So NORAD thinks its fighter jets could have shot down one or more of the 9/11 planes if communication had been better.

Do we really WANT S.O.P. to be a shootdown?

I'm not aware of any way we can know in advance if future hijackers are absolutely going to commit mass murder. What if they would have landed and just demanded money?

Is a pre-emptive shoot-down the right policy? What if the radio just broke?

We dont use this kind of force in other situations:
Take for example a bank robber holding hostage 30 customers and staff. You don't see anyone rushing in to gleefully blow up the entire building.

Heck, take the Chechnian terrorists who held hundreds of theatre-goers hostage. Didnt blow up the building there. (Unless the Russian /intentionally/ killed so many of their own with that gas... i'd prefer to hope for incompetance.)

I actually would prefer that we not shoot planes down. /I/ certainly dont want to be on a plance that is mistakenly shot down.

I just dont see that the situation is usually clear enough to justify shoot downs. If I were the family of someone on the flight that crashed in PA, I personally would much prefer that my loved one died fighting or at the hand of the terrorist rather than killed by my own government pre-emptively.

My two cents.

---

What I've been reading:

The Egypt Game (Yearling Newbery)

Over Sea, Under Stone (Cooper, Susan, Dark Is Rising Sequence.)

The Dark Is Rising

Greenwitch

The Grey King

Silver on the Tree