“LET’S ROLL”, uttered Todd Beamer, the first 9/11 hero who led his fellow passengers and crew members on United Airlines Flight 93 in attacking and overpowering the Islamic terrorists that had taken over the jetliner that they apparently intended to crash into the capitol or the White House on September 11, 2001. Instead, they crashed into a Shanksville, Pennsylvania field where they all perished. Indeed, the brave action of Todd Beamer and fellow passengers was the very first response to our war on terror, essentially thwarting the jihadist terrorists from destroying the seat of America’s leadership.
Beamer had been speaking with his wife by cellular phone and learned that jetliners had already crashed into the World Trade Center’s twin towers and the Pentagon building, making it clear to him that the hijackers aboard were headed for Washington with a similar mission. What brave, noble and courageous people they were aboard United Airlines flight 93, truly the first heroes and responders in our war on terror, and Todd Beamer was clearly hero number one.
Since September 11, 2011, various laws, executive orders, plans and tactics were enacted and put into operation beginning with the passage of the Patriot Act by the US Congress allowing the government, among other things, to tap overseas calls to learn of other plots to do further damage to this country. This has also resulted in the prevention of various such schemes and aborted attempts to kill innocent Americans. The “Christmas bomber” who tried to bring down an American Airlines jetliner by the use of powdered explosive sewn in his underwear, and the Times Square bomber who left an explosive-laden truck in Times Square to kill as many people as possible, simply bungled their plots, but alert citizens called the attention of police to the suspicious truck parked in Times Square, which was diffused.
Similarly, many bomb plotters have been arrested due to the intensive work and cooperation of the intelligence community of the US and our allies.
Finally, after a 10 year search for Osama bin Laden , the al Qaida leader who sent the 9/11 bombers from their training camps in Afghanistan, American justice finally caught up with the world’s most wanted man in a secret compound in Pakistan, the result of information put together by the CIA, military intelligence and from satellite photos pinpointing bin Laden’s whereabouts. As a result, an elite team of US Navy SEALs (who fight effectively on the Sea, Air and Land) quietly descended in bin Landen’s compound by helicopter, killed him and his bodyguards and quickly carried off his body to a USA aircraft carrier and gave him a burial at sea.
This appears to have been a wise and fitting way to dispose of bin Laden, the world’s public enemy number one, avoiding a worldwide uproar of Islamist extremists who would have flocked to any land burial site which also would have been treated as a shrine by his followers.
A public hanging at ground zero could have satisfied the survivors of the 3,000 victims of 9/11 as a final act of justice. But as a government of laws, giving every accused person his/her fair day in court, a trial of bin Laden in an American court would have been a worldwide circus drawing a myriad of terrorists and bin Laden followers to the US, involving all the constitutional guarantees for a fair trial, appeals and legal maneuvers and would have made the trial a case of “justice delayed”.
In any event, bin Laden’s supporters can now only scout the area of the vast Pacific Ocean where his body was deposited as there is no bin Laden shrine to visit on land.
Hail to the likes of Todd Beamer, flight 97 passengers and flight crew, and the brave and highly trained SEALs who took bin Laden out and finally brought him to justice.
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Manibog & Manibog, LLP is an all service law firm particularly handling catastrophic personal injuries and wrongful death cases from vehicular, motorist, and aircraft accidents, business disputes, wills and probate, medical and legal malpractices and bankruptcy, and immigration.
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