Fatal Contact

THE more we learn about the men who destroyed the World Trade Center, the more mysterious they seem. That mystery does not, however, reside in their foreignness. Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and various Muslim clerics with walk-on parts, hectoring crowds in Pakistan, look exotic enough in their long beards and flowing robes. If we ran into such figures in our travels, we would not be surprised to discover that they had very different religious and political beliefs from our own; we would, indeed, expect it, and make every effort to understand their exact meaning and to avoid giving unintended cultural offense. We might even think these men more foreign, in the sense of more remote from our concerns, than they are in reality.

But the men who actually hijacked the planes on September 11—men such as Hanji Hanjour, who flew a plane into the Pentagon, or Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania—looked just like any number of Middle Eastern graduate students we have all met on American campuses or at London parties. And this should not surprise us, because that is what—among other things—they were. Mohamed Atta, the apparent ringleader of the hijackers in America, had enrolled at a technical university in Germany to learn engineering. Other hijackers also fit this pattern: They were Western-educated, spoke English or German, and had modern American tastes in several respects. Their friends and families, now baffled by what has happened, often say things like: “But he loved America—everything from jeans to hamburgers.” If we had met them, we would probably have thought them more American than, as it turns out, they were in reality.

About the Author

John O’Sullivan

John O’Sullivan is a senior fellow at National Review Institute and a contributing editor of National Review.

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THE more we learn about the men who destroyed the World Trade Center, the more mysterious they seem. That mystery does not, however, reside in their foreignness. Osama bin Laden, Mullah Omar, and various Muslim clerics with walk-on parts, hectoring crowds in Pakistan, look exotic enough in their long beards and flowing robes. If we ran into such figures in our travels, we would not be surprised to discover that they had very different religious and political beliefs from our own; we would, indeed, expect it, and make every effort to understand their exact meaning and to avoid giving unintended cultural offense. We might even think these men more foreign, in the sense of more remote from our concerns, than they are in reality.

But the men who actually hijacked the planes on September 11—men such as Hanji Hanjour, who flew a plane into the Pentagon, or Ziad Jarrah, who was at the controls of the plane that crashed in Pennsylvania—looked just like any number of Middle Eastern graduate students we have all met on American campuses or at London parties. And this should not surprise us, because that is what—among other things—they were. Mohamed Atta, the apparent ringleader of the hijackers in America, had enrolled at a technical university in Germany to learn engineering. Other hijackers also fit this pattern: They were Western-educated, spoke English or German, and had modern American tastes in several respects. Their friends and families, now baffled by what has happened, often say things like: “But he loved America—everything from jeans to hamburgers.” If we had met them, we would probably have thought them more American than, as it turns out, they were in reality.