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of a hijacking. Silently obeying the commands of fanatics whose actions
would certainly result in your death was no longer the best advice. Sud-
denly the experts were recommending passenger rebellions and pilots
armed with pistols.
The bottom line is that no one really knows what to do. It is easy for
anyone to Monday morning quarterback every terrorist incident. Unfor-
tunately, the majority of us can't read minds. If you knew that all your
assailants wanted was to take you on a nice plane ride to Cuba, the advice
of “Listen to the nice terrorists and do what they say” would seem to make
sense. Now, however, you don't know if they intend to fly the plane into
the airspace of a country friendly to them or into something they wish
to destroy. In fact, in Bin Laden's taped discussion of the attacks, it is
clear that most of the hijackers themselves did not know what the true
nature of the mission was. Apparently only a few of the terrorists knew that
the mission was actually a large-scale suicide bombing. Once it becomes
clear that the planes are to be flown into buildings, passengers have no
choice other than to act. To do nothing is certainly to perish. As Ambas-
sador Francis X. Taylor told the Congressional Committee on International
Relations:
One result of the terrorists' stark “us” vs. “them” attitude is their willingness to
kill large numbers of innocent people in suicide attacks without claiming respon-
sibility or stating a measurable demand. In the past, when terrorists hijacked air-
craft or took over a building, they did so in pursuit of specific and quantifiable
political goals, such as forcing governments to release previously captured col-
leagues or the media to publish manifestos. The September 11 attacks were a con-
tinuation of the trend to inflict maximum casualties, without regard to loss of life
or likelihood of achieving specific demands. The planners used a ghastly scenario
of the kind that could be imagined only by people so full of hatred that they are
beyond the civilized pale.
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This tactic represents a quantum shift in the mind-set of those ter-
rorists who continue to use airliners in furtherance of their goals. This
change also has caused airline security experts to rethink the standard
approach to a hijacking that suggests docility. Almost every American is
aware of the now-famous last recorded words of Todd Beamer, a passen-
ger on United Airlines Flight 93. The passengers on board knew they were
the fourth plane hijacked that day, and they knew the fate of the other
three planes. Beamer and several other passengers decided not to go as
sheep to the slaughter. Instead, they fought the terrorists and prevented
