Standing up

The attempted attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 was the third act of international terrorism in this decade to be disrupted by passengers and crew. It confirms an essential truth about the age of terrorism: Average citizens are the last line of defense, and in many ways the most important.

Quick decisions turn would-be victims into heroes, and undermine the goal of terrorism, which is to disempower people through fear. The realization that citizens can protect themselves is in some ways more reassuring than disrupting plots through intelligence or electronic surveillance — it proves that average people aren’t just pawns. It gives them a role to play, and a reason to summon the strength to stand up to threats.

Of course, it shouldn’t come to this. There were failures in both intelligence and screening that allowed Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to get aboard Flight 253. But the painful reality is that lapses can occur in any system, and so the best defense is multiple layers of defense. That’s where would-be victims come in: the final pairs of eyes, watching the match get lit or the suspicious bag be loaded.

Much the same thing happened in December 2001, when shoe-bomber Richard Reid tried to blow up an American Airlines jet. And a more dramatic example occurred three months earlier, on 9/11, when passengers on United Flight 93 took the fight to their hijackers, crashing their plane rather than allow it to be pointed at the White House or Capitol.

The passengers of Flight 93 are honored at the site of their deaths in Shanksville, Pa. Thankfully, there is no memorial necessary for those who protected Flight 253. Many people share a sense of relief — and even exhilaration — at their success in bringing down their attacker.

— The Boston Globe