Alternate Realities

Snippets from an article by PV Vivekanand about the 9/11 attacks published in September 11th's edition of Gulf Today:

"There is an increasing belief around the world today that the Sept.11 attacks were engineered from within the US, and Al Qaeda was used as a pawn in the hands of those who orchestrated it. There are so many questions that defy logical and reasonable answers that it is simply impossible to accept the theory that Al Qaeda plotted and carried out the attacks on its own without help from powerful sources within the US. The irony, as many point out, is that even under this scenario, Al Qaeda might not have been aware that it was being set up."

This is interesting. As an American, I am aware that much of the world is angry with us. Until I was plopped down in the middle of the Middle East, I paid little attention to the viewpoints of what the American press consistently referred to as zealots. I also must admit a shocking disinterest in political matters, my American heritage, it seems. When you live half a world away from everyone else, it seems not important to understand what people think. Imperialistic, of course, and blatantly arrogant, we are.

Americans, even post-Nixon, want to believe in their government. Our institutions are us. Remember Sinead O'Connor? Americans cannot deal with threats on their institutions. We may disagree, but we hold very dear the notion that our government has our best interests in mind. We irrationally believe this, even when confronted with the text of the Patriot Act. Terrorist have dark skin and come from over there. The notion that our own government is now collecting information and terrorizing its own citizens is anathema. Our belief is seemingly unshakable, tied to our Constitution, ignoring all realities. Idealistic, we are.

We are a nation that has always rebelled, embracing the malcontents as evidence of freedom. Yet we now have adopted a frightening rigidity to our beliefs, a national thought approval program, that is increasingly evident. One cannot raise a question these days without being viewed as a potential threat, a potential terrorist. We back Israel unconditionally, not understanding the issues, not believing for a moment that the Israeli's have their own agenda. We only know it has something to do with the pursuit of religious freedom, and we approve of that, for it mirrors us. Anything more complex is a mystery. We have warped the process, not caring, not understanding. We cannot question, we have no idea what questions to ask. We shun viewpoints that differ from ours. We alone know the truth. Ignorant, we are.

"A sizeable number of Americans now believe that top officials in the administration of George W Bush had something to do with the Sept.11 attacks and Israeli agents were part of the conspiracy. The arguments raised by those who believe in this theory are plausible and could not be rejected out of hand. These include an assertion that Vice-President Dick Cheney was directly in control of running air exercises involving hijackings of airliners on Sept.11 and this was the reason that the honest-to-God American air defense system did not respond to the four actual hijackings that were not part of the exercise."

Huh? I was not aware that a sizable portion of Americans believed that GW had something to do with the attacks. But I, holding on to the rebel American within, am willing to consider this. Still, the thought is so disturbing to me, that I automatically reject it. This statement may be political flame-fanning at its worst...but if the ME populace really believes this, we are in for a world of hurt. However, it makes me smile to think of Cheney directing the hijackings. This, interestingly, is not a hard picture for me to envision...

"The American government version of investigation findings has many contradictions and many key details have been omitted, the strangest among which is that none of the eight cockpit recorders -- black boxes -- (each of the four planes had two) survived in order to yield any clue to what had happened. The odds of all eight black boxes damaged in four air crashes in a span of three hours are put one in billions. Another unanswered question is how at least seven among the 19 "suicide hijackers" named by the US surfaced alive and kicking."

I have heard nothing about the black boxes. However, because this was a crime, all information related to the crashes is controlled by the FBI, not the NTSB. We will likely never see any accident reports released in our lifetimes. But, as an educated guess, I would say that the black boxes were not destroyed (it actually takes ALOT to destroy one), though due to the nature of the crashes, some of the information may have been rendered unusable. The odds of this happening are not in the billions, I question how this was calculated. The odds of the boxes being obliterated are directly related to the heat produced by the fires and the duration of the flames. Given the nature of the crashes, it is a possibility that there is not much left of the boxes, and this would be entirely expected, not an unusual event for fires of this duration.

"Israel benefited most from the 9/11 attacks. Afghanistan was removed as a source of militants with anti-Israeli agenda. Saddam Hussein was ousted and the shape of Iraq was twisted so badly that it would never emerge as a potential Arab military power which could threaten Israel. "

Oh, oh. The Israel thing again. OK, if I ignore the fact that this may be merely an anti-Israel propaganda statement, it does present an interesting viewpoint about the shift of power in the region.

"The international community now believes that the Bush administration was waiting for an opportunity like 9/11 to implement its grand designs for global domination. The world now knows that the leading figures in the neoconservative camp around Bush had plotted the invasion of Iraq, Saddam or no Saddam, and turn that oil-rich country around to an advanced military base in the Arabian Gulf where the Americans would be in a position to intervene in any country if such intervention fits in with American interests."

So here we are. And we are here for a while. The fact that the occupation of Iraq seems to present such an efficient opportunity for an extension of American interests in the ME, would seemingly confirm the truth to this statement. And if we accept the statement as true, we have to question how we got here...

"There are indeed many who believe that the US had deliberately relaxed its hunt for Osama Bin Laden so that he would remain a bogeyman who could be cited as and when it suits American interests."

Where is Osama?

"Michael Tomasky, executive editor American Prospect magazine, observes in an on-line (www.prospect.org) article:

"In truth, the anniversary should be the occasion for a thoroughgoing discussion of how America has combated terrorism in the last four years. And on that front, even the disaster Bush has created in Iraq takes a back seat to one overwhelming fact: By the time night falls on Sept.11, Osama Bin Laden will have been at large for 1,461 days."

"America vanquished world fascism in less time: We obtained Germany's surrender in 1,243 days, Japan's in 1,365. Even the third Punic War, in which Carthage was burned to the ground and emptied of citizens who were taken en masse into Roman slavery, lasted around 1,100 days (and troops needed a little longer to get into position back in 149 BC)."

Odd how striking this statement is. And true. We have lost our interest in Osama, a disturbing indication of what our true motives might be. Some have been saying this all along, but Americans, true to their institutions, refuse to believe this alternate reality.

If the ME firmly believes that our government orchestrated this whole debacle, it presents a picture so disturbing that it would shake our nation to the core. That is, if we could actually believe it and get off our fat American asses to hold our government accountable.

I recall a conversation I had more than once with David. We couldn't understand this war, and felt a vague need to protest, do something, when we returned to the states. I asked him why we didn't see masses of protest, what had happened to us to make us so apathetic. We had no answers to that. Yet I predicted that once back in the states, neither one of us would protest, a prediction that has turned out to be true. Why?

There is something intrinsically different about us now. Perhaps we have been overwhelmed by our lives, unable to take on more than what we have in front of us. Idealism is a notion still within us, but we have surrendered our lives to merely existing, not demanding more. Personally, professionally, politically, we have sunken to the lowest common denominator. We demand nothing for ourselves but to be left alone to live our pathetic, disconnected lives. America? Yes, this is America.

We don't care. We don't care if we are wrong. We don't care if you are killing your people. We don't care if your citizens are starving, unless, of course, we need your oil. We have our lives to live, mortgages to pay, kids to send to school. We expect our government to make the right decisions, but we no longer have the ability to critically ascertain if they are. We hold dear to the heroism of past wars, you know, the ones before Viet Nam, the ones that meant something to the world. We hold fast to our image as a cowboy, saving damsels and spreading good. It never occurred to us that we are as pathetic as an old man reliving his best years over and over again in his mind, surrendering the here and now to the prism of a better past.

We are America. We don't understand your version of reality, and we don't have to.

Pathetic, we are.