Post 9/11 Thinking

After 9 years has your thinking changed in regard to the who, why, wherefore of the terrorist attacks? Do you believe the official story, the 911Truthers, or some religious icon or prophet of disaster?

I still believe there were "insiders" involved in the attack or had prior knowledge - but have changed my idea on who that might be. They may have been members of the US government or ruling class - but I don't think it is necessarily BushCo. In fact, I think the guilty parties would be names the public is not generally familiar with, perhaps even people with great wealth and clout, yet may or may not be American born.

Also, as for the "how" it's plausible to me because many many people were simply not doing their job. Hard to connect the dots when half the dots fall through the cracks because of incompetence and sheer laziness at the state and federal employee level. So many want a fat paycheck and prestige but not actually have to work for it.

The mantra that the US was attacked because "they hate our freedom" is not enough motive. Although in an abstract sort of way, it might be possible, if freedom were defined as our right to think for ourselves - those who want to control the US wouldn't want us thinking ... and therefore might deplore that trait in us, but most Americans haven't practiced that freedom in the last 50 years, although they swear they think for themselves.

While so many like to cite and/or interpret our failure to follow the foreign policy beliefs of the "founding fathers" I no longer feel our foreign policy is a valid motive either. Attacked because we have troops in Saudi Arabia? Puleeeeeze.

Recently I reread some of the writings of Jefferson, Adams, and Washington's farewell address and think it's a false argument when someone uses the notion that Washington's warning of "foreign entanglements" is an admonishment to avoid foreign wars like Iraq and Afghanistan.

Once a believer, I now think the argument that we were attacked because of our foreign policy is the dumbest of dumb ideas. It may be an excuse, but it's not a motive. People looking for excuses always find one, no matter how flimsy or unbelievable, and a grain or two of truth makes it seem on the surface more plausible.

I get the impression that George Washington's idea of avoiding foreign entanglement, was a warning to not be so politically entangled with other nations that the republic would be influenced, particularly by Europe. Understandable as he had just fought the British empire. He believed free trade and free men would set the example. And both of those have dwindled in the last few decades.

Washington was issuing a warning to followers of Franklin and Jefferson, both Francophiles, and the French Revolution going on at the time. The founding fathers were also surrounded by dozens of delegates to the Continental Congress, most had extensive political experience, many with military service, many with European ties. If Washington put his finger in the air in the 1790s I'm sure he felt there were men around him who had not cut the umbilical cord to Europe. Many wanting to be actively involved in the French Revolution, which was not as successful as America's - giving France the guillotine, Robespierre, a reign of terror, and the anti-monarchy revolutionaries who thought naming Napoleon commander-in-chief of the army and then First Consul was a good idea. Contrary to popular bumper stickers the French have never got it right.

The words and writings of the founding fathers must be taken in context of the era and what was politically going on around them. If anything, George Washington sounded more isolationist than anti-war. At the time of his farewell address the US didn't have much of a standing army or navy and he believed a strict neutrality would keep the peace.

The founding fathers and their immediate successors had no problem waging war. Jefferson's Barbary or Tripolitan Wars, the War of 1812, meddling in Hawaii, the domestic Indian Wars, the Mexican-American War, the Monroe Doctrine.

But, back to motive of 9/11. I can think of only 2 viable motives. One is, there are extremists who enjoy perpetrating death and mayhem on others, even if for no other reason than thrill killing. There are hate-filled people in the world who create suffering because they take pleasure in it. Secondly, there are those who would like to collapse the US in order to save it, or slave it. If the two factions work in collusion, or if one uses the other ... they could easily pull off a 9/11 and confuse the hell out of the American public for eternity. And the more confused an American is the more loudly he will shout his certainty about everything.

Another thought I factor in, if 9/11 was an inside job, is the perpetrators would put figureheads in place who lead no trail back to them. That alone would absolve Bush/Cheney of being the inside jobbers. Bush in place because he was slow-witted enough to do as told, Cheney because he could be manipulated by perps who are much more clever.

The "war for oil" meme sounded good initially but it was apparent early on that the US would not be the beneficiaries of the bulk of Iraq/Afghanistan oil and gas. Yes, US companies are getting contracts, but China and Russia are reaping the biggest rewards.

What surprises me sometimes is that no one in positions of power or with a respectable soapbox has even proffered the idea that the US was infiltrated decades ago by those wishing to destroy the country from within. Looking at the social and political insanity today, is that such a far-fetched idea? Of course, anyone who would or does make the suggestion is quickly branded a bigot, or a -phobe of some sort.

Glenn Beck may come close with valid ideas on "infiltration" but he puts most of it at the feet of ObamaCo and infuses too much God rhetoric. Obama and company, like the last dozen or so presidents, are figureheads, who do as their advisors advise, the advisors getting their advice from advisors who got advice from their advisors and so on until only god knows where the advice really comes from. And God, well, some people need god, some people behave better with a god, and some of us are turned off by godspeak. Beck is dopey when he stops the buck at Obama or Bill Ayers or Van Jones or the dozens of other metrosexual radicals at Barry's elbow. They are all only water carriers for the real artists of change, and probably believe the b.s. coming from their own lips, and believe they formed their ideology by deep thought and intellect, not propaganda and narrowed thinking.

Honestly, sometimes I think I need to better research the McCarthy era as he may have been on to something.

What to make of the recent arrests of Russian spies? One was Vicky Peláez who "spent more than 20 years working as a columnist for one of the New York's best known Spanish-language newspapers, El Diario. Her specialty was strident criticism of US policy in Latin America, with a strong defence of Fidel Castro and Hugo Chávez." Is that part of the "insiders"? Part of the change to the mindset of mainstream Joe Blow - make US bad, and the socialist world warm and do-goody? How many others with a "specialty" live, love, breed, and promote their ideas among us?

If these "spies" are just a sliver of a titanic iceberg ... a second generation of them just might feel they are Americans with a better ideology. In some ways it justifies to me why the US deported or interned Germans, Italians, Japanese, etc in WWII. For how certain can one be of the loyalty an immigrant truly holds when his native country or that of his parents is at war with the US? For decades I've known foreign folks who believe the US should do certain things the way it is done in the country they fled - and some of those things have changed to accommodate these folks in the name of "tolerance." Of course, it also drags the US toward the same sociopolitical structure of those godawful countries immigrants are running from.

We have went from a nation run by intelligent knowledgeable men to one run by pols who think there are 58 states and do not know that Arizona borders Mexico. A nation born of men willing to give their life and fortunes to founding a nation - now to grown men who want the country to give them their life and fortunes.

Whoever the "insiders" and whatever their objective, they are closer - and I will probably live to see even more of a change I don't believe in.