What Would You Do?
I think every person in the United States has probably wondered at some point, "Could I do it? If I had been on Flight 93 on September 11, 2001, could I have risen from my seat and charged the cockpit? Would I have been brave enough?"
And I think the great majority of honest people would have to answer, "I don't know."
Today I find myself even more in awe of those passengers who fought back, reading
the details of tape recordings from that flight played in the trial of accused terrorist Zacarias Moussaoui.
The pleading voice of a flight attendant before she is coldly murdered...the sounds of passengers as they surge toward the cockpit...the horrific decison by the hijackers to "pull it down."
And perhaps most chilling:
the repetition of "Allah is the greatest" as the hijackers roll the plane over and point it towards the ground. That's some god you terrorists have....
I'm opposed to capital punishment, but if anything could make me want to kill someone who's not currently trying to kill me, it's the emotion of hearing such a tape.
Nonetheless, I don't think Moussaoui should get the death penalty; that would make him a martyr to others like him.
He ought to be locked up in solitary...and forced to listen to those recordings every day, all day, for the rest of his life.
