All Americans must see “United 93”

Weekly Editorial   —   Posted on April 20, 2006

(by Dennis Prager, Townhall.com) – Universal’s new movie, “United 93,” is about United Airlines Flight 93, hijacked on 9-11 by Islamic terrorists shortly after leaving Newark, N.J., for San Francisco. The terrorists intended to fly the plane to Washington, D.C., and crash it into the Capitol. Instead, the passengers fought back and forced the plane down in Pennsylvania, thereby saving the lives of any number of people on the ground in Washington and saving America from a devastating blow to its image.

Incredibly there is some controversy about this film. Apparently many Americans are not “ready” to see a film about 9-11 “so soon” after 9-11.

If this is so, it is an ode to the weakening of the American people.

Five years after the most devastating attack on American soil, people are asking if Americans are ready to see a film — not some fictional, politically driven, reality-distorting film by Oliver Stone, but a film based on the phone conversations of the passengers and flight attendants, on the flight recorder tape, and approved by the families of all 40 passengers — one of the most terrible and heroic events in American history.

Did anyone ask in 1946, five years after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, whether Americans were prepared to see a film about the Japanese attack?

If anything should be controversial, it is Hollywood going AWOL while its country fights the scourge of our time, Islamic totalitarianism. For five years, America has been battling people who are dedicated to destroying every value that Hollywood claims to care most about — freedom, tolerance, women’s rights, secular government, equality for gays — and Hollywood has yet to make a film depicting, let alone honoring, this war.

Finally, a major studio comes out with a film reminding Americans about the nature of our enemy, about what really happened (to the best of our ability to reconstruct) on one of the 9-11 planes, and the press wonders if Americans are “ready” to see the movie.

Universal invited me to see a preview, and unless they change it (or don’t drop a few gratuitous, politically inspired words that appeared right after the film ends), I believe it is just about every American’s duty to see this film. There is no gratuitous violence — if anything, Universal went out of its way to prevent us from seeing the reality of the throat-slashing of passengers and crew — but there is unremitting tension and sadness, since we all know what will happen to these unsuspecting people, and we know this is real, not fiction.

There is also American heroism. People completely unprepared for an airplane flight to become their last hour alive rise to the occasion and save fellow Americans from death and from the humiliation of having their nation’s capitol building destroyed.

The only people likely to object to this film are those who don’t want Americans to become aware of just how conscienceless, cruel and depraved our enemy is, or those who think that our enemies can always be negotiated with and therefore object to depicting Americans actually fighting back.

Teenage and older children in particular should see this film. If the younger teens have nightmares, comfort them. But young Americans need to know the nature of whom we are fighting. If they are attending a typical American high school or college, they probably don’t know.

Congratulations to Universal Studios on making this film (presuming that, as assured to me, they removed the post-film politically inspired message). And shame on Hollywood for only making one such film in five years.

Perhaps if “United 93” turns out to be the unforeseen box office success that Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” was, the lure of major profits will exert more influence over Hollywood than even Hollywood leftists do.

In the meantime, go and see “United 93,” to see why some Americans still take “Home of the brave” seriously; and to see why we have to win this war more than any since World War II. That’s how bad our enemy is. You have an unfortunately rare chance to see that enemy at work when you see what happened to everyone who boarded United Airlines Flight 93 that left Newark on September 11, 2001.

Dennis Prager is a radio talk show host, author, and contributing columnist for Townhall.com.

Copyright © 2006 Creators Syndicate, Inc. (April 18, 2006) Reprinted here with permission from Townhall.com and Dennis Prager.  Visit the websites at Townhall.com and DennisPrager.com.