BOULDER, Colo.—The son of a pilot killed on Sept. 11 when his plane crashed in Pennsylvania said he was surprised and happy to hear about the death of Osama bin Laden.
Matt Dahl, 25, son of United 93 co-pilot Jason Dahl, said Monday he had been watching television with his wife at their Boulder home when his mother, Jason Dahl’s ex-wife, called him with the news.
“I was happy to hear that we had executed and brought a sense of closure to 9/11 and my father’s death. I think, in a word, I was happy,” Dahl said.
Six other crew members and 33 passengers were killed when flight 93 crashed into an empty field near Shanksville, Penn.
“Those people can rest easier now, in my opinion,” Dahl said.
Dahl said despite feeling that the wrong that was done to him “has been answered for,” he does not think he will celebrate bin Laden’s death.
Dahl said he has never been a supporter of the death penalty and that stance has been hard to reconcile with the loss of his father. In an ideal world, he said bin Laden would have ended up in an American prison.
“I always felt like imprisonment in an American prison would have been far more punishing than death. I would have liked to see a little more suffering,” he said.
Dahl conceded those feelings come from a more vengeful side of him, but it was never just the initial shot of his father’s death that he’s had to deal with.
“I’ve had to grow up without him, I’ve had to get married without him,” Dahl said. “So I guess there’s that element of suffering that part of me wanted. But by that same token it’s from a realistic standpoint I think this is what we needed.”
Recordings from the cockpit of the plane’s final moments were released in 2006 for the trial of Sept. 11 conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. Jason Dahl’s widow, Sandy Dahl, said they indicate her husband had been dying, but alive, while the plane went down.
Sandy Dahl told KUSA-TV she thinks bin Laden and others like him are cowards and boils on the backside of humanity.
“They’re sitting in their mansions, with their wives and children, directing young, impressionable men to hate and kill,” she said.
Matt Dahl said he knows bin Laden’s death does not mean the end of al-Qaida, but it is an important step in the fight to end his political and financial power.
“You can’t justly trade one for 3,000. Osama bin Laden is the head of the lion, as they say, the head of the snake. And eliminating him from the equation, I think, is something that makes not everyone’s death in vain.”
