I remain unconvinced that the violent protests committed on the 11th of September, 2001, were in any contrived or a clandestine “inside job” perpetrated explicitly by the United States government.
There simply isn’t enough evidence to go down such a path. Many of the claims made by so-called “truthers” can be explained by alternate circumstances, could have occurred by means besides what these individuals purport, and ultimately do not seem very plausible to a rational audience.
Personally, I have little doubt that the United States government was well aware of the protests before they happened, and were in fact complicit in allowing the events to unfold...however; my reasoning in reaching such a conclusion is entirely anecdotal. Suffice it to say that precisely 24 hours PRIOR to these violent protests, on September 10, 2001, I was as a soldier placed on an unusual and irregular state of high alert in South Korea, the details of which I’ll share at another time...ultimately they’re not relevant to this particular post.
The horrifying and apocalyptic events that occurred on 11 September, 2001, invoked an unfamiliar and anxious degree of heart-striking fear into not just the American public, but the entire Western world. Citizens of the United States had not had such terror so uninvitingly introduced into their lives since December 7th, 1941...and this cataclysmic event, the attack on Pearl Harbor, to most of us existed only in the minds of our grandparents and were insufficiently recounted in history textbooks and sporadically re-created, recollected and exploited by dramatizations derived by Hollywood.
The fear experienced, particularly by citizens of the United States, were and remain well warranted. The idea that individuals...for WHATEVER reason, or WHOMEVER may be behind it...are bent on ending the lives of thousands of human beings in a matter of minutes is justifiably frightening. If people have the capacity, willingness and finance to commit THIS atrocity, then others are sure to follow.
We were RIGHTLY and JUSTLY a scared people. But while justified, no moment in United States history has so completely crystalized Franklin D. Roosevelt’s inaugural declaration stating that “there is nothing to fear but fear itself” than the responses opted by the George W. Bush administration.
As it turns out, the most explicit thing for all of us to fear was our own easily manipulated fears and apprehensions.
MOST NOTABLE in those responsible for the next decade of United States history is ourselves. As a whole, US citizens abandoned completely our propensity for free-thought, critical perspective and analytical ability. While many held to these American values, MOST IN FACT DID NOT, and irresponsibly abandoned such rationality in favor of blind nationalism, misdirected and entirely dangerous adoptions of nationalistic fervor, not to mention a breed of aimed hatred and fascist phobias not seen since Franco, Mussolini and Hitler.
Collectively, the American public was given an historic opportunity to take an introspective assessment of her government’s policies and history, and she utterly failed. Utterly and tragically...FAIL.
So, before any of us revel in indignant shock and 20/20 hindsight moral platitudes regarding Bush’s actions following these violent protests, we should be careful to review our collective fever and hysterical bloodthirst that polluted the cultural waters in the days, weeks, months and even years in the wake of 9-11.
Next on the list of those that should be ashamed of the United States responses to September 11th is our media.
Highly gate-kept and for some time entirely submissive to their (monetary) sponsor’s wishes and interests, what should have been a guardian to truth and an active exposition of facts and real circumstances capitulated to hysteria and irrationality.
Genuine journalistic integrity, which had by 11 September, 2001 been already largely dismantled and popularly ridiculed and dismissed by an apathetic, spoiled and fattened public, failed entirely to do their job and instead cowed themselves to an abhorrent industry that holds the daily activities of Brittany Spears with a higher priority than ongoing wars, disturbing circumstances and questionable actions by her government.
While some clung to the pretense of honest journalism (and no question, it was indeed a pretense...neither honest nor genuine), others embraced the fervor and cashed in on American stupidity, most notably FOX “News”, conservative talk radio and right-leaning editorial banter.
I view the general response of the Western media as fitting in every imaginable way to the definition of “treasonous”, for this widespread and highly influential industry did more than any other empirical voice of the People (other than the People themselves) to rape the contract between citizens and news than has ever been exacted in the history of modern culture.
William Randolph Hearst has NOTHING on the egregious irresponsibility of modern US media in the wake of 9-11. NOTHING. Hearst is fucking Ida Tarbell compared to FOX “News”, CNN, MSNBC and the countless instances of local “news” outlets that cheerlead the reprehensible actions of the US government in the wake of 9-11.
Finally, I hold the United States government, and in particular her Commander in Chief, as disgustingly responsible for what our nation has done to the world in the last decade.
While our fear of terrorism was justifiable and real, what we should NOT have feared was our own government.
Regardless, the George W. Bush administration descended upon our fears like hungry vultures.
These assholes double-fisted everything they could suck politically out of the tragedy.
While this was actually OBVIOUS AND GROSSLY APPARENT AT THE TIME, in retrospect it is even easier now to understand and perceive (quite accurately) that the government reaction to 9-11 was a complete abortion of elected civic responsibility.
This is not surprising, since this kind of circumstance had already been firmly established as a status quo long before 9-11.
Rather than choose a path of responsible leadership, George W. Bush and those dictating his policies instead chose to pile fear on top of fear. The relinquishment of Civil Liberties via the “Patriot” Act, the embracement of torture and extraordinary rendition, the willingness to defile centuries old concepts of Habeas Corpus, Geneva Conventions, United Nations charters and the United States Constitution in effect endorsed additional anxiety throughout the ranks of US citizenry.
George W. Bush’s ultimate failure was being far more interested in the political capital available to his ideology than he was in appropriately and responsibly leading our nation through an extraordinarily difficult era. It is this failure that consequently fuels conspiracy theories regarding 9-11...if this individual and his policies lend themselves so much to the inherent violation of our Civil Rights and Liberties, what ELSE could he and his cohorts been capable of?
The answer: Anything.
Again, while I do not subscribe to most “truther” theories, were it to ever come out that Bush and DICK explicitly and intentionally planned and exacted the violent protests of 11 September, 2001, I would not find myself even remotely surprised.
The task of George W. Bush was to lead us away from fear. His task was to take on the enormous and difficult path in helping us critically understand why anyone would commit such atrocities upon us. His job was to discern truthful and hard-core historical advents that had and may in the future compel those predisposed to violent protest to kill nearly 3,000 human beings in little more than an instant.
Instead, he and his administration decided to embark upon paths fueled by nothing more than the cowardice, spineless and profiteering interests of power, greed and legacies of imperial conquest.
SO...
That is where we are at today. These are the consequences of OUR failure to be real patriots, or appropriately concerned and intellectually courageous citizens. It has lent entirely to the romper room that our media has manifested itself into, AND to the potently dangerous motives and actions of our government.
Can we, or WILL we, be more Civic, responsible and intellectually curious in the future? Honestly, it certainly does not appear so.
Barack Obama was elected with a call for “change” that reached a hopeful pitch in regard to this. Yet, the media remains doormats for their gatekeepers, unjust and dubiously justified wars rage on, and millions of US Citizen continue to anguish in the mires of poverty, sickness, stripped Civil Liberties, and are entirely devoid of the welfare guaranteed them by the United States Constitution.
If this is not a recipe for “9-11: 2.0”, I’m not sure what is. The lessons of Vietnam were clearly unlearned, and it is sadly apparent that the lessons of the last decade have been equally, if not more readily, eschewed by the American public.
Let’s see what happens.
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