As another poster said, those are not good comparisons. You're comparing situations in which the moment of last resort had clearly arrived, with situations in which that is not at all clear. There was nobody else to left to act on those planes, and there was no single agency or group that could fully respond to what happened on the ground on 9/11. Those people made the right decision, and showed good judgement. But extending that into the concept that intervening is always the noble and correct thing to do renders it little more than a useless platitude. Rational people evaluate each situation that arises on its own characteristics. There is no evidence that Wilcox needed to intervene in order to either prevent a tragedy or help in recovering from one.
no one left to fully respond or act? how about taking control back of the damned plane. you might be going down, but why let someone else choose that for you and take others with them? you have a chance at a crash landing. you have 0 chance crashing into WTC or the pentagon at the helm of the hijackers.
handful of hijackers vs 120 passengers. passengers could have prevented the planes from crashing into the pentagon and WTC towers, like the folks who crashed in PA did.
the passengers may have lost their lives, but they could prevented the additional loss of life.
is intervening always advisable? maybe not. but in this guy's mind, he thought the risk was obviously acceptable given his knowledge of the situation. unfortunately for him, there was an accomplice.
to add to that, i have a childhood story. the magnitude is nowhere near similar, but i think the principle of the story is along the same line:
two girls in my gradeschool started fighting. i stepped in to break them up, and did so successfully. my mom, a teacher at the school, came over to take care of the aftermath. my mom also chastised me for intervening because of someone might say i sexually assaulted them or some nonsense if i touched someone the wrong way.
honestly, i was very confused, and a little disappointed. i did the right thing - i stopped a fight. but i was being criticized for it.
so what's the moral of the story? the guy saw something wrong - he saw people in danger, and he made a decision to try and stop, what i can only assume in his made, was an already extremely bad situation from going even further south.
yes, he lost his life, and that is tragic, but he was someone willing to do something.
my (soon-to-be) brother in law was in a parking garage and saw multiple men kicking and beating a guy on the ground. he ran in and stopped the fight, at the risk of his own safety. the assailants left, and police later apprehended and charged them.
these are people willing to do the right thing.
unlike the people who could have stopped 9/11 from being as devastating as it was.
unlike the canadians who sat terrified on a bus as a man was beheaded in front of them.
unlike, apparently, so many in this thread.
frankly, i think we need more people like this Wilcox guy, not less.
edit: and since i'm totally armchair quarterbacking this thing, i'll say that i can only hope to have the same courage in a similar situation, but sitting in my chair, i could not tell you what my reaction would be.
When the fuck did I do that?
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