Every time the anniversary of the 9/11 tragedy comes around, America works quite hard at the task of commemorating the events of that day. On Facebook the patriotic memes arrive bearing the words NEVER FORGET. Television news dutifully marks the anniversary as well. Yet since that event on September 11, 2001, the story of what transpired that day has been interpreted in many ways in a process that is continually evolving.
But like so many American historic events there is far more than one opinion about the nature of what 9/11 really means. The United States has a history of divided opinion, after all. That’s why so many sympathizers to the cause of the Confederate South still love to fly that flag.
We should be so lucky to have such a clean dividing line about the meaning of 9/11. The story of what transpired that day is subject to many interpretations. Some are quite controversial and extend from a range of conspiratorial theories to the contention that only God could have caused such a horrific tragedy in order to teach some sort of lesson to the United States with its liberal ways.
What follows is list we’ll call the 11 Degrees of Belief About 9/11. You will notice that the standard narrative is firmly fixed in the middle of the list. As such, it does not count as a degree of belief. To whit, this the interpretation of 9/11 events as provided by the 9/11 Commission Report and therefore reported by a wide range of media outlets. We might more conveniently call this the “normal” beliefs about what happened on 9/11.
But take a look at this list and consider the fact that America actually has a wide-ranging set of beliefs about 9/11. Most of these theories also speculate on what either led to or allowed the attacks to happen. It also covers some of what the nation did (or has done) in response to that fateful day.
You will no doubt disagree with some of these theories, but that does not change the fact that these beliefs exist here in American and among people around the world.
We’ll share a couple links to demonstrate that many people share these degrees of belief about 9/11.
It was planned, an INSIDE JOB: 9/11 Truther Movement
The belief that 9/11 was an “Inside job” has gained traction through the ability to distribute unfiltered information through the Internet. One of the most famous proponents of 9/11 as a conspiratorial event is none former Minnesota Governer Jesse Ventura. Truthers question several key aspects of the Standard Narrative, especially that jetliners could generate enough heat to cause steel to melt in the Twin Tower and produce the “free fall” in both buildings despite the fact they were struck at highly different angles. The fact that Building 7 was never struck by a plane yet also fell in freefall fashion suggests a controlled demolition. As for the Pentagon, there is no discernable video showing an actual plane striking the most highly guarded military building in the world.
The Bush Administration was COMPLICIT, and allowed 9/11 to happen
This is how a recent article in The Guardian described the contentions of novelist and political commentator Gore Vidal: “America’s most controversial writer Gore Vidal has launched the most scathing attack to date on George W Bush’s Presidency, calling for an investigation into the events of 9/11 to discover whether the Bush administration deliberately chose not to act on warnings of Al-Qaeda’s plans.”
The White House IGNORED WARNINGS about 9/11
As reported in the New York Times, “On Aug. 6, 2001, President George W. Bush received a classified review of the threats posed by Osama bin Laden and his terrorist network, Al Qaeda. That morning’s “presidential daily brief” — the top-secret document prepared by America’s intelligence agencies — featured the now-infamous heading: “Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” A few weeks later, on 9/11, Al Qaeda accomplished that goal.”
The Bush Administration was INEPT about responding to terror warnings
During the 2016 Republican campaign, candidate Jeb Bush said of his brother, “He kept us safe.” But pundits characterized that statement as false, considering the attacks on 9/11 happened under the watch of the Bush administration.
Bush was UNSUSPECTING on the day of 9/11
The story that Bush was as surprised as the rest of us on 9/11 is illustrated by the videotape of his behavior that morning while reading a book to children at a public school. His reaction and confusion were to some people a sign of great personal control while others saw him as either indecisive, scared because he actually did know what was going on that day or too dumb to know what to do. Recently reports have emerged that Bush wanted to get back to Washington but instead spent eight hours in the sky aboard Air Force One.
The STANDARD NARRATIVE is that 9/11 was carried out by terrorists on American soil
The narrative credits 19 Saudi hijackers with flying commercial airlines into the Twin Towers, another airliner into a ground level attack on the Pentagon and a fourth airliner that was essentially wrestled to the ground by passenger who rallied around the cry “Let’s Roll.” The 9/11 Commission Report is the official government record of 9/11.
OSAMA BIN LADEN was responsible for the attacks
The principle villain identified in the attacks was the expatriated Saudi militant living in Afghanistan who conceived and planned the 9/11 attacks from afar. Bin Laden heightened the profile for Al Qaeda, a network of terrorists bent on undermining Western influence in the Middle East. Interestingly, and as reported on Fox News, it was not until three years after 9/11 that bin Laden was officially reported to have admitted causing the attacks.
AMERICA’S THIRST FOR OIL AND DRUG MONEY CAUSED THE ATTACKS
As an irritant to Middle Eastern countries, western nations such as the United States have long occupied and even wrangled resources out of nations such as Iraq and Afghanistan. These corrupt, “behind the scenes” activities are sometimes driven by the CIA, whose actions are not always well-known or documented even by our own government. This presentation of the US as a “goody-two-shoes” while engaging in behind the scenes regime change to install leaders favorable to our economic interests, and conducting clandestine drugs for weapons or other illegal activities. This makes America a keen target for what was essentially an economic attack on 9/11. How ironic it truly is that American turned around and doubled-down on its efforts to channel more drugs and oil and other resources its way through invasion of Iraq and Afghanistan. It may well be a self-fulfilling prophecy.
SADDAM HUSSEIN DID IT
A tertiary theory developed through claims of the Bush administration that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein took part in or originated the 9/11 attacks. This is how it was reported in USA Today in 2003, “Poll: 70% believe Saddam, 9-11 linkWASHINGTON (AP) — Nearly seven in 10 Americans believe it is likely that ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein was personally involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, says a poll out almost two years after the terrorists’ strike against this country.
Sixty-nine percent in a Washington Post poll published Saturday said they believe it is likely the Iraqi leader was personally involved in the attacks carried out by al-Qaeda. A majority of Democrats, Republicans and independents believe it’s likely Saddam was involved.
The belief in the connection persists even though there has been no proof of a link between the two. President Bush and members of his administration suggested a link between the two in the months before the war in Iraq. Claims of possible links have never been proven, however.”
MUSLIMS DID IT; Al QAEDA AND ISIS AND ISIL are America’s greatest threats
As the supposed direct cause of the 9/11 tragedy, militant Muslim terrorists have become a source of permanent angst for many Americans. Presidential candidate Donald Trump even proposed a ban on Muslim immigrants to America during his 2016 campaign. This characterization of all Muslims being terrorists if highly inaccurate, yet the 9/11 tragedy affixed this reputation by association.
Since the 2008 election, the Republican Party has blamed President Obama for further inflaming Muslim terrorism, crediting him with opening the door to ISIS by withdrawing troops from Iraq. In fact, the withdrawal of American combat troops from Iraq was negotiated by the Bush administration carried out by Obama according to a plan developed in direct collaboration with the government of Iraq.
A ONE WORLD GOVERNMENT IS BEHIND 9/11
There are those who theorize that 9/11 was simply a false flag attack (re: an event either orchestrated for effect or carried out to create fear, confusion or a reactionary belief) by a sophisticated secret network of operatives that report to no government, or who conspire with or within a government to achieve specific monetary or political control.
GOD CAUSED or ALLOWED 9/11 to happen
Some people see 9/11 strictly in a religious context.The site Ecclesia.org quotes Billy Graham’s daughrer this way: “She said “I believe that God is deeply saddened by this, just as we are, but for years we’ve been telling God to get out of our schools, to get out of our government and to get out of our lives. And being the gentleman that He is, I believe that He has calmly backed out. How can we expect God to give us His blessing and His protection if we demand that He leave us alone?” In light of recent events…terrorists attack, school shootings, etc. Let’s see, I think it started when Madeline Murray O’Hare (she was murdered, her body was found recently) complained she didn’t want any prayer in our schools, and we said OK.”
And thus, according to some religious zealots, we dissed God. And therefore, we asked for it.
CONCLUSION
So it’s interesting to examine the wide spectrum of beliefs about what transpired on 9/11. It is also chilling to realize how much false information has been internalized by so many people. When one considers that 70% of people polled at one point believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the 9/11 attacks, and that our government directly suggested this to be the case, and people accepted that as Gospel, it is a valuable exercise to review the rest of what people believe about 9/11.
And one wonders, if the official information about who caused 9/11 could be so wrong, then what else are we being asked to believe about that day that might also be devilishly wrong?
It’s a little hard to believe that God might wipe out 4000 people to make some sort of theological point. Yet the Bible shows God ordering the death of many people in acts of genocide, and wiping out the earth’s human population in the Noachian Flood. So the fundamentally religious perspective of some Christian believers is both extreme and distasteful. It is also no coincidence that it is religious fundamentalists and extremists sprouting from the Muslim faith that are doing some of the killing as well. This proves that we can trust neither set of extremists with our future as the human race.
The same dynamic occurs with our trust in government, or lack of it. People who hate government see all sorts of potential evil. And to be sure, governments run second only to religions in terms of corrupt and vicious behavior. So we might consider that the Bell Curve with most believers likely supporting the Standard Narrative as the most plausible explanation for 9/11 could also be far off.
That leaves us begging for answers from both sides of the political fence. Both liberal and conservative interests could vastly benefit from examining the truth about what happened that day in 2001. So much potential evidence in the rubble of the Twin Towers was shoveled up and shipped away to China. The molten steel flowing like a river below Ground Zero at the World Trade Center both fascinated and horrified structural engineers and architects. Under the banner of Science of 9/11, many of these building professionals have demanded a fuller investigation than the 9/11 Commission Report.
The White House initially resisted the need for any investigation, first nominating the secretive Henry Kissinger to conduct any commission or study. That was declined. Yet participants in the actual commission maintain that the effort was “set up to fail.”
Initially, only $3M was budgeted. Then it was raised to $14M. Yet the Clinton sexual affair scandal investigation budgeted $100M.
All this points to a warped perspective on the significance of 9/11 as an historic event in America’s history. The real story has obviously been suppressed from the very day it occurred. Much of the narrative has been defined by fears projected on the aftermath and toward people who appeared to be engaged in a coverup or misdirection of the meaning of the 9/11 tragedy.
It’s not just one lie, but many that mislead us about how we remember 9/11. That’s a serious problem for the nation. But it is also a serious problem for the world, and what anyone of us believe about it.
On the way home from the art studio this Sunday morning, I slowed the car to allow a squirrel in the street to make a decision about which way to go. You know the story. The squirrel turned one way, then the other. Suddenly it scampered to the curve.
But that makes God out to be a pretty bad character, the dispenser of evil as well as goodness. Which makes for thorny questions when it comes to the personal fate of members of the human race, who are so preoccupied with their own destinies they can hardly comprehend their real place in the universe.
To accomplish this feat would have required, of course, a blind salamander from the caves of Texas to crawl across the entire western European continent, swim thousands of miles across a saltwater ocean, climb onto the dry land of the Eastern Seaboard and swim all the way to what is now the State of Texas, crawl across hundreds of miles of parched landscape to where a small population of said blind salamanders still lives and breeds to this day.
Human beings thus are subject to choices made by free will as well. These choices fuel or place in the process of evolution. We make good choices, we live. When we make bad choices, sometimes we die. This is true on both an individual and collective basis. Evolution takes place largely in incremental fashion, but it can also roll out in wholesale destruction if human beings fearfully agree to respond to life’s circumstances like a herd of squirrels.
The human race is experiencing a “squirrel on the highway” moment when it comes to dealing with climate change. The back and forth between those who accept the evidence and those who deny its verity is causing the human race to dither and change direction on the subject. Meanwhile, the Big Wheels are Turning and heading our way. If the human race does not figure out how to slow down the rate of climate change, we really will get run over. Coastlines will flood. Hurricanes will increase their destruction. The human race will be forced to evolve in a hurry to deal with climactic extremes that will produce highly unpredictable weather.
And let us not forget that God even allowed the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. That scattered his ostensibly Chosen People like a band of squirrels, out into an inhospitable world where they got run over and enslaved in many cases. But a few eventually banded together and returned to their home turf, where they reside to this day in a form a bit evolved from the original. Because that’s how evolution works, you see.
Years ago, while monitoring the latest inanity of Rush Limbaugh, I was interested to hear Rush twist the words of the late Jack Kervorkian, to some known as Doctor Death, on the practice of helping terminally ill patients with assisted suicide.
Just let Donald Trump keep the jacket with the spangled epaulets for now. He would surely look as good as the late Muammar Gaddafi, once did, or Saddam Hussein. Both were dictators installed, at one point in history, by the leaders of the Banana Republican Party.
The Banana Republicans don’t believe in any power but their own, and they’re unafraid to think big. They tried under Reagan to pull off the big Iran-Contra coup (and a few others) to prop up a banana republic of choice. But they got caught, and people went to jail. Yet men like Oliver North got out of jail to go give speeches at Christian organizations about how he was moved by a power higher than the law to act as he did.
There was a time when devout fundamentalist Christians went on the attack against rock’n’roll. In the early 1960s, stacks of records by The Beatles were raised high and burned in public places. The Boys were disclaimed by Christians because John Lennon said, and we quote: “Christianity will go. It will vanish and shrink. I needn’t argue about that. I’m right and I’ll be proved right. We’re more popular than Jesus now. I don’t know which will go first, rock ‘n’ roll or Christianity. Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. It’s them twisting it that ruins it for me.”
When Martin Luther King, Jr. arrived on the scene to question of both religious and secular authorities about the nature of civil rights, social justice and America’s military adventures, he was vilified by conservatives of his time. The ignoble J. Edgar Hoover tracked his every move. Hooever also tracked other civil rights activists including President John F. Kennedy and his brother Bobby. It’s no coincidence that all three were eventually murdered inside the decade of the 1960s. That’s how murderous authoritarianism works. These are the same forces that killed Jesus. If authoritarianism cannot dominate the conversation, it gets its way through brute force and murder.
Worse than that, conservatism sometimes travels in banal fashion, such as the likes of Dr. Ben Carson, the black candidate for the Republican nomination whose theology and logic was so confused he was not fit to tie the shoes of the late Martin Luther King, Jr. Yet today’s conservatives could not tell the difference, and some flocked to that vacuous man just because he held up signs that said, “I’m a Christian.” The shallowness is breathtaking. But not unexpected by any means. Conservatism loves short answers and shallow thoughts that seem to hold the truth in a nutshell.
And so the dichotomy exists over the worship of money to this day. And America has a presidential candidate who weakly claims to be Christian, yet who clearly worships money, and himself.
“From that point on I think he manipulated the white middle class on race,” said Lewis. “But was he a racist? Was he a segregationist or was he just using race to win elections? I don’t think we will ever know because we don’t know his heart.”
As we roll into the actual election cycle it might be good to recall some of America’s history to help explain how we got where we are.
So the arc from prejudice to act is not a long leap. Not in American or in any other nation on earth. Which is why the angry, racially tinged words of Donald Trump are such a threat to the evolution of the American conscience. When he brands all Mexicans “rapists” or criminals his word hold weight with those waiting for an excuse to express their disappointment and rage toward those they view as invaders on their land.
Yet another shooting of an unarmed man by police has taken place in Florida. The incident heightens the fact that police are using their weapons too freely.
Genesisfix's Blog 