An Entry in the Defense Department Essay Contest Honoring King Abdullah | PJ Tatler

It is sad that you died of natural causes. I had an appointment in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001. It was cancelled at the last minute. If only you could have been there in my place. How much you could have learned. Or perhaps you could have been a passenger in one of the planes that hit it. No doubt you would have had a first class seat, right at the front of the plane. After all, great men like you don’t sit with the college kids and nursing mothers in the back. What joy you would have had, seeing New York from the air, at closer range than any has ever had, or at least had since Solomon Andrews buzzed 5th Avenue in a gliding balloon in 1866.

He would have felt right at home on that plane, though, given how many Saudi nationals were in the gang of murderous barbarian savages that hijacked it.