Be Thankful for Unanswered Prayers (to Allah, that is)

As I watch the many retrospectives on 9/11 I'm struck by just how lucky we really were that day (my recollections of that day here). Although we lost nearly 3,000 people and the economy took a big hit with the loss of the World Trade Center and the nearly fatal damage to the airline industry, it could have been so, so much worse. It's hard to look at the attacks that day from an objective basis and not declare them a failure, given the potential for loss and death that wasn't realized. I've given a little thought to a couple of things that could have dramatically changed that day's outcome.

The 9/11 planners underestimated the strength of the World Trade Center buildings as evidenced by their plans to strike the buildings near the top. The first plane hit around the 93rd floor, and the second somewhere in the 80's. I'm sure they planned it that way thinking that the force of the high speed impact would have caused an almost immediate failure of the structures down near the base which would have caused them to topple over onto adjacent buildings. The fact that the attacks came from opposite directions helps confirm this theory since it would have dramatically expanded the damage area.

This would have resulted in the loss of nearly everyone in the towers themselves, plus untold thousands on the street or in adjacent buildings that would have been crushed or set aflame in the collapse. The death toll could have easily approached 100,000.

That didn't happen, thank God (our God, not theirs), and instead the building survived long enough to allow something like 27,000 people to escape before the collapse. And when they did finally give way, they collapsed straight down upon themselves, doing relatively little damage to the surrounding area, much of which was already evacuated. We were very lucky.

What would have happened had the terrorists not made this overestimation of the building's strength? My guess is they would have tried to strike the buildings at much lower levels, and if they had, the casualty rate could easily have been multiplied twenty-fold. Number one, everybody above the impact level would have been lost (I think there were few if any survivors from floors above the impact in either building), and with so much more weight above the impact zone, the building failure would have come much quicker (remember, the second building that was hit failed first because there was more weight above the impact area). In addition, the building failure would likely as not have resulted in the tipping of the structure away from the center point, thus increasing damage and loss of life in the surrounding area. Once again, we were very lucky the terrorists didn't think through this a little more.

Of course, the greatest underestimation on the part of the terrorists involved their beliefs about America and our political leadership. After eight years of fecklessness in the Clinton adminstration, they were expecting at best a tepid response. Maybe we'd launch a few missiles at some remote tent camp in Afghanistan or Sudan, and we'd bite our lip and look real sad on TV when we talked about it, but that would be it. What they got instead was war and the overthrow of two dictatorial and terrorist supporting regimes. Imagine their surprise. A whole lot of al Quaeda operatives are cavorting with the virgins these days.

Although they badly underestimated our president, they certainly predicted the response of the Democrats. While there were a few moments of unity in the immediate aftermath of the attacks, it didn't take the Dems long to return to full feckless mode. The Dems are now more concerned about treating captured terrorists well than killing the ones still out there. There's also a lot of legacy protection going on right now, as shown by the all out war on ABC/Disney over "The Path to 9/11".

Part of the problem is that over time feelings and emotions go away. The horror we felt as we watched the reporting during those first hours and days has faded, and since we rarely see any images from the attacks, we've allowed our outrage to disappear. MSNBC is doing some on 9/11 that every network should do - they're replaying their coverage of 9/11 in real time, just as it happened. If every network did that, a lot of folks would begin thinking differently about the war on terror, and perhaps some of that old unity would return. The show "9/11" on CBS tonight is also excellent, and I wrote about it here. Be sure to tape that while you're watching "The Path to 9/11" (and writing your comments at HolyCoast.com).

The only other way we're going to see a return of an America with a unified purpose in the war on terror is through another devastating attack, and that's something nobody wants. I hope it doesn't take the loss of thousands more Americans to wake up the half of America that's currently abstaining from the war on terror.