Rock_nj, what do you think the Bush administration should have done that they didn't do? Do you think that they should have shot down the second airliner, or the third airliner, or the fourth? I don't want to second-guess what you think should have been done, but as to this scenario...pre 9/11, do you really think that any fighter pilot would have fired a missile at a fully loaded civilian passenger airliner? It's one thing to order troops to kill the enemy, but it's hardly reasonable to expect a fighter pilot to willingly kill several hundred civilians. Post 9/11, I think a lot of pilots (though not all) could do it, believing that it would be the lesser of two evils. It was a nightmare scenario.
I'm simply not clear what "gaffe" you're referring to.
You say "once the attacks were underway", but remember that even though the Pennsylvania passengers did become convinced that the other airliners had been rammed into the twin towers intentionally, they did want to have a shot at liberating the airplane. I don't for a minute believe that their first impulse was to shove the yoke down with the intention of crashing the plane. I don't think anyone knows exactly what happened. It's possible that when they got to the cockpit they discovered that the crew capable of landing the airliner had been killed, and at that point they very well may have shoved the yoke down to prevent the plane from being used as a weapon against a building. But surely the airline passengers deserved a chance to subdue the hijackers and, if the pilots were not incapacitated, they could then regain control of the flight. |
