George Will On "Flight 93"

The New York Times, wonderfully in character, has managed to worry about the movie's "politics of heroism": Is the movie sufficiently "inclusive"? That is, did it violate some egalitarian nicety by suggesting that perhaps not all passengers were equally heroic?
Inexplicably, the Times did not fault the movie for ethnic profiling: All the hijackers are portrayed as young, fervently devout Islamic males. Report Greengrass to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights.
In a movie as spare and restrained as its title, the only excess is the suggestion, itself oblique, that the government responded even more confusedly that morning than was to be expected. Most government people, like the rest of us, were in the process of having their sense of the possible abruptly and radically enlarged.
Going to see "United 93" is a civic duty because Samuel Johnson was right: People more often need to be reminded than informed. After an astonishing 56 months without a second terrorist attack, this nation perhaps has become dangerously immune to astonishment. The movie may quicken our appreciation of the measures and successes - many of which must remain secret - that have kept would-be killers at bay.
The editors of National Review were wise to view "United 93" in the dazzling light still cast by a Memorial Day address, "The Soldier's Faith," delivered in 1895 by a veteran of Ball's Bluff, Antietam and other Civil War battles. Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said why understanding that faith is important:
"In this snug, over-safe corner of the world . . . we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous untamed streaming of the world, and in order that we may be ready for danger. . . . Out of heroism grows faith in the worth of heroism."
The message of the movie is: We are all potential soldiers. And we all may be, at any moment, at the war's front, because in this war the front can be anywhere.
The hinge on which the movie turns are 13 words that a passenger speaks, without histrionics, as he and others prepare to rush the cockpit, shortly before the plane plunges into a Pennsylvania field. The words are: "No one is going to help us. We've got to do it ourselves."
Those words not only summarize this nation's situation in today's war, but also express a citizen's general responsibilities in a free society.
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Good thing you do not stray into the movie-reviewing biz very often, George, although sticking it to the Times was worth wadding through the remainder.

The Facts: After the usual stay-in-your-seats-everything-will-be-just-fine orders from airline personnel, several members of Flight 93 decided to rush the cockpit. The door was secured, and no one knows if they breeched it. That they at least tried to do something passes for heroism these days, and I say that without rancor, or belittlement.

It is not known if their actions in any way caused the airplane to crash before reaching the target. Or, as a salute to the real world, WE don't know. Military personnel from around the country have avowed that the aircraft was shot down, but until the government spills the real beans that's just another "maybe" and nothing more.