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Peggy Noonan is a really good writer.

Bookworm on Sep 08 2006 at 1:06 pm | Filed under: Uncategorized

Don’t ask why. Just read it.

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5 Responses to “Peggy Noonan is a really good writer.”

1. on 08 Sep 2006 at 1:21 pm 1mamapajamas

   This is a great column. Peggy catches the importance of all of the messages that were sent out that terrible morning.

   A few days ago, I bought the newly released DVD of United 93, and even though I saw it in the theater, it’s something that has to be viewed over and over to see everything. All was in such chaos that morning, and that is precisely what the film emphasizes. When I was it in the theater, everyone came out quiet and contemplative, each in his own thoughts.

   From what I’ve seen, this is another definition of courage that you could share with your son, Book. The people on that plane were positive that they would die if they did nothing, and decided that to risk doing something… anything!… was the better course. And they kept the plane from hitting Washington. Nothing else needs to be said.

2. on 08 Sep 2006 at 1:43 pm 2isirota1965

   I have an e-mail group to whom I send political e-mails, and this was the first thing I sent out today, at 7 a.m. It was heartrending. We should NEVER FORGET what happened that day, though I fear that all too many of us have done just that………

3. on 08 Sep 2006 at 2:28 pm 3jg

   Thanks, Bookworm.

   But I’m shocked and angered by this.
   It’s the nature of the enemy.

   http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/14723997/

4. on 08 Sep 2006 at 5:27 pm 4Trish

   It may be regional arrogance on my part, but I think that plane was headed for the Sears Tower.
   We should all be grateful to those courageous people for the fact that we’ll never know for sure.

5. on 08 Sep 2006 at 5:50 pm 5Ymarsakar

   Did you read Noonan’s letters written to Chris Matthews debating the war? It was pretty interesting, in so far as it helped to characterize certain archetypes of psychological behavior leading up to the war.

   Noonan is an example of a true liberal. True liberals, I respect, although I don’t like all of them simply because they, like Michael Totten, are sometimes not military enough for my tastes. So a weird personality conflict going on here.

   The documentary I saw on the History Channel, gave the exact phone calls that were made. It was quite striking, in that the movie itself flowed with the voice calls almost seamlessly. Reality and fiction, life and death, chaos and order. These things are opposite of each other, and yet they can form a greater whole together.

   When I first heard that Flight 93 had fought back, causing the plane to crash into a unpopulated field, instead of the capital or some other building in Washington, killing more people, I felt a great furor of admiration and pride.

   That people did not go silently into the night. It was an example of pure power, brought on by will, technology, and the timing of fate itself. The fate that caused the decisive delay that allowed Flight 93 to be out of synch of the hijackings, so that they were given the one chance to make use of the available openings and do something about their situation. That is power, applied in a focused, efficient manner.

   It is also one of the supporting pillars of why the basis of democracy is “the power of the people”. The power of the people is not in their votes, it is in their ability to act together, to form action teams, to effect change in the world beyond their private individual limitations. To be as one, to act as one. Their power is funneled and channeled through a leader, or leaders, that is true, but that power is still theirs. Autocrats and dictatorships, and even Leftist Utopian Socialist movements are weak by comparison, because they do not make use of the will, of individual power. They try to take it, they try to steal it, they try to manipulate it, and in so doing they weaken their power base.

   You need more than hate, but hate is all the Utopian Revolutionists have. What of love, what of compassion? Without those elements, your hate is not a usable weapon, it does not make you stronger. As it does not make juna stronger.

   He who knows nothing but hate and he who knows nothing but love and compassion, they are incomplete human beings, weak human beings that are unable to fullfill their potential.

   To love a person is to hate to be parted permanently from them, to leave them bereft and alone. To care for a person and their joy, is to feel pain when they are without care or joy. To love anyone, is to hate their enemies, enemies that seek the destruction and suffering of your loved ones. Without loved ones or principles or ideas that are loved, hate is a slim shadow of its former power.

   This reminded me of that moment when Todd Beamer of United 93 wound up praying on the phone with a woman he’d never met before, a Verizon Airfone supervisor named Lisa Jefferson. She said later that his tone was calm. It seemed as if they were “old friends,” she later wrote. They said the Lord’s Prayer together. Then he said “Let’s roll.”

   I saw her personal testimony and interview on the History Channel Flight 93 feature. She got very choked up when talking about her last moments with Todd Beamer. And I heard the call. She was very calm, Todd was eager and rushed because he knew he didn’t have much time. But the stress tones of his voice was not overt, you might have speculated he was in traffic if you hadn’t seen the news.

   Plans do not survive contact with the enemy. The military learns that for a reason. Neither Todd’s plan to get into the cockpit and fly the plane to a landing worked, nor did the terroists’ plan to use the plane as a bomb to blow up a building worked. And yet when adversity causes your plans to fail, should you complain like William Buckley the conservative or Harry Reid the fake liberal? No, you don’t complain, you do what you have to do, and adjust your plans hoping it will compensate for the problem. Have you failed when your plans go wrong? Should you give up, discard your willpower? Should people give up because their deaths and defeat is an inevitability as some have suggested for Iraq? Or should they fight on, against the odds, using their human talents at their greatest maximum potential? These are the questions that define what kind of a person you are, and will be. The choices people make in life or will make, define who they are.

   There is one exclusion to that old battle wisdom, however. And that is when the plan is a surprise. If you have the surprise, then your plan will work more often than not.

   Surprise, is of course, only in your mind. It is the paralysis of your mind that allows surprise to do its thing.

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