[dirtboy]

Cooper's position was that there was no excuse -- none -- for 159 passengers to allow a pair of hijackers to take over an airliner.

This part of his essay is wrongheaded. It was doctrinal prior to 9/11 to not fight hijackers as they usually wanted money or passage somewhere - nothing worth dying for to stop. On 9/11, once it was realized that the hijackers were bent on suicide terrorism, the passengers of Flight 93 fought back.

And ever since passengers have walloped attempted hijackers on the spot.

[Alberta's Child]

I was about to post that, but as I read through the main post on this thread it occurred to me that the guy may not have been referring to one of the 9/11 hijackings with that example.

You're absolutely right. I remember telling people shortly after 9/11 that terrorists all over the world are probably cursing the names of the 9/11 hijackers ... because hijacking an airplane and using the passengers as bargaining chips is no longer a feasible method of carrying out a terrorist attack.

"Fighting back" is only practical when you have a reasonable sense of how lethal the threat may be. No bank, for example, would ever advise its employees or customers to "fight back" in a robbery -- even if the perpetrator isn't clearly armed. In that particular example, there's almost no cost to letting the perp get away and tracking him down later.

[Political Junkie Too]

I think that, while you are correct about passengers fighting back, our eyes first began to open during the hijacking of TWA 847 in 1985 when Navy diver Robert Stethem was killed by the Hezbollah hijackers for being an American military.

-PJ