scotandrsn, your GD question is fine. Problem is, it doesn’t apply to the queation at hand. So if you substitute “passenger” for every "you’, "your’, or "yourself’ in the question to make it relavent, it wouldn’t stand the test of GQ, because it would assume conditions not known. Read the rest of the stuff in your reply to see why. You’ve yet to show where I’ve said anything disrespectful about the passengers. I’m pretty impressed by what they did.
Why should I get kudus for admitting something not germain to the spirit of this discussion? Important to the actual OP, maybe, but not to the “hero” question.
In an attempt tp be fair, I’ve asked people around me (anecdotal, I know) if describing the passengers a heros isn’t maybe a slight stretch, and most agree. Onlt three claimed to “know for sure” that the passengers are heros. I’ve also been told that it’s not always smart to be “right”. Sounds a little threatening to me. 
Emotional subject, I guess.
Just in case you missed it, the last part of my post is reflective of my opinion that your horseshit “Heroes are only heroes if they win” notions are so unfounded as to be unworthy of debate on any level.
Again, the distinction seems to be one that is DEEPLY important for you to draw, but I am still at a loss to figure out why.
Finding others who agree with you is not a sound argument (I call it the “Fifty Million Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong” fallacy), ESPECIALLY if they live in Berkeley, where a tendency toward inflammatory contrariness for the sake of it is practically a residency requirement. I would hardly take their opinions to be indicative of any widespread belief.
I recall a moment from the documentary Berkeley in the '60s where a former UC student tells of a time when he and his friends heard about some people who were killed in a bomb blast set off by Viet Nam War protestors. He said something along the lines of “I bet my friend ten dollars that if we went to such-and-such a street, we would be able to find a least one person willing to argue that because those people were in that place at that time, they deserved to die. I won that bet.”
A couple of quotes from scotandrsn, who can’t seem to handle other opinions;
Unfounded??? Try unstated. Where did I say that? And why are you resorting to nastiness?
“Hero” in our language is a subjective term. I simply take the word to a different level than you (and some others).
And;
So that’s it. My place of residence is what rubs you so raw. FYI, I’m the only Berkeley resident in my little sample group. Most are from my work, a HUGE oil company, and hardly liberal. A few (my family, mostly) are in Bakersfield. You think they’re a bunch of liberals too? 
I drew upon these folks not to prove a point, but simply to see, or to get an idea, for myself how my feelings fit with the feelings others. I shared that with you.
No, I’m not going to counter-attack LA. I lived there for a while. Not my bag (bag? snicker), but I hung with some pretty cool people there.
Yes, yes, we’ve all heard about your lofty criteria for heroism that says: If they’d actually breached the cockpit door and engaged in hand-to-hand combat they’d be heroes; otherwise, meh.
I’m not trying to be nasty, I’m just trying to figure out if the reason you’re not talking sense is because you really don’t get the concept of heroism or the stakes that day, or because you just feel like being obstinate.
To rule out the former, I laid it all out for you, point by point, which you did not refute or even acknowledge. I could therefore only assume the latter (aided by your stated location, a region known for having devil’s advocates as its chief export), and responded accordingly.
I’m here to remind you that we’re not talking about the Raiders crossing the goal but blowing the extra point, meaning they didn’t hit your point spread in the fucking office pool. We’re talking about life, death, and real consequences here.
We’re talking about a situation so dire that our national leaders, of whom we might wish to demand more, can find those who forgive them for being stunned into immobility.
We’re talking about people who decided, when face to face with that situation more than any others could be, to rise up and take action, against homicidal maniacs who turned out to be too cowardly to face capture, that resulted in the rescue of the national seat of government from disaster.
You have more or less put it to us that your criteria for heroism that exclude these people ought to be seen as some sort of standard.
I put it to you that your criteria are useless to anyone but yourself, and have yet to hear a word out of you that suggests to me otherwise.
Oh I refuted and actually acknowledged your diatribes. I asked you to show where I made statements you attributed to me. All you do to respond is pull little bon mots (" otherwise, meh") out of the ether, and credit them to me. There’s nothing there that warrants reply. And you insist on saying “we”. Are you a committee? Everyone else seems to have went away.
And I’ve already said that I don’t accept your rules. You can’t “rule out” reasons for the opinions that you decide I hold I hold, especially when they’re reasons that you dream up.
You also continue to insinuate that I’ve been trying, somehow, to demean those passengers. Of course you won’t back that up any more than you have any of the other stuff you claim I’ve stated.
Yes, I did allow that “hero” is a subjective term, as it is. Accept that.
Well, it’s been interesting. Time for this thing to end.
Oops, I didn’t address the football and, uh, oh yeah, office pool analogies.