The United States is being held hostage. In the wake of the attacks on our embassies, an anti-Muhammad video has been identified not just by the Muslim world, but by our own Government as the reason for those attacks. The real reason – enunciated in Arabic – is to use the video as a tool to get nations all over the globe to criminalize criticism of anything Islam.
In essence, Americans are supposed to surrender a right so sacrosanct to their country’s founding principles that our forefathers, in crafting the Bill of Rights, made it a central component of the very first Amendment.
When people are taken hostage in bank robberies – or anywhere else for that matter – what is a common phrase that is universal to all hostage takers?
“Do what we say and no one will get hurt.”
It’s a phrase that’s part of evil’s DNA.
In the case of 9/11/01, the hijackers of the first three planes neutralized their passengers by using variations of that phrase. Here is the leader of the 19 hijackers – Mohamed Atta – telling people onboard American Flight 11 to be quiet and everything will be alright:
That leads to another strain embedded in evil’s DNA; it lies and it deceives. It will tell you that as long as you do what it wants, you will be ok. Evil has no intention whatsoever of leaving you “ok” when you do what it wants. The flames of hate are fed by the pheromones of fear.
The 9/11 Commission determined that the hijackers of United Flight 175 subdued passengers, based on the accounts of eyewitnesses, by sending people to the back of the plane and telling them that compliance would keep them from being harmed.
Indications were that American Flight 77, which flew into the Pentagon, suffered the same fate; passengers were told to get to the back of the plane.
United Flight 93 was a different story because its passengers knew they weren’t going to be ok if they did as they were told; news of what happened to the other planes gave them two options – die or fight.
They were told by hijacker Ziad Jarrah to be quiet until their “demands” were met. Fortunately for our White House and Capitol and, by extension, our president and congressmen, that didn’t happen – thanks to those courageous Americans who represent all of us.
Here is what Jarrah told the passengers:
Perhaps the sickest irony of all is that Flight 93’s passengers prevented the hijackers from attacking either the U.S. Capitol or the White House, two structures that house the leadership which should be doggedly protecting not only Americans themselves but every single aspect of the first amendment the people who agree with the 9/11 hijackers want to take away. Instead, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff – Martin Dempsey – called a small Florida pastor to talk him out of exercising his first amendment rights so no one gets hurt.
Meanwhile, Democrats in Congress seem to want to bow to Sharia law and most Republicans are reticent to stand up to it. The message from the White House is that the 9/11/12 attacks are not against the United States but a response to an exercise of free speech (isn’t that the same thing?).
Question: If the 9/11/12 attackers are burning the President of the United States in effigy while collectively invoking the name of Osama bin Laden, does that mean the attacks of 9/11/01 were not against the United States either, despite our financial center and Pentagon being primary targets?
The passengers who prevented Flight 93 from reaching its target represent the same Americans who are being told that a video is responsible for the Muslim riots in the Middle East.
Instead of the Obama administration and Congress doing all it can to defend – with all its might – the Constitution it swore an oath to defend, they appear to be on the brink of complying with the demands of those who attacked us on 9/11/12.
“Give up your right of free speech and no one will get hurt.”
There comes a point at which storming the cockpit is better than the alternative. Losing the right of free speech will be one of those times.
Ben Barrack is a talk show host and author of the book, Unsung Davids