By By Tray Smith
A few weekends ago, our nation commemorated the fourth anniversary of September 11th. This time, however, the event was little noticed and little mentioned, and it received very little media coverage. Hurricane Katrina was still in the headlines, and after four years, the memories of 9/11 have begun beginning to fade in our minds anyway. It seems as if each passing day, the images of planes running into buildings, smoke arising from the Capitol, and parents and children scrambling around looking for their loved ones moves further and further to the back of our minds. However, unfortunately, each passing day also brings us closer to the next time that terrorists will, or will at least try, to attack more of our buildings, kill more of our loved ones, and dampen more of our spirits. We have entered into a denial of danger.
This is why I was glad that I caught a portion of the Discovery Channel Special on 9/11, the Flight that Fought Back. In this portrayal of the events which occurred on United Flight 93, viewers were shown vivid images of what happened on that dreadful flight. The passengers on Flight 93 knew that they had been hijacked by terrorists. They knew the terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center. They knew they were being made into a human missile to bring death and destruction to yet another target. So they stood up for their country, they stood up for there fellow Americans, and they overtook the terrorist.
In doing so, they saved one of America's most sacred institutions of democracy, the United States Capitol, from falling into complete ruin. While the death and destruction of that day was already bad enough, it would have been even worse (if you can fathom worse) if those passengers had not acted. Those passengers, however, did act, and thank God for it.
They struck the very weakness of the terrorist. You see, a terrorist can plan and plan and plan some more on how to navigate through every layer of security and carry out a terrorist attack. They can train and train on how to bring ruin to America's shores. They, however, could not in a million years have trained enough to break the heart and spirit of the American people. The terrorists never anticipated those passengers to stand up and overpower them, they never envisioned anyone caring so much or loving so much that they would risk their own lives to take them down. The terrorists never envisioned anyone fighting for their beliefs and standing up for their American values. Why is this?
It is because in America, we love and care for one another, we look out for one another, and we are our thankful to live in the greatest country the world has ever scene. We embolden values of love and compassion like no other people in the world ever have. The terrorists, on the other hand, know only hate, fear, and death. They cannot plan to fight an enemy the polar opposite of themselves, and they have no clue how to fight the powers of love. That is because they have no clue what love is. The terrorist hijackers on Flight 93 were completely taken by surprise when the passengers fought back. They did not have any idea what to do. The only thing they got out of Flight 93 was taking down an aircraft and going to hell.
The Flight that Fought Back exposed the true evils that we face. It exposes the horror that we are up against. It exposes the human trash that is trying to kill us. To those politicians who criticized our treatment of prisoners at Guantonomo Bay, Cuba, you should wake up and realize that there is nothing too harsh we can do to these thugs who try to kill our children. I wonder if any of these political hacks would ever be re-elected if they would have split the screen between the towers falling and our Senators making accusations of torture. (At least they had enough sense to quit when London's subway was bombed.) I am not trying to politicize this, they are. I am just trying to acknowledge the terror that we face and what we must do to combat it.
If you did not get the chance to watch this documentary, then you missed out. But if you did, you know what I am talking about. This is the ultimate fight between all of the good in the world and all of the bad, and it is up to us if good shall win. We must remain strong in our resolve and brave in our fight, and that is the bottom line.
Tray Smith is a freshman at Escambia Academy. He is a political columnist for the Atmore Advance. He can be reached at tsmith_90@hotmail.com . His column appears weekly.