Actions Extraordinary

Just lately I've taken in so much information that I'm overwhelmed. I follow the British way - sitting on the fence and waiting. Waiting for my mind to clear and for the most important facts to rise and shake me into action.

The girl responsible for inspiring me to blog has sent me two articles and no note about slacking.

One by a New Yorker who has gone to see the United Flight 93 movie. Here are a few hightlights:

"...I'm not sure anymore about the final count, but I am pretty sure that most families, in the end, got nothing. Their loved ones had all gone into the smoke and the dust that covered the end of the island and blew, mostly, across the river into Brooklyn where I lived. What happened to most of the three thousand killed by the animals on that day? It is simple and ghastly. We breathed them until the rains came and washed clean what would never be clean again."


"...United 93," from the first frame to the last, simply and clearly lets you see what happened high in the air on that day. It is, as the phrase on the poster says, "The plane that did not reach its target." Instead, it reached something unintended and much higher. It became and will remain a legend; an integral part of the tapestry of the American myth from which we all draw what strength remains to us, and, in the future, will surely need to draw upon even more deeply. Like the best of our legends, it arises out of our ordinary people doing extraordinary things.


"...In a film of brief but telling moments, there's one moment towards the end where you see one man reach down and remove his seatbelt. In that moment you can sense that he goes from being a passive victim to a man who has decided to stand up and engage the evil that has taken control of his life; to take the controls back from thugs and the cut-throats and the mumbling fanatics of a wretched and burnt-out god."

"That man, like the firemen who went up the stairs, and his fellow passengers who attacked up the aisle in those last moments, became, in the end, one of the Americans who decided on that day and the days that followed, to stand up. Soon after, that man and all the others on United 93 went into the smoke of that fire in the field.

"United 93" is a simply told, near-documentary look at how that fire in the field came to be. As I said above, the film has no message, but if you -- as I finally did -- choose to go, it will pose you a question: What would you do, an ordinary person in an extraordinary moment when life and death, good and evil, were as clear as the skies over America on September 11? Will you, as so many of our fellow citizens yearn to do these days, stay seated? Or will you stand up?
On one of our days to come, there will be another test. You'd best have an answer prepared."

The second article she's sent me is by Todd Beamer's Dad and appeared in the Wall Street Journal. It's about "The day that our nation was attacked; the day when the war came home--September 11, 2001. The day our son Todd boarded United 93."

"...this film reminds us that this war is personal. This enemy is on a fanatical mission to take away our lives and liberty..."

"...their methods are inhumane and their targets are the innocent and unsuspecting...this enemy does not seek our resources, our land or our materials, but rather to alter our very way of life."

"...Resolve to give thanks and support to those men, women, leaders and commanders who to this day (1,687 DAYS since Sept. 11, 2001) continue the counterattacks on our enemy and in so doing keep us safe and our freedom intact."

It's been more than a week since I attended the first ever military blogger's conference in Washington DC. The group of people I met were inspiring, intelligent and attractive and I've felt calm and - yes - a bit complacent since then. We are in good hands with that lot. But there is still a public relations job to do and bloggers play such an important role in knocking and outing the biased frauds running the left wing media. Although I know I can leave it in much more capable hands, my contribution still has a role to play, if only in adding to the amazing and growing statistics. Rock on.