WTC, Three Months Later
Ah. I'm finally free of the cold that had me blowing PANTONE 394 mucus out of my nose for two weeks. I got tested for strep twice, used sulfacetamide eyedrops for possible conjunctivitis, and was just plain knocked out for the first day. That's it. I'm not getting sick again this winter.
It's been three months since the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center. The practical upshot of that fact is that I get to see the videos again on TV. It's OK, people. I already have it burned into my memory. Thank you, move along.
But the big thing on the news is the revelation that some of the airplane hijackers may not have known that they were going to be crashing the planes into buildings.
Why does this surprise anyone?
It's a standard technique called "need to know". The fewer people you tell something to, the less of a chance it has to leak out. It's a fact of life.
I'm trying to figure out what difference that fact makes to me. Do I dislike bin Laden even more because he sent his guys to die without them knowing it? Give me a break. When you crash a plane into a building, people are going to die with no foreknowledge, and I'm sure that bin Laden was happy to send his men to heaven (with the virgins, etc.) while striking a blow to infidel America.
And it certainly doesn't make me sympathetic to the hijackers. To take over an airplane involves bloodshed. They certainly knew that they were going to kill some people on the plane, and likely get themselves killed in the process. So what if they were slated to die? I'm not going to cry over the fact that there are now fewer hijackers in the world (for now; it won't take long for their educational processes to crank out some more kids who hate the United States and the west).
Wake up, people. This is how terrorism works. Terrorists go and kill large quantities of random people. They know that they're probably going to die. This shouldn't be a surprise to anyone. Welcome to the real world.