfect parody of effete multicultural responses to terrorism. Indeed, if anything, itâs too perfect a parody: the âembraceâ is just the usual huggy-weepy reconciliatory boilerplate, but the âcrescentâ transforms its generic cultural abasement into something truly spectacular. In the design plans, âThe Crescent of Embraceâ looks more like the embrace of the Crescent â ie, Islam. After all, what better way to demonstrate your willingness to âembraceâ your enemies than by erecting a giant Islamic crescent at the site of the dayâs most unambiguous episode of American heroism? Okay, letâs get all the âof coursesâ out of the way â of course, the overwhelmingly majority of Muslims arenât terrorists; of course, we all know âIslamâ means âpeaceâ and âjihadâ means âhealthy-lifestyle lo-carb granola barâ; etc, etc. Nevertheless, the men who hijacked Flight 93 did it in the name of Islam and their last words as they hit the Pennsylvania sod were no doubt âAllahu Akhbarâ. One would be unlikely even today to come across an Allied D-Day memorial so misconceived in its spirit of reconciliation as to be called the Swastika of Embrace. Yet Paul Murdoch, the architect, has somehow managed to produce a design whose two most obvious interpretations are a) a big nothing or b) a splendid memorial to the hijackers rather than their victims. Four years ago, most of us understood instinctively the courage of Flight 93. They were honoured not just by chickenhawks and neocons and Zionists and the usual suspects but even by celebrities. The leathery old rocker Neil Young wrote a dark driving anthem called âLetâs Rollâ that began with cellphones ringing. Then: I know I said I love you I know you know itâs true I got to put the phone down And do what we gotta do Oneâs standing in the aisle way Two more at the door We got to get inside there Before they kill some more⊠Granted, even then, there were a lot of folks eager to âembraceâ their enemies. The day after September 11th, Robert Daubenspeck of White River Junction, Vermont wrote to my local newspaper advising against retaliation: âSomeone, someday, must have the courage not to hit back but to look them in the eye and say, âI love youâ.â Thatâs not as easy as it sounds. If you try to look Richard Reid the shoebomber in the eye as heâs bending down to light the fuse sticking out of his sock, you could easily put your back out. But each to his own. If Mr Murdoch sincerely believes in a âcrescent of embraceâ, let him build one â at the headquarters of a âmoderateâ Islamic lobby group, or in the parking lot of your wackier colleges. To impose it on Flight 93 â to, in effect, hijack those passengers a second time â is an abomination. Flight 93 is about what happens when you understand that some things canât be embraced. Perhaps Mr Beamer and his comrades did indeed âlook them in the eyeâ and saw there was nothing to negotiate, nothing to âembraceâ. So they acted â and, faced with a novel and unprecedented form of terror, they stopped it cold in little more than an hour. Todd Beamer asked that telephone operator to join him in reciting the 23rd Psalm: âYea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of deathâŠâ He knew there would be no happy ending that day, but in their resourcefulness and sacrifice he and his fellow passengers gave their country the next best thing: a hopeful ending. Thatâs what the Flight 93 Memorial should be honouring. Instead, in its feeble cultural cringe, the Crescent of Embrace hands the terrorists of Flight 93 the victory they were denied on September 11th. And it profoundly dishonours Todd Beamer, Thomas Burnett, Jeremy Glick, Mark Bingham and other forgotten heroes of that flight. Most of us are all but resigned to losing New Yorkâs Ground Zero memorial to a pile of non-judgmental if not explicitly anti-American pap: The minute you involve big-city politicians and foundations and funding bodies and âartistsâ youâre on an express chute to the default mode of the cultural elite. But surely itâs not too much to hope that in Pennsylvania the very precise, specific, individual, human scale of one great act of American heroism need not be buried under another soggy dollop of generic prettified passivity. A culture that goes to such perverse lengths to disdain its heroes cannot survive and doesnât deserve to. Four years ago, Todd Beamerâs rallying cry was quoted by Presidents and rock stars alike. Thatâs all thatâs needed in that field: the kind of simple dignified memorial you see on small-town commons saluting Civil war veterans, a granite block with the names of the passengers and the words âLETâS ROLL.â The âcrescent of embraceâ, in its desperation to see no enemies and stand for nothing, represents the precise opposite of Beamer, Glick, Burnett and co: Are you ready, guys? Letâs roll over. Originally at The Irish Times, September 12th 2005 |
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| Tom Burnett, RIP |
| 2001-09-15 |
SAN FRANCISCO (AP) - Thomas Burnett Jr., the California executive who may have helped thwart a plan by hijackers to crash a fourth plane into a landmark, was on board that day because he was in his usual rush to get home to his wife and young children. Those who knew him say he regarded himself as a family man. But the successful executive and athlete was also a proven leader. A former Bloomington, Minn., high school quarterback, Burnett enjoyed hunting and fishing at his family's Wisconsin farm house retreat. He was also an avid reader, interested in history, politics and sports. During Tuesday's hijacking of United Flight 93, Burnett called his wife, Deena, told her about the hijacking and said he and other passengers were "going to do something." Minutes later, Flight 93 crashed in the Pennsylvania countryside, killing all 45 people on board but no one on the ground. Investigators haven't said whether the passengers tried to overpower the hijackers or if that caused the plane to crash far from other possible destinations, such as Washington. The plane's cockpit voice recorder, which should have taped the final 30 minutes of conversation, was recovered Friday and sent to Washington for analysis. Burnett, who lived in San Ramon, was a senior vice president of Thoratec Corp., a medical research and development company. His friend and company president Keith Grossman said Burnett had been scheduled to take a later flight but apparently booked the earlier one at the last minute. "He was going home to be with his family," Grossman said. "I've traveled enough with Tom over the years to know that he was eager to get home to them as soon as he could." Burnett had three children, twins Madison and Halley, both 5, and Anna-Claire, 4. Grossman said Burnett, a University of Minnesota graduate who earned a master's degree at Pepperdine University, was bright, driven, competitive and possessed skills and maturity well beyond his 38 years. "He had high ideals and principles, and he expected a great deal of himself, and of others," Grossman said. "He had a very strong sense of right and wrong, and was solidly rooted in the strength of his own convictions." Those who knew him are counting Burnett - an admirer of Abraham Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and America's founding fathers - as a patriot for the part he may have played in preventing greater bloodshed. "I would expect Tom to die just as he lived, with honor, principle and dignity," Grossman said. |
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