I had a discussion with two friends/collegues the other day about 9/11 and got kind of upset. They started citing some of the same type of evidence the 9/11 Truth Movement cites to make the case that it's possible the Bush administration (ie Cheney) was behind 9/11. I've been doing research on 9/11 and the Truth Movement for over a year for my thesis, and I think a lot of the claims made by 9/11 Truth are shaky. The reasoning is kind of like this: if we question the official explanation, and we can find motive for those who give us the official explanation to lie, it must mean that those who gave us the official explanation are using it to cover up their responsibility. My problem is that motive does equal means. The assumption, of course, is that it's the United States Government, the most powerful thing on earth, so they can do anything they want. I don't buy this. So while I do think the official explanation has problems, I don't think it means that the buildings were bombed or that al Qaeda wasn't involved, etc. Of course, the useful thing about the "9/11 conspiracy theories" is that they're adaptable. If the government changes its story, it is lying to us. If we change our story it's because we have to explain the lies.
Maybe the U.S. government is behind al Qaeda. Maybe, but I think al Qaeda was perfectly capable of doing it without our help. Maybe we had warnings and let it happen. Maybe, but it's just as easy for me to believe we just fucked up. I do believe the 9/11 Commission was a "cover-up" but I believe it covers up our inability to actually deal with the threat of terrorism. I think we inflate the threat of terrorism to justify a lot of heinous shit but when it comes down to it there are things beyond the government's control. THE GOVERNMENT IS FALLIBLE.
Anyway, to the point: I still think al Qaeda did it. And I don't think that the U.S. government did it. Can I imagine them either arranging for al Qaeda to do it or having forewarning and ignoring it to let it happen? Yes, but my burden of proof here isn't "can you imagine it happening" because fuck, I can imagine a lot of things happening that ain't real. (And the response to the burden of proof re: 9/11 conspiracy theories is that the evidence is suppressed as part of the conspiracy so you can't say for sure who did it or why, only that it didn't happen the way the government says it did. ok...) I think attaching yourself to one of these theories fulfills an ego-defense function aka paranoia. It helps order the universe to imagine that the U.S. Government, if it failed to protect us, must have been responsible. The idea that they're a bunch of fuckwits like us who make mistakes is too much to handle. But I think it's true.
Let's look at this real fast:
Al Qaeda. Motive: Response to U.S. hegemony in the Middle East. Yes. Means: Hijacking planes and crashing them into buildings. Ok. Opportunity: failures in the U.S. security apparatus. Makes sense to me.
U.S. Government. Motive: False flag attack so necons can do some fascist shit, we can start new wars in Middle East and get oil. Well that went exactly according to plan, didn't it? Means: Let hijackers into country to do their plan, plausible I guess. Plant bombs in the buildings, etc. Whatever, who, how, when, etc? No one knows. Stupid. Also, hundreds of government people from Clinton and Bush adminstrations have to play along, not one whistleblower. Opportunity: 9/11. Pretend it was a terrorist attack. Blame it on bin Laden. What?
One friend made the argument that the government plans everything several steps ahead, and I said I just didn't think they were that smart. She said this was really ignorant. I think that's naive and symptomtic of hegemony. Like South Park said, they can't have power if people realize that they can't control things like 9/11. So 9/11 Truth reifies the hegemony of the current adminstration by giving them more credit (evil credit) than they deserve. If we look at the record, what the Bush adminstration does is try to control the episteme, the way we understand and interpret things. But that doesn't translate to techne, or knowing-how to do shit. If the government was able to conspire to cause the 9/11 attacks, I submit that this would be one of the only plans in the last 8 years the Bush administration successfully carried out (not to mention that it would require Clinton's complicity, since the hijackers were let into the country on his watch).
Here are some examples of Bush's telos not translating into techne (with a paranoid interpretation in parentheses): Going into Afganistan to capture bin Laden, only to have him escape into Pakistan (what if we let him escape?). Going into Iraq to set up another client-state democracy in the Middle East to counter Iran, but they elected a Shiite government friendly to Iran (maybe we want Iran to become our new USSR?). Hurricane Katrina (Bush hates black people). No child left behind. Economic stimulus. Etc.
But back to Cheney. Why the fuck would you want to pretend global warming isn't happening? Because it represents a threat to economic interests. Ok, I buy that. Because global warming might kill a lot of people in the world and the NWO wants to kill most of us so they can consolidate control. Eh...
But what if Cheney believes this too? Like, what if Cheney believes that a kind of armageddeon is inevitable (I mean, he knows we're running out of oil, etc.) and that it is up to him and his friends to make sure they're ok to survive it. That's fucked up evil, but Cheney might be crazy enough to be down for that. What gets me is this: if you believe that this New World Order thing is really this diabolical plot to centralize control over the earth, shouldn't you believe that al Qaeda did 9/11 because that represents a resistance to global American hegemony? It shows the cracks in the surface of the Empire. Right? By believing that the U.S. government did it aren't you sacrificing your agency (responsibility) to a supposed force beyond our ability to control? Aren't you just supplementing the U.S. government for Yaldabaoth?
If Cheney has delusions of grandeur why accept the premise of his delusions? The funny thing here, to me, is that because he is in a position of power he has the ability to manifest his delusions. But as delusions they don't work out exactly as planned, because nothing ever does, does it? So if he can get the rest of us to believe that the NWO is going to protect an elite while allowing the rest of the world to shrivel and burn, then it probably will, because there are a lot of problems in the world and if we believe the source of those problems also controls the power to change them then...
It's secular gnosticism. And as a former gnostic, I find it attractive as a metanarrative, but I also feel like things are too random to buy into that paranoia. Having said that, I still do believe in the Apocalypse narrative, minus a personal god, because I think the prophecies so inform our ways of seeing reality that we manifest them, ya dig? Lots of bad shit could happen and our way of dealing with it is informed by our episteme in which the prophecies are important chains of signifiers for many of us. I still think it's gonna be different than we expect. I know it's going to be different than Cheney expects, but it's up to us to handle up on that and quit accepting his delusions in order to prevent his paranoid fantasy from becoming reality.
mm
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