After reading Dave Barry's eminently respectful article on Flight 93 in the Post-Bulletin's special 9/11 issue, a question I've had for almost a year was rekindled. Was there room for doubt in the minds of any of those terrorists on board that flight?
Even while they lived in America to train for their deadly plans, I'm sure the terrorists found plenty of fuel for their deeply imbedded hatred.
They could witness a luxury of hypocrisies between the expressed righteousness of our democracy and the deeds on our nightly news.
Their disdain must have been bolstered by passengers interrupting progress down the plane's narrow aisles to stuff huge bags into the tiny overhead compartments.
At the appointed time, a brief silent prayer and an adrenaline rush was all it would take to propel each terrorist from his seat to join his comrades in an attack to take control of the plane and fly it to mass tragedy and a promised life hereafter.
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But, in the middle of the attack -- when all those anonymous strangers started to urgently whisper among themselves, consult secretly with their cell phones, put down their Palm pilots, then suddenly wrench their Dockers from their seats and come at the perpetrators with alarmingly singular resolve -- was there room for doubt in those terrorists' hate-saturated minds whether Americans might be something more than they had been led to believe?
Sam; Hurne
Rochester;
