To 19 Highjackers

Five years have passed since you vanished in thin air. You remain now, flying, only in nightmares, your last wish granted.

Everything you ever did with your life has been examined like puzzle pieces, in the desperate hope of understanding you. In the light of hindsight, you have been called everthing for which man invented words, in the struggle to express the vacuum of thought and logic.

Mainly, though, you are called cowards.

However, I know you are not cowards. You are brave.

I cannot know the years of patient planning. The time spent in a foreign land, living and breathing the evil around you that drove you to hate it. I cannot know the adrenaline you must have had coursing through you as you packed your knives and boxcutters and headed for the airport. I cannot imagine the fear as you stepped across that threshold onto your respective airliners. I cannot understand the excitement as you sprung into action against your fellow passengers so high in the air, how completely unaware they were of the grand plan that you were granted by your God to initiate. I cannot fathom how you felt to steer those huge planes amidst the screaming and confusion. I cannot ever comprehend your final thoughts as you dove headfirst into the towers and into history forever.

To say that such planning and action is cowardly is wrong. It is brave.

People in the United States often forget that some of the bloodiest battles ever fought on earth came as a directive from their God, from their Bible. In times past, from the battle against Communism to the Crusades and Inquisitions, men bravely stood up for the God of the Bible and committed horrific crimes they truly believed were right. This goes all the way back to the Israelites slaughtering the women and children of the Hitties and Amorites. It goes back to God slaughtering the firstborn of Egypt. It goes back to God commanding Abraham to slaughter his only son Isaac. The God of the Christian world commands bloodshed from his people, and if they disobey, then they too are slaughtered.

But who has the resolve to take up that sword today? Who has the ability to have a belief living so fully within themselves that they stand up and count themselves among those who will fulfill its grim prophecy? Those that commit to their beliefs, even at the sacrifice of their own lives, cannot be cowards. Like the policemen and firefighters that disappeared with you that day, fighting against what you wrought, you too are brave. You are, one and all, brave.

The cowards are those who come afterwards, making speeches and pounding war drums and then sending other people's children to their deaths to fight for the ideals they refuse to defend with their own blood. These cowards eagerly take up the title of leaders, replete with all of the inherent power and riches, yet refuse the sword and recoil before their own sacrifice.

I admire you for your courage. Courage such as yours, if demonstrated by everyone, could change this world for the better. If only you could have had noble ideals to match your bravery, how much more powerful and complete the improvement might have been in the world today. How sad, utterly and unforgettably sad that you chose the lesser, destructive path.

I pray that those young people of the world who watched what you did and praised you will remember your courage and emulate it as they grow older. I only hope that what your courage could not let you see will be their guide, and love, not hate, will steer their planes instead toward peace.