It's Decision Time: Cower Down or "Let's Roll"

Let's suppose you are on a commercial airliner flying over Pennsylvania when suddenly a passenger jumps up, grabs the stewardess and slits her throat with a box cutter. And others crash into the cockpit and kill the pilots. Your seatmate gets on his cell phone and makes a call to report you are being hijacked, only to learn two other airliners have been crashed into the largest buildings in New York. And at that point you know full well this plane you are on is going to be used to crash into a building, logically in Washington D. C., to kill hundreds of other people. At this moment you know full well you are dealing with terrorists who are more than willing to kill people, and who will ... given half a chance ... kill thousands.

Now, what do you do. Do you cower down and wave a little sign saying "Be Peaceful"? Or do you join the American hero Todd Beemer and say "Let's Roll" and do your best to save both the people on that plane, and probably more important, to save the people these terrorists are trying to kill in Washington?

I think that is where you and I are as Americans right now. We don't have to ask whether or not Saddam Hussein or Osama Ben Laden will kill people. Like the terrorists on that plane they will slit a person's throat in a heartbeat - even members of their own family if they cross them. We don't have to ask if either one of them will kill thousands, even millions, if given half a chance. These are not reasonable, logical, peaceful people and as much as we might like for them to negotiate, we know that, left in power, they are not going to do anything short of destroying us.

I think we are all in that plane right now, flying toward Washington, D. C., with time running out. Americans died before our very eyes on 9-11, and we know it, and we know others are going to die if we let this plane continue. And we have a decision to make, you and I: do we cower down and wave a little sign saying "We Want Peace", or do we stand up with the first American hero of this war, Todd Beemer, and say "Let's Roll"?

This is Gordon Sawyer, and may God Bless America.