I'm watching United 93.  It's filmed in real time, so you see the chain of events unfold as they happened to the passengers and crew of United Flight 93, the last of the four planes to crash on September 11, 2001, and the only one not to fulfill it's mission.  I am riveted.  I can't begin to articulate my emotions as I watch this film.  I couldn't stomach films about 9/11 before this.  They were too painful, too realistic, too in-your-face, too heartbreaking.  But It's been seven years.  I guess that's long enough for me to start feeling jaded about the whole event.

This is something that can never be forgotten, never be trivialized or downplayed.  9/11 was the defining moment in our American arrogance.  This was our weakest moment, the moment we were caught with our proverbial pants down, defenseless against an enemy we did not know or understand.

That's the most horribly unfathomable thing about the attack--it was unprecedented.  The target was civilians, not the military.  That's what makes terrorism so frightening, so depraved.  The terrorist believes he is acting on God's behalf, that he is fighting a holy war, a cause greater than himself.  He is not afraid to die--in fact, he welcomes death, for in death he is made glorious.  He is invincible as an instrument of God's wrath against the decadence of western culture.  He is the hero of his race.  Like the Kamikaze pilots of WWII, he believes he is furthering the cause of justice against an evil oppressor.

We were fat, we were soft, we were complacent, and they came to our door and attacked us with our own transportation system.  They made a mockery of our defenses.  As the world watched in horror, everyday people jumped to their death from the upper floors of the Twin Towers rather than be burned alive in their offices and cubicles.  The world watched and could do nothing to stop it.

That's what makes United 93 so terribly, incredibly poignant, that those passengers knew what had happened to the other three planes and they took the initiative to do something about it.  It's not the terrorists who are the heroes, it's that unified group of travelers and crew on that fateful airplane who, while knowing they were going to die, made their own deaths into a hopeful beacon for the rest of us.  They died in order to save other lives.  And for that we must never forget.