Journal entry for September 13, 2001

Today's summary: Tuesday's terrorism.

I finally felt able to make a directly related comment, so, I posted this on wetcanvas.com. A friend had pointed out the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania would've flown by me, so, here's my response...

Yeah, it would have flown RIGHT over my town, if they'd gone straight towards DC as apparently planned (the onboard computer had filed a change of flight path, apparently).

But really, it doesn't matter where they would have gone, or even why they crashed... the important thing is that as few people as possible died as a result.

As I was telling my husband, up till now the mentality towards airline terrorism has been similar to the advice given in the event of a mugging: "Just stay calm, play along, do what they say, and you'll probably survive". But from now on, people are by necessity going to have to take a mentality similar to a kidnapping/rape case: "DON'T go along with it, resist all you can, because if they manage to take you away from safety, you WILL die."

I hear angry people on the radio today saying things like, "They only had knives! Why not overpower them!". But I mean, nobody's thinking about the fact that it's not easy to rush en masse up a narrow airplane aisle -- the first person gets cut badly, and then the next person in line has to contend with both the terrorist and the injured person in the way. I can't imagine how that would be possible for any group of civilians to pull off, even aside from the terror they must have been experiencing.

I'm certain that everybody who was on those planes did every single thing they thought they should or could have done. That makes them heroes no matter what happened afterwards. Don't blame the victims...

So today I've been thinking about them, and about the people of New York and Washington... and also, thinking of the OTHER true innocents who are simply unlucky enough to live in any nation whose government has screwed its own people over by tolerating terrorists, or worse, helping terrorists. This isn't over yet, and we shouldn't forget that there are people ALL over the world who will never, ever be able to understand or come to terms with violent acts that have been, and will be, committed.

But hey, call me biased, I'm still mostly thinking of us here in America... I can't help it.

The point is, it's a wound that cannot heal so easily, but hopefully, whatever happens in the next days and weeks will make it that much more difficult for terrorists to find support overseas, and access here.

Also, I was talking to a friend about Martin Luther King and Ghandi earlier. If only we could take a peaceful approach... but, that only works when you can count on your opposition's conscience outweighing their resolve. There's so many groups and regimes out there that couldn't care less what their people think of what they're doing, except perhaps to feed them a bit more propaganda. I mean, think of Tiananmen Square. Do you really think India would be free today if it had been ruled by a government like that, instead of the British?

If only there were more people in the world who couldn't possibly stomach the idea of doing things like we saw yesterday...