Monday, June 12, 2006

9/11 - Wild Conspiracies at war with Rational Concerns


The official government accounts related to 9/11 have unexplained errors and problems. This does not mean a U.S. conspiracy brought down the towers.
I, for one, have no problem accepting the notion that a small group of true believers -- people like Dick Cheney, Paul Wolfowitz and the rest of the neocon "cabal" -- used the attacks of 9/11 to seize and consolidate power. And I'm comfortable accepting that they view liberal democracy as a threat, their political opponents as a national weakness, and American militarism as the best hope for humanity.

They've proved, to my mind, that they're happiest when governing in secrecy -- a prerequisite for a conspiracy. Think about the administration's obsession with classifying everything under the sun, or Dick Cheney going all the way to the Supreme Court to avoid divulging who, exactly, crafted America's energy policy.

The administration's hardliners also represent a nexus between the more authoritarian end of our political spectrum and the anti-egalitarian business Right; the administration and its backers, allies and former partners are making an unprecedented fortune in all corners of the "war on terror," and that goes to motive.

It's a group of ideologues that knows its prescriptions aren't popular. The Project for a New American Century, where a "White House in waiting" of hard-right operatives weathered the Clinton years, urged a massive "rebuilding" of America's military capabilities (PDF), but warned that it wouldn't be easy unless there was a major attack on the American homeland. "The process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event -- like a new Pearl Harbor," they wrote.

....there will be no further serious investigation into the events of 9/11. Ironically, that's largely because of the 9/11 "truth movement" itself -- by embracing fanciful notions that the government blew up the World Trade Center with thermite charges, or that the Pentagon was hit by a missile -- makes it hard for the rest of us to express rational skepticism of the official account.

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