Flight 93: Rumsfeld’s Trolley Problem

Karl Muth asks why no one is discussing the trolley problem that may have faced America’s leaders on 9/11?

For the purpose of this blog post, it doesn’t matter what you think happened aboard United 93, the most interesting of the hijacked flights on 9/11. Some people think the passengers fought back, which makes for a nice story (the 9/11 Commission, despite scarce evidence, bought into this dramatic tale). Some people think the hijackers lost control of the plane or that the pilots began an irreversible purge of the fuel tanks before being killed. Some people think the plane was intercepted and shot down by a missile to prevent damage to additional targets. Many people, like me, think the passengers of United 93 died like so many others that day: frightened and confused, huddled in the back of an airplane.

But the decision to shoot down Flight 93 was almost certainly on the table and it’s the focus of this blog post. At some point the people on the plane are going to die whether it’s in a field or at 30,000 feet or upon impact with the Capitol Building. If that’s the case, the value of those lives depreciates dramatically as the airplane turns southeast between 9 and 10 in the morning on 9/11.

This question is not orphan in the research. In fact, it is a piece of a seventy-year lineage of published philosophy, thought experiments, empirical laboratory experiments, and scholarly debate. If Bush and Rumsfeld discussed (as I’m sure they did, likely with the advice of Rumsfeld’s longtime friend and Air Force capabilities expert and F-4 combat pilot General Richard Myers) blowing up Flight 93 with an air-to-air missile, a trolley problem presents itself.

The term “trolley problem” is an explicit reference to the famous 1957 paper by Professor Foot (though in the contemporary sense, it refers to subsequent thought experiments in ethics proposed by Unger, Kamm, and Nussbaum). In the problem, a trolley is coming down the track at a high rate of speed, certain to kill the five people down the track (the respondent has no way to remove or warn these people); the respondent is asked whether he or she would throw a switch that would cause the trolley to instead go down a nearby siding of track and kill only one person rather than the five it would otherwise kill.

Many ethics students question whether killing the one person on the siding is worse, as an affirmative act by the respondent caused that person’s death. Others question the validity of the problem’s premise, noting that the value of the five lives versus one is arbitrary and that comparing the value of human life is itself unethical. Still others claim there is a duty to preserve human life and that the respondent’s inaction is unethical – even criminal in some Continental and Aristotelian analyses.

Another hypothetical often discussed, particularly in law-and-philosophy circles (and discussed multiple times when I was a student at the University of Chicago) is the question of the man on the park bench. In this hypothetical, which is likely based on the famous case People v. Dlugash (argued on appeal by noted advocate Alan Dershowitz in the late 1970’s), a man is already dead. A person comes along and shoots the corpse, with honest (unrefuted) confusion as to whether the person is alive or dead. Is the shooter guilty of attempted murder?

To apply the trolley problem framework: If Flight 93 was already successfully hijacked and the people aboard were going to crash into a building with hundreds of people in it, is it not better to shoot a missile at Flight 93 and kill only the people on the plane (the equivalent of the single person on the siding track in the trolley problem) but thereby save the lives of the people in the building (which never suffers an aircraft collision)?

To apply the man on the park bench framework: If the people on Flight 93 are essentially already dead, in that the plane is hijacked and the only people capable of flying the plane still alive onboard are those intent upon crashing it into a building in an act of terrorism, is it acceptable to then kill them (even if there is some question as to whether they are dead with certainty or only high probability) with a missile launched by an American fighter jet?

The political framework is that it would likely have been politically-unpopular to shoot down United 93, even if the frameworks above were discussed. Of course, it would have been equally (or more?) unpopular to announce that Secretary Rumsfeld knew of a terrorist attack in progress and failed to stop it before more Americans were killed. As a frequent air traveler, I have often thought that the official story regarding Flight 93 is fanciful and unbelievable (that passengers fought back). But I have also thought that, if I were on a flight that were hijacked, I would expect the plane to be shot down with a missile if its anticipated flight path posed a risk to nearby buildings or communities.

That Secretary Rumsfeld came very close to facing – or perhaps did face – the closest thing America has ever experienced to a real-life trolley problem is fascinating. That he has never discussed it, or conversations about United 93, is puzzling. That Congress, during the 9/11 Commission hearings, asked no questions regarding the framework for these decisions is troubling. That Americans consistently and persistently fail to ask these questions when considering the ethical orientation of their leaders and their government is alarming.