Late in the morning of the Tuesday that changed everything, Lt. Heather “Lucky” Penney was on a runway at Andrews Air Force Base and ready to fly. She had her hand on the throttle of an F-16 and she had her orders: Bring down United Airlines Flight 93. The day’s fourth hijacked airliner seemed to be hurtling toward Washington. Penney, one of the first two combat pilots in the air that morning, was told to stop it.
The one thing she didn’t have as she roared into the crystalline sky was live ammunition. Or missiles. Or anything at all to throw at a hostile aircraft.
Except her own plane. So that was the plan
Click to read F-16 pilot was ready to give her life on Sept. 11 from The Washington Post.
Jeez. The heroes on Flight 93 saved more people than we realized.
I shared this with my mom yesterday, and it took a lot to keep her from crying. God knows I don’t always agree with military action, and yeah there might be a few bad apples, but wow if our service members don’t deserve a huge debt of honor. Making sacrifices every day, but being ready and willing to accept missions like this. Wow.
I read this article the other day, and was rightly impressed by the men and women that serve in our armed forces. After I got to thinking about it a bit I felt that an obligation as big as the one those two pilots faced that day would likely been borne by just about any able bodied American that morning. To be the only one in the sky with the means of preventing another attack, you or I or anyone, would do what must be done. It is why there were so many heroes that day, in the towers, and on the ground in Alexandria. You encounter people worse off than yourself amid incomprehensible destruction and you instinctively help them. Even if it means dashing into burning buildings or literally going down with your ship. God bless all our selfless heroes and innocent victims from that destructive day. Sincerely.
This just reinforces that true leadership is in preventing the catastrophe in the first place, so that such sacrifices will not be needed so often. It was failures of political leadership that opened the door to 9/11. It was our political leadership that coddled Saddam and the Taliban until we turned on them. (They we always our enemies, we just chose to overlook that fact for expediency.)
I get outraged when I see the military, police, fire, etc. all being asked to clean up messes created by politicians who are some mixture of cynical, misguided, or stupid.