The Voice of Pure Evil (Part 2)

Flight 93 was a different story.

In one sense I suppose it was very much the same story; the same terrorist hijacking, the same lie, the same frightened passengers, the same anxious air traffic controllers listening for any clue as to what was taking place in the sky above them. But the lie that had been effective with passengers on other flights, was about to be shown for what it was. The veil was beginning to fade. The reason?

Flight 93 did not take off on time as the terrorists' had planned. Instead of taking off at 8am, Flight 93 experienced a full 40-minute delay before take off due to the congested runways at Newark. While the hijacked plane hurtled towards its intended target, passengers onboard learned of the earlier attacks by phone. The hijackers' carefully devised timetable had failed. The curtain had been pulled back and the passengers began to see the ugly truth of the situation; a truth that could no longer be denied.

No amount of saying "If you move, you'll endanger yourself and the airplane - Just stay quiet" could compel them to remain quiet and motionless any longer...

At 9:57am the passengers revolted.

But the heroes, though they included a 6'5'' Rugby star, an all-state wrestler and judo champion, a basketball player, and a trained pilot, could not turn the tables and save the plane. The damage had already been done. The White House was saved - but the plane could not be. The attempted rescue came too late.

Without a doubt, from start to finish it must have looked a very different event to those who lived it and experienced it, almost like looking into a completely different world perhaps. Knowing what we know now, we can -- only with great effort -- transpose ourselves back in time to that fateful morning and attempt to see it through their eyes. Today, we look at events like the warning text message that Flight 93 received from the United Airlines flight dispatcher at 9:23am that morning:

"Beware any cockpit intrusion - Two a/c hit World Trade Center."

...and we stare in bewilderment, wondering how it was that the plane was still hijacked, and every person on board still lost their life. 9:23am -- five minutes before the plane was hijacked -- here was the warning that was needed!

To us, looking back, it appears plain as day. And yet the plane was still lost and forty innocent passengers perished. The brief opportunity to avert the danger had come and gone. Those who had eyes to see the truth were in a position to do something; those who did not, were doomed to perish without even a fight.

In the days after 9/11 The Churchill Centre was often asked to research what Winston Churchill had said amidst similar circumstances in his own day. They assembled a collection of statements he had made that possess relevance to our own day and published them under the title "Our Qualities and Deeds Must Burn and Glow: Churchill's Wisdom Calls to us Across the Years". I have pulled out two quotations that seem particularly apropos:

"When the situation was manageable it was neglected, and now that it is thoroughly out of hand we apply too late the remedies which then might have effected a cure. There is nothing new in the story. It is as old as the sibylline books. It falls into that long, dismal catalogue of the fruitlessness of experience and the confirmed unteachability of mankind. Want of foresight, unwillingness to act when action would be simple and effective, lack of clear thinking, confusion of counsel until the emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong, these are the features which constitute the endless repetition of history." (1)

"Still, if you will not fight for the right when you can easily win without bloodshed; if you will not fight when your victory will be sure and not too costly; you may come to the moment when you will have to fight with all the odds against you and only a precarious chance of survival. There may even be a worse case. You may have to fight when there is no hope of victory, because it is better to perish than live as slaves." (2)

It is tragic, truly tragic, how often we fail to heed Cassandra's warning; the warning that could for us avert disaster. In our folly we find ourselves endeavoring to gag and silence, or simply to ignore, the voice of truth; and turn our ears instead to the voice of evil: "It's not really that bad (yet). Do nothing."

(Continue to Part 3)

1  House of Commons, 12 April 1935
2  The Gathering Storm, 272 (English edition), 348 (American edition)