The “War on Terror” is said to have begun on September 11,
2001. But is it possible that the war began before this date? Some people point
to U.S. government complicity in the events of 9/11, either by not doing enough
to prevent it, or—more ominously—by actively planning for it. Whatever the
truth may be, there is plenty of conjecture that what happened on that day
doesn’t add up to the popular version of the events.
What
is not in dispute is that public support for the War on Terror was far greater
after these attacks than it would have been on September 10, 2001. Could it be
that the attacks were allowed to happen to create public clamor for a war that
would otherwise have been inconceivable? Many people have pointed to the
possibility that 9/11 was a clone of Pearl Harbor, an attack on the U.S. that
was deliberately allowed to take place in order to further the war aims of a president.
But a more sinister comparison has been made by
those skeptical of the motives of the Bush administration. They claim that what
happened was more akin to Adolf Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag, the German
Republic’s parliament, on February 27, 1933. Hitler blamed the fire on Communists
plotting against the state. But historians widely accept the view that a member
of the Prussian interior ministry set fire to the building deliberately, on
Hitler’s orders.
Immediately
after the fire Hitler announced an emergency decree which suspended the normal
civilian rights and liberties of citizens and gave the government enormous
authority to impose order. This was the beginning of the end for democratic
values and the rise of Nazi dictatorship. On October 3, 2001 Congress approved
Bush’s Patriot Act, a similar bill which reduced the civil liberties of Americans
and allowed the detention without trial of anyone the government deemed a
potential “security threat.” Furthermore,
the public and political pressure for retaliation for the attacks was intense,
and neatly tied into the agenda of the “Project for a New American Century.”
This was a strategic document put forward by a group of neoconservatives in
September 2000 outlining a new strategy for American global dominance in the
twenty-first century. This think tank included Dick Cheney, the vice president; Donald
Rumsfeld, secretary of defense; Paul Wolfowitz, his deputy; Jeb Bush, brother
of George and governor of Florida; and Lewis Libby, the leader of Bush’s 2000
election campaign team now working in the White House.
The
most intriguing part of the document concerns the readjustment of American
forces across the globe. The report states that only an incremental approach
can be taken to this radical restructuring owing to political and public constraints,
unless there was “some catastrophic and catalyzing event like a new Pearl
Harbor.” Despite all this, however, there is still the question of how such an
elaborate attack could have been prepared and executed by the government and
its agencies without the media becoming deeply suspicious. The most likely explanation
is that the attacks were planned by Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda but that U.S.
intelligence agencies did not act upon the information they received to
adequately
prevent
them. Evidence of their failure, whether deliberate or through incompetence,
has been widespread following Congressional investigations but without any
smoking gun. Furthermore, the CIA and New York City counterterrorism offices
were based in Building 7 of the World Trade Center and were therefore destroyed,
along with any potentially incriminating evidence.
The
suspicions about intelligence are just part of the growing mistrust about the
events that day, which reverberated right around the world. On the day of the
attacks geological surveys in NewYork recorded the greatest amount of seismic
activity as occurring immediately before the Twin Towers collapsed, and not
when they hit the ground. This has led many people to the conclusion that the
towers were blown up with explosives underneath the building and not by the
enormous volume of fuel that ignited after the two airliners
exploded; a belief reinforced by the way the towers imploded inwards instead of
collapsing sideways. The evidence at the Pentagon also raises profound
questions. Why was the Pentagon hit on the one side of the building that
happened to be empty on the day of the attacks owing to refurbishment? Why was
there no visible evidence of a destroyed airliner among the debris? Why were no
fighter jets scrambled to intercept the hijacked aircraft until after the third
plane had hit the Pentagon, despite it being a legal requirement in the U.S.
for fighter jets to be scrambled whenever a commercial airliner veers
significantly off its flight path? How was so much information known about the
hijackers and released to the media by the FBI so soon after the attacks,
including details on a passport miraculously found among the rubble of the Twin
Towers?
These
question marks raise serious doubts about the official version of what happened
on September 11. Many are cynical of the report published only a year prior to
that date; a report which would revolutionize America’s role in the world
toward ultimate military, political and social hegemony, but one which would
require a catastrophic event. These cynics cannot accept that the occurrence of
just such an event can be no more than coincidence. Can it also be mere
coincidence that those who authored the report are responsible for failing to
prevent the attack and for coordinating their desired global response?
