There are a number of problems with this approach. It leaves in place the people that did it, and the mechanisms used for covering it up. It leaves in place the use of the "war on terror" as justification for the current administration's abuses, and allows the 9/11 rallying cry to continued to be used, and often accepted, to justify these abuses. And it leaves open the very distinct possibility that this kind of attack will be used again to justify further abuses.
Doug Thompson recently recounted a discussion he had many years ago with John Connally, the Texas governor who was shot during the Kennedy assassination.
Connolly was both gracious and charming and told us many stories about Texas politics. As the evening wore on and the multiple bourbon and branch waters took their effect, he started talking about November 22, 1963, in Dallas.I'd gone back and forth on the JFK thing, it seemed possible to make arguments both ways. But once I started researching 9/11, and understood more about how this kind of thing is done, it became quite obvious that JFK, as well as RFK, were not shot by "lone gunmen".
"You know I was one of the ones who advised Kennedy to stay away from Texas," Connally said. "Lyndon (Johnson) was being a real asshole about the whole thing and insisted."
Connally's mood darkened as he talked about Dallas. When the bullet hit him, he said he felt like he had been kicked in the ribs and couldn't breathe. He spoke kindly of Jackie Kennedy and said he admired both her bravery and composure.
I had to ask. Did he think Lee Harvey Oswald fired the gun that killed Kennedy?
"Absolutely not," Connally said. "I do not, for one second, believe the conclusions of the Warren Commission."
So why not speak out?
"Because I love this country and we needed closure at the time. I will never speak out publicly about what I believe."
When I'd looked at this before, it didn't seem that relevant. At worst, a historical injustice.
My point of view has changed.
In many, many ways, the JFK assassination set the stage. It proved to those who did it that you could do something that dramatic, that heinous to the average citizen, and get away with it. It proved that you could fabricate a cover story and that the press would cooperate . It proved that you could quash dissent and investigation. And it proved that you could do it in America.
There seems to be a strong feeling on the left that, somehow, 9/11 is irrelevant. That to focus on it distracts from "real" issues such as Iraq and domestic spying. Again, almost to minimize the importance of 9/11, treat it as bygone history, and concentrate only on the misuse of the event by the administration.
There are a number of problems with this approach. It leaves in place the people that did it, and the mechanisms used for covering it up. It leaves in place the use of the "war on terror" as justification for the current administration's abuses, and allows the 9/11 rallying cry to continued to be used, and often accepted, to justify these abuses. And it leaves open the very distinct possibility that this kind of attack will be used again to justify further abuses.
There's a misconception that there is no proof for 9/11 being an inside job. There's plenty of proof. Obstruction of investigation before and after the fact, the NORAD failure, buildings collapsing in ways that could only be explained by planted explosives, planes being flown in ways the alleged hijackers could not have flown them, some of those very hijackers still being alive. There isn't just one smoking gun here - there are dozens of them (this is a good place to start research). What the left seems to want is some sort of "official" acknowledgement, one that will never come - just as Connally would never acknowledge publicly what he knew.
There is a strong tendency to deny and try to explain away the evidence. Part of the difficulty in accepting the reality behind 9/11 is confronting the significance not just of the nature of the event but what it and the surrounding cover-up implies. The harder part is not necessarily believing that some people in our own country would do such a thing, but that the entire government and media would assist in the deception that followed. An essay in 911truth.org says it best:
Understanding the full truth of 9/11 seems to require two separate awakenings.I found that reflected exactly what I had to go through. After seeing the overwhelming evidence on 9/11, it was Kristina Borjesson's essay on her experience investigating TWA800 in her book "Into the Buzzsaw" that was the final straw. It showed that the prototypical "conspiracy theorist" mechanisms of false investigations by the FBI and suppression of investigation by the media were, in fact, in place well before 9/11; that even under the Clinton administration, one that was far less repressive than the current one, such things occurred.
The first, awakening to the fraudulence of the "official 9/11 story," is a pretty simple brain function and only requires a little study, logic or curiosity. ...
The second step, however, consciously confronting the implications of that knowledge -- and what it says about our media, politics and economic system today -- is by far the harder awakening ...
This is one of the reasons it is important to confront 9/11 directly. In a sense it is like a flare that was sent up to illuminate and expose those willing to do such an act and those willing to go along with it. Not acknowledging it means living under the illusion that the media honestly reports the news, something that I've learned is patently false. And this dishonesty is pervasive: most people understand that Fox distorts the news; far fewer realize that the New York Times does as well.
One of the keys to changing the current system is to discuss events such as 9/11 as openly as possible. To not be afraid of the "conspiracy theorist" label, which is exactly one of the fears those doing this use to try to socially isolate and ridicule people who understand their actions and try to publicize them.
What they do works because they create a world view, a "reality", so that people who question it, especially about something so important, seem crazy. As a Bush aide once said, "We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality". Nowhere was this more successfully done than with 9/11. Given the patriotic fervor the cover story for the event generated, it was relatively simple to suppress any expressions of doubt in its veracity.
But this changes as more and more people begin to connect the dots and see how the administration uses 9/11. Most of those trying to publicize problems with the official version now, such as David Ray Griffin and Steven Jones (1,2), only looked into it when they noted the abuse of the event by the government; many more are doing that every day, and the notion is not nearly as outlandish to most now as it might have seemed a few years ago.
There is a fairly direct lineage from the perpetrators of the sixties assassinations, through the Watergate and Iran-Contra scandals, to 9/11; the group of people who seem to enjoy and are able to implement covert actions in the name of maintaining power and modifying policy is alive and well and stronger than ever. They're currently attempting to consolidate their control through vote fraud, an effort that started showing results in the 2000 elections. There's no reason to think they won't continue to use these techniques if they continue to go unrecognized and unpunished.
There have been a number of false terrorist attacks abroad since 9/11, and domestic ones still appear to be on the table as an option. A GOP memo conjectured how another "terrorist" attack might help Bush's ratings, and Cheney discussed the possibility of a 9/11-like event precipitating an attack on Iran. As more people catch on, it makes the selling of the false reality of an attack difficult, and the attack less likely to take place. So, for example, when Ron Paul says "Fear of imaginary nuclear weapons or an incident involving Iran - whether planned or accidental - will rally the support needed for us to move on Muslim country #3" he may actually be lessening the possibility of such a "planned incident".
A lot is at stake here. Jim Garrison once said that "fascism will come to America in the name of national security." Incredibly prescient; that's exactly what's happening now. It's no coincidence that this administration has borrowed on the "big lie" technique perfected by the nazis. In fighting it, it's best to face reality, and not believe one of their biggest lies.
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