...Nothing could be more innocent than the fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, attendants and pilots on that plane. Like us at this moment, they were in the act of daily life. They were not combatants in any sense. They were targeted precisely because they were unprotected. During periods of peace, and we have had a long one, some people come to believe that this happy condition is the natural state of life. It is not. The unprotectedness of civilized, quotidian life was earned, over centuries, often in war.

To dedicate the act of murdering a stewardess, pilot or passenger to Allah in the course of committing such an act, as United 93's hijackers did, is to engage in behavior that is quite wide of the daily life of America and many other nations. Whether the Khobar Tower bombing, the USS Cole, the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, the bombings in Madrid and London, Bali, Jerusalem, the murder of Theo van Gogh, a great many people are being murdered in the service of Allah. In this respect, watching what takes place inside the confines of United Flight 93--and surely this movie is as close to the reality as one can imagine--is food for thought. Maybe just saying that you "know" Islamic terror exists out there isn't quite enough. If in 2006 we think that if Iraq would go away the world would not be too different than the world before September 11, then Moussaoui may in time prove right: "America you lost. I won!"...