"We're the only plane in the sky"

druryj said:

I woke up this morning remembering the day. It’s still fresh in my mind; watching it unfold on TV.

Almost all of this can be traced to the events of 1979, and the Iranian Hostage Crisis. I was shortly after floating around on a ship in the Indian Ocean, just waiting for the order. It never came, and we missed an opportunity to nip the tide of Islamic Terrorism from the start. We sure had a plan, just not the political will and foresight to carry it out. An opportunity squandered is an opportunity never to be had again.


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John6185 said:

The sad part is that they still want to kill us and the politicians fail to remember what happened on 9-11. They keep bringing them in country and curry to most of their demands.

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donner said:

This story is long, but very different than any article i've read before. And it's very good.

It's a series of one to two sentence quotes from those on air force one on 9/11. It's not always comforting, and it's chaos, but it's also very us.

It's a story i'm not sure too many have heard. In many ways, it's a story about when we came together.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2016/09/were-the-only-plane-in-the-sky-214230

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The most significant development of 11 September is that it marks the day America began to fight back: 9/11 is not just Pearl Harbor but also the Doolittle Raid, all wrapped up in 90 minutes. No one will ever again hijack an American airliner with boxcutters, or, I’ll bet, with anything else — not because of predictably idiotic new Federal regulations, but because of the example of Todd Beamer’s ad hoc platoon. Faced with a novel and unprecedented form of terror, American technology (cellphones) combined with the oldest American virtue (self-reliance) to stop it cold in little more than an hour.

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At 8:48 a.m. Mohammed Atta took a jet headlong into the north tower of the World Trade Center. Eighteen minutes later an accomplice did the same to the south tower.

When Jeremy Glick called his wife, his first question was an attempt to confirm something another passenger had heard on his spousal call: was the World Trade Center story true?

Lizzy Glick paused, thought for a minute, swallowed hard, and told him the truth. Yes, they had. Moments later, still on the line with her husband, Lizzy Glick saw that another plane had run into the Pentagon. She passed that information on as well to her husband, who relayed it to the other passengers.

Jeremy Glick then told her that the passengers were about to take a vote and decide if they should rush the hijackers and attempt to foul up whatever evil plans they had.

He put down the phone and a commotion was heard by those on the other end of the line. Then nothing. A dead line. An aborted missile launch against the town where I live.

That was 10:37 a.m. on Tuesday, September 11… just 109 minutes after Mohammed Atta rammed the first plane into the north tower of the World Trade Center.

Just 109 minutes after a new form of terrorism — the most deadly yet invented — came into use, it was rendered, if not obsolete, at least decidedly less effective.

Deconstructed, unengineered, thwarted, and put into the dust bin of history. By Americans. In 109 minutes.

And in retrospect, they did it in the most American of ways. They used a credit card to rent a fancy cell phone to get information just minutes old, courtesy of the ubiquitous 24-hour news phenomenon. Then they took a vote. When the vote called for sacrifice to protect country and others, there apparently wasn’t a shortage of volunteers. Their action was swift. It was decisive. And it was effective.

United Flight 93 did not hit a building. It did not kill anyone on the ground. It did not terrorize a city, despite the best drawn plans of the world’s most innovative madmen. Why? Because it had informed Americans on board who’d had 109 minutes to come up with a counteraction.

And the next time a hijacker full of hate pulls the same stunt with a single knife, he’ll get the same treatment and meet the same result as those on United Flight 93. Dead, yes. Murderous, yes. But successful? No.

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CHenry said:

View attachment 142774

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