War & Peace Quote by Jim Ramstad

Ramstad’s line turns a chaotic, civilian act of resistance into the opening chapter of a national war story. Calling the passengers “heroes” is not controversial; calling their last minutes “the first battle” is the deliberate move. It grafts Flight 93 onto the vocabulary of armies and campaigns, converting private catastrophe into public purpose. In one stroke, grief becomes resolve, and memory becomes obligation.

The intent is twofold: to elevate agency and to stabilize meaning. Flight 93 is uniquely suited to that framing because it offers a rare narrative of thwarted violence on a day defined by helplessness. “Won” functions as moral accounting. It doesn’t pretend the passengers survived; it insists their intervention produced a tangible strategic outcome. That’s a powerful consolation and an implicit instruction: courage can still tilt history, even when the ledger is brutal.

The subtext rides on the phrase “War on Terror,” a term that’s less a description than a political container. It legitimizes policy choices by placing them in a wartime continuum: if there was a “first battle,” then later battles, budgets, laws, and deployments follow as part of the same story. The quote also quietly polices remembrance: “should never be forgotten” is commemoration, but also a claim on civic identity, asking Americans to keep a certain posture - vigilant, unified, morally certain.

As a politician, Ramstad is doing what politicians do at commemorations: offering a usable memory. The line memorializes the dead while also recruiting their example to hold the nation’s narrative together.