Terror Mysteries
This week I watched a set of YouTube videos that together make up at least part of the video "9-11 Mysteries - Part I: Demolitions" which is available at Amazon.com on DVD. I realize I shouldn't be watching this stuff, that in the post-9/11 world it is unpatriotic to question authority and that I risk being labeled a "terrorist" and thus an "enemy combatant" if I am caught. It is said that Jesus died for me so in that same vein I will say that the US Constitution was written for me, so I will, until that document is suspended, exercise the rights which that document guarantees to me.
I would suggest that most of the Americans who would not watch such a film aren't patriotic for refusing to see it, they are cowards. In the back of my mind I can remember the network news coverage for a month or two after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center showing video of smoke still rising from the remains and on-the-scene workers talking about how hot the smoldering core remained. I remember that it struck me as a real mystery why firefighters were not able to douse this fire, why it continued not just for days but for weeks and then for months. I also remember that in my mind I wished this mystery would just disappear. I didn't want to hear about it anymore or think about it. It just didn't make any sense at all to me that for the safety of the cleanup workers this fire should have been extinguished but it wasn't and not just that, it couldn't be! It was unsettling to me that this mystery remained basically unsolved. Eventually the mystery did go away, not by being solved but just by being ignored and that satisfied me. It was enough that the media had buried the mystery and our country had moved on by going to war to rid the world of this terrorist threat.
When you stop and think about it, this event, the 9/11 attack, has been at the core of Bush politics ever since the day it happened. 9/11 virtually defined the Bush administration, won them reelection in 2004, and served as justification for two Middle East wars which have become perpetual. I can still remember after 9/11 thinking in my own mind how the US now had the support of virtually the entire world to go after Muslim extremists who had been spreading out over the globe establishing various strongholds, not just in Afghanistan, but also in places like South America and the Philippines and even in Europe and right here in America.
I can look back on that, on those thoughts that I shared with so many other Americans and so many other people around the world, and wonder from today's perspective what ever became of that hope. More than five years have passed and al Qaeda still thrives, bin Laden has never been caught and brought to justice or even tried in a court, the terrorists still run free in South America, the Philippines, Europe, and here in America. All this still exists while America is bogged down in Iraq's civil war. What happened? How did we forget the message of 9/11? How did we come to ignore this very real danger that we found so easy to perceive five years ago?
It really makes no sense at all that the "War on Terror" didn't take the form that we all expected to see it take. It really made no sense to most of us that we as a nation decided that the best approach was to send a portion of our military into Iraq and establish them as sitting ducks to draw the fight into Iraq so it wouldn't spread around the world. "Bring it on" made sense to some Republicans but it made no sense at all to the rest of us. Why that approach rather than working with the rest of the world to root out al Qaeda?
In my thinking now, there is only one explanation that covers all the mysteries. 9/11 was to the Bush Republicans what Pearl Harbor was to America in the early 1940s. It was the justification they had been waiting for, even hoping for, Rumsfeld's "blessing in disguise," the spur in America's flank to get her to rear up and attack the enemy in Iraq and the greater Middle East. Bush brought the neo-cons into power early in 2001 because of this perceived need to go to war in the Middle East. All that was needed was a new Pearl Harbor and 9/11 fit that bill perfectly. The rest of us stood stubbornly in denial, but 9/11 served the Bush agenda perfectly.
9/11 didn't lead to the worldwide sweep to rid us of terrorists, the sweep that after 9/11 we all imagined was actually happening. It didn't lead to the breakdown of the financial system that supports Muslim terrorists. It didn't lead to lasting international cooperation. It didn't lead to port security or the crackdown on weapons trading. It didn't lead to a safer world. It lead to the Middle East wars that were already being planned before 9/11 even happened, planned even before the 2000 election.
That is why we all need to abandon our denial and face the facts. That is why we need to stop hiding from the mysteries, stop wishing them into oblivion. If we are to believe what Dick Cheney has been warning about for years, that a victory of the Democratic Party will mean future successful terrorist attacks in the US, we need to understand how it is that he can know this for certain. We need to back up to where we stood as a nation and as a world in the wake of 9/11 and find out why the War on Terror wasn't waged the way we thought it would be. We need to discover why all of 9/11's secrets and mysteries were either destroyed or stored away in locked vaults. We need to discover who really is calling the shots when it comes to al Qaeda. We need to know why we are just sitting back and observing the growing threat rather than eliminating it. We need to know why everything al Qaeda does helps the Bush agenda. We need to face the facts.
This video, 9/11 Mysteries, seems like an excellent way to begin.
I would suggest that most of the Americans who would not watch such a film aren't patriotic for refusing to see it, they are cowards. In the back of my mind I can remember the network news coverage for a month or two after the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center showing video of smoke still rising from the remains and on-the-scene workers talking about how hot the smoldering core remained. I remember that it struck me as a real mystery why firefighters were not able to douse this fire, why it continued not just for days but for weeks and then for months. I also remember that in my mind I wished this mystery would just disappear. I didn't want to hear about it anymore or think about it. It just didn't make any sense at all to me that for the safety of the cleanup workers this fire should have been extinguished but it wasn't and not just that, it couldn't be! It was unsettling to me that this mystery remained basically unsolved. Eventually the mystery did go away, not by being solved but just by being ignored and that satisfied me. It was enough that the media had buried the mystery and our country had moved on by going to war to rid the world of this terrorist threat.
When you stop and think about it, this event, the 9/11 attack, has been at the core of Bush politics ever since the day it happened. 9/11 virtually defined the Bush administration, won them reelection in 2004, and served as justification for two Middle East wars which have become perpetual. I can still remember after 9/11 thinking in my own mind how the US now had the support of virtually the entire world to go after Muslim extremists who had been spreading out over the globe establishing various strongholds, not just in Afghanistan, but also in places like South America and the Philippines and even in Europe and right here in America.
I can look back on that, on those thoughts that I shared with so many other Americans and so many other people around the world, and wonder from today's perspective what ever became of that hope. More than five years have passed and al Qaeda still thrives, bin Laden has never been caught and brought to justice or even tried in a court, the terrorists still run free in South America, the Philippines, Europe, and here in America. All this still exists while America is bogged down in Iraq's civil war. What happened? How did we forget the message of 9/11? How did we come to ignore this very real danger that we found so easy to perceive five years ago?
It really makes no sense at all that the "War on Terror" didn't take the form that we all expected to see it take. It really made no sense to most of us that we as a nation decided that the best approach was to send a portion of our military into Iraq and establish them as sitting ducks to draw the fight into Iraq so it wouldn't spread around the world. "Bring it on" made sense to some Republicans but it made no sense at all to the rest of us. Why that approach rather than working with the rest of the world to root out al Qaeda?
In my thinking now, there is only one explanation that covers all the mysteries. 9/11 was to the Bush Republicans what Pearl Harbor was to America in the early 1940s. It was the justification they had been waiting for, even hoping for, Rumsfeld's "blessing in disguise," the spur in America's flank to get her to rear up and attack the enemy in Iraq and the greater Middle East. Bush brought the neo-cons into power early in 2001 because of this perceived need to go to war in the Middle East. All that was needed was a new Pearl Harbor and 9/11 fit that bill perfectly. The rest of us stood stubbornly in denial, but 9/11 served the Bush agenda perfectly.
9/11 didn't lead to the worldwide sweep to rid us of terrorists, the sweep that after 9/11 we all imagined was actually happening. It didn't lead to the breakdown of the financial system that supports Muslim terrorists. It didn't lead to lasting international cooperation. It didn't lead to port security or the crackdown on weapons trading. It didn't lead to a safer world. It lead to the Middle East wars that were already being planned before 9/11 even happened, planned even before the 2000 election.
That is why we all need to abandon our denial and face the facts. That is why we need to stop hiding from the mysteries, stop wishing them into oblivion. If we are to believe what Dick Cheney has been warning about for years, that a victory of the Democratic Party will mean future successful terrorist attacks in the US, we need to understand how it is that he can know this for certain. We need to back up to where we stood as a nation and as a world in the wake of 9/11 and find out why the War on Terror wasn't waged the way we thought it would be. We need to discover why all of 9/11's secrets and mysteries were either destroyed or stored away in locked vaults. We need to discover who really is calling the shots when it comes to al Qaeda. We need to know why we are just sitting back and observing the growing threat rather than eliminating it. We need to know why everything al Qaeda does helps the Bush agenda. We need to face the facts.
This video, 9/11 Mysteries, seems like an excellent way to begin.
posted by Bill | 9:30 AM
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