They saved the Capitol and killed the enemy

Passengers and crew of United 93 died as American soldiers

“What happened on September 11th?” I was unprepared for my nine-year-old’s question earlier this summer. It caught me flat-footed and speechless. I changed the subject after promising we would talk about it later.

Twenty one years have passed from that day. My father showed me his packet of photos from the atrocity in lower Manhattan just last week for the first time. He spent his career working for the phone company. He was among the thousands who worked on the Ground Zero site and burial mound. He helped restore the phone service that allowed the American free enterprise system to function with the resumption of the opening bell on Wall Street.

I was in a car with my best friend in a traffic jam between the Capitol and Supreme Court building. We were trying to move away from the RNC building. The smoke was visible from the strike on the Pentagon, and we had watched the second plane hit the South Tower on live television. There were unconfirmed media reports of explosions occurring around Washington, DC.

I listened to the events of 9/11/2001 unfold on one of the most extraordinary radio broadcasts I have ever heard. Howard Stern’s narration on that day was beyond riveting. It was likely one of the greatest narrations of a live and unfolding event in the history of the medium. My best friend and I had both grown up together, and worked together at the NRCC. I was from North Plainfield, NJ, he was from Green Brook. Both central NJ towns offered glimpses of the two Twin Towers some 25 miles away from any point of elevation. There has never been a moment since 9/11/01 where I have looked at the Manhattan skyline, and not missed the presence of the magnificent Twin Towers that I had been to the top of so many times as a kid. My grandfather, a factory worker and bartender from Bayonne, NJ, loved the observation deck of the World Trade Center as much as he loved the Circle Line boats that daily circumnavigate Manhattan Island.

When the first tower fell it was Howard Stern who described it. The events of that day are remembered visually because they mostly played out on television. When I saw the images later it was inconceivable. What Stern so brilliantly described had happened.

Above us, unseen, a great battle raged. A random group of Americans were fated to die together in the first counterattack against the enemy who had already killed thousands, and was aiming a jet-laden passenger airplane at the Capitol Dome. There is no video from the events that transpired aboard United Airlines flight 93, but there is audio. It tells an American story.

The passengers and crew of United 93 were comprised of a random assortment of everyday people. Some were black, others white. Some gay, some straight. None of that mattered in the decisive hour.

They knew what was happening. They crashed the plane in a Pennsylvania field. They gathered in the back of the plane and voted. They voted to fight. They did. They saved the Capitol of the United States that would be attacked again on January 6th after an incitement by a defeated US president and incumbent members of Congress against the US constitution in a far-ranging violent conspiracy.

The passengers and crew of United 93 were combatants. They represented the greatest virtues of patriotism and sacrifice in a defining moment. They defended their country and should be recognized and decorated accordingly.

The United States Armed Forces are among the nation’s oldest and most important institutions. The US military is not generally understood as an institution by either policymakers or the general public. That is unfortunate, but this story might give some context to the appropriate treatment for the passengers and crew of United 93.

The United States Army faced an embarrassing crisis in 1776. George Washington had not been promoted in almost 200 years, and thus had fallen in the seniority ranking to dozens of other generals who outranked the retired lieutenant general and founding father. He was promoted to the rank of General of the Armies of the United States, and given the highest rank forever, in perpetuity. Tradition. Custom. These things matter in a great nation. The memory of loss and grief must be accompanied by a celebration of all of the worthy virtues. Love, honor, courage and patriotism are among them.

There is something called a brevet. It is arcane and no longer in use, but has a long tradition in the US military. It should be used again to properly recognize the fierceness, valor and sacrifice of the men and women of United 93 who were the equals of the men who stood their ground at Lexington, Bastogne and Gettysburg. They died as Americans fighting back against a foreign enemy. They huddled, organized, voted and formed an American armed force, and attacked the enemy and killed him. They saved the Capitol of the United States and thousands of lives.

Those passengers should be breveted to appropriate ranks posthumously in the Armed Forces of the United States. They should be decorated with Purple Hearts and valor awards. This is appropriate. It will honor them, and renew our connection to them and their families. They died for America.

The American people are not the sum of the worst of our politicians. The American people are the men and women of United 93.

The commanding general of marines on Iwo Jima said, “Uncommon valor was a common virtue” there. It was so on United 93.

The men and women on that flight saw the enemy, closed on them and destroyed them in the finest traditions of the United States military. They should be treated in death what they became unexpectedly in life: American soldiers. May god bless their memory and the memories of all of the murdered of 9/11/01. May their memories be a blessing.