Watching United 93, Gerard Vanderleun remembers the other heros of that day:

Far away on that day, far from the pillar of flame and plume of ash at the foot of the island, there was another fire in a field in Pennsylvania. Those nearby felt the shudder in the earth and saw the smoke, but it would be some days before we understood what it was, and longer still until we began to know what it meant.

The film I saw by myself tonight expands that meaning and brings a human face to the acts by the passengers of United 93 that endure only in that rare atmosphere that heroes inhabit. What I know in my heart, but what always escapes my understanding until something like this film renews it, is that heroism is a virtue that most often appears among us not descending from some mythic pantheon, but rising up out of the ordinary earth and ordinary hearts when the moment calls for actions extraordinary.

I saw this ordinary courage in New York on that day as I learned of the police and the firemen who had gone up the stairs to save others’ lives. That they, in their hundreds, had gone up when all others were fleeing down is an image that can never be erased from my memory. Time fades all impressions as surely as it faded the faces of the missing on the walls of my city, but let’s, just for now, remember it it once again, for it we fail to remember and sustain the memories of our heroes, we are surely done as a nation and a people.

Michael Totten describes a visit to northern Israel, at the Lebanese border:

Rush Limbaugh has an interesting interview with Paul Greengrass, the (“liberal”) director of United 93:

GREENGRASS: I’ll tell you one of the most chilling things that I have learned from my experience of looking at terrorism. About 20 years ago the IRA bombed the hotel where the prime minister, Prime Minister Thatcher, and her cabinet were, and about ten people were killed, and Prime Minister Thatcher — who I never agreed with politically in the entirety of her career, but she was our prime minister, and I don’t agree with blowing her up. Luckily she escaped. Later that night, the IRA issued a statement. They said, “Tonight you were lucky. You have to be lucky every time. We only have to be lucky once,” and in that expression is the heart of the mind of the terrorist operation.

“We only have to be lucky once. You have to be lucky every time,” and the truth is we can’t always be lucky.

That’s why we’ve gotta find somewhere solutions to these things, and we have to be prepared, it seems to me, and maybe you and I aren’t going to agree about this, to look at what we do and ask ourselves some tough questions about it. Are what we’re doing, are the things that we do, the things that they want us to do? Because one of the things terrorists want to do is goad us, make us react in ways that make the problem worse. I’m not making a political point now. I’m just, you know, answering the question, and that also is in this film. You know, we, all of us, wherever we stand on the political spectrum, if we’re going to confront this problem and prevail, have got to ask ourselves hard questions and be prepared to challenge our beliefs. Because unless we get some consensus here, we’re not going to prevail.

If you’re going to see the movie this weekend, it’s a good time to reread (or read for the first time, if you missed it) humorist Dave Barry’s staggeringly unfunny, but masterful essay on the event. I wish I’d written it. I wish I had a tenth of the talent it took to write it.

Michael Yon explains what he meant earlier, in a must-read photo essay.

…sitting in a tree. K I S S I N…

Gee, here’s an interview with Thomas Jocelyn, on what the captured documents have revealed about their relationship.

The same document…indicates that Iraq was in contact with Dr. Muhammad al-Massari, the head of the Committee for Defense of Legitimate Rights (CDLR). The CDLR is a known al Qaeda propaganda organ based in London. The document indicates that the IIS was seeking to

Cindy Sheehan’s excellent Easter adventure. I guess she can do this because she has, in Maureen Dowd’s words, “absolute moral authority.” I’m not a Christian, but if I were, I’d be appalled.

Christopher Hitchens is still waiting for some substantive answers from Joe Wilson:

…it’s true that the two men knew each other during the Gulf crisis of 1990-1991. Indeed, in his book The Politics of Truth, Wilson records Zahawie as having been in the room, as under-secretary for foreign affairs, during his last meeting with Saddam Hussein. (Quite a senior guy for a humble mission like violating flight-bans from distant Niger and Burkina Faso.) I cite this because it is the only mention of Zahawie that Wilson makes in his entire narrative.

In other words (I am prepared to keep on repeating this until at least one cow comes home), Joseph Wilson went to Niger in 2002 to investigate whether or not the country had renewed its uranium-based relationship with Iraq, spent a few days (by his own account) sipping mint tea with officials of that country who were (by his wife’s account) already friendly to him, and came back with the news that all was above-board. Again to repeat myself, this must mean either that A) he did not know that Zahawie had come calling or B) that he did know but didn’t think it worth mentioning that one of Saddam’s point men on nukes had been in town. In neither case, it seems to me, should he be trusted with another mission that requires any sort of curiosity.

First, we have this story, of a Marine put on a TSA no-fly list because he was detected with gunpowder residue on his combat boots.

Then, KLo over at NRO asks:

Small thing, all things considered, but wouldn’t an expired I.D. be something to notice?

Not in a sane world. I’ve commented on this before. And I just noticed in the last comment on that post:

And as far as security being “bullshit”? How many planes have been hijacked since new security procedures have been put in place?

And how many would have been had they not?

This is the “tiger repellant” fallacy.

“Why do you keep jumping up and down on one foot?”

“To keep the tigers away.”

“Are you crazy? There’s not a tiger within thousands of miles of here, except in zoos.”

“See? It works!”

It’s not the airport security procedures that have prevented hijackings (though they may have cut down on attempts)–it’s the fact that the passengers are much more alert now, and will never again allow another plane to be hijacked. Every flight from now on, as long as we remember Flight 93, will be Flight 93.

I knew that the Raptor was superior, but I hadn’t realized just how superior:

The aircraft is simply the most advanced ever built. There is nothing on earth to touch it. In simulated dogfights it has wiped the floor with the opposition.

In one such encounter, six F-15 Eagle air-superiority fighters

I’m on long record as being opposed to the “War on Terrorism.” Not that I don’t think that we should be fighting these thugs, but that the war was misnamed from the beginning. Jonathan Rauch explains:

“I think defining who the enemy is is a real problem in this war,” says Mary Habeck, a military historian at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. “If you can’t define who’s a real threat and who’s just exercising free speech, it’s a problem.” As it happens, Habeck is the author of one of three new books that, taken together, suggest the time is right to name the battle. It is a war on jihadism.

Jihadism is not a tactic, like terrorism, or a temperament, like radicalism or extremism. It is not a political pathology like Stalinism, a mental pathology like paranoia, or a social pathology like poverty. Rather, it is a religious ideology, and the religion it is associated with is Islam.

But it is by no means synonymous with Islam, which is much larger and contains many competing elements. Islam can be, and usually is, moderate; Jihadism, with a capital J, is inherently radical. If the Western and secular world’s nearer-term war aim is to stymie the jihadists, its long-term aim must be to discredit Jihadism in the Muslim world.

No single definition prevails, but here is a good one: Jihadism engages in or supports the use of force to expand the rule of Islamic law. In other words, it is violent Islamic imperialism. It stands, as one scholar put it 90 years ago, for “the extension by force of arms of the authority of the Muslim state.”

…”This is a struggle over Islam and who’s going to control Islam,” Habeck says. “If you can’t talk about that, you can’t talk about most of the story.” Specifying that the war is against Jihadism — as distinct from terrorism or Islam (or Islamism, which sounds like “Islam”) — would allow the United States to confront the religious element of the problem without seeming to condemn a whole religion. It would clarify for millions of moderate Muslims that the West’s war aims are anti-jihadist, not militantly secular.

In any case, says Habeck, “people are not buying the administration’s claim that this has nothing to do with Islam.” A recent Washington Post/ABC News poll finds that the proportion of Americans saying that Islam helps stoke violence against non-Muslims has more than doubled (to 33 percent) since January 2002, when 9/11 memories were still vivid. If anything, the tendency of Bush, Blair, and other Western leaders to sweep Jihadism under the rug is counterproductive and fuels public suspicion of those leaders and of Islam itself.

What’s interesting (particularly in light of this post) is that the left is supposedly against imperialism, but they never seemed to mind the imperialism of the Soviets. And now they are either sanguine, or in denial (or even supportive, because it opposes that evil western Amerikkkan imperialism) about Islamic imperialism.

[Via La Dynamist]

[Update a couple minutes later]

I think this is an opportunity for the administration. Since so many whine that the president will never admit to error, he could take some wind out of their sails, while clarifying the nation’s war policy, by admitting that calling it a “War on Terrorism” after 911 was a mistake. This would undercut a lot of the arguments about why we don’t go after the IRA, or other groups, while showing that he can recognize mistakes and rectify them. Renaming it a war on Jihadism would also increase pressure against Iran, which is clearly of a jihadist mindset, and increase justification for preventing them from getting nukes (assuming that any is really needed).