The Truth Is Out There...
9/11 conspiracies abound, and the documentary “Loose Change”, directed by Dylan Avery and available to watch on Google video, covers most of the major ground (Pentagon hit by a missile not a plane, Twin Towers brought down by explosives not the airliners, Bush Administration behind the whole thing etc.) in a watchable format. Yet what might make for compelling viewing makes for a very poor analysis of the war on terror.
For a start, as with all conspiracy theory, much is presented out of context and selectively. Endless news footage from 9/11 is put forward to flag up various discrepancies and contradictions in the contemporary accounts. All this really points to, however, is the chaos and confusion of that day and the notorious problems of eye witness testimony. Avery also contradicts himself in an attempt to bring every aspect of the events into question. In one sequence he shows a close up of the second airplane to hit the Twin Towers, supposedly revealing some kind of instrument affixed to the fuselage. Subsequently the audio of a Fox News broadcast is replayed, in which a journalist claims the airplane we have just been looking at, clearly a passenger jet, was a cargo plane. Such overlapping layers of fantasy infect any such conspiracy theory, and anyone who has read the exhaustive and methodical report of the 9/11 Commission will find Avery’s account shallow and unconvincing.
There are even more serious problems with the logic of 9/11 conspiracy theories. If the claims of a conspiracy were true, the planning and execution of the events would have involved thousands of people; dynamiting buildings, hiding the passengers of the original hijacked planes (presuming they existed in the first place…), creating the ‘faked’ Bin Laden confession tape etc. This administration has been marked by an inability to keep anything secret and its minions have been little better. The past four years have produced a litany of leaked intelligence reports, photographed torture sessions and insider tell-alls. How they would have kept a major activity like 9/11 quiet is a mystery.
And what did they really gain from it anyway? They set up Hamid Karzai in an impoverished and unstable country, got bogged down in Iraq, and, on the domestic front, attempted to find out what library books we’re reading. Surely a group devious enough to fake the 9/11 attacks would have an agenda more extensive than this up their sleeves. If there was a conspiracy, the total inability to take advantage of it would suggest that this blog has been right in asserting that the contemporary elites suffer from a highly limited political imagination. Furthermore, the discrepancy between pulling off one of the greatest acts of deception the world has ever seen, and the lack of planning for post-invasion Iraq is too much to believe.
Such childish fantasies can only get in the way of hard thinking about the genealogy and significance of the war on terror. Conspiracy theory is compelling because it offers a silver bullet explanation that saves us from doing the hard work of understanding the complexities and contingencies of contemporary politics. The world of conspiracy is a fairy tale land where, once the wicked witch is slain, everyone can live happily ever after. Unfortunately the real world requires a more sophisticated worldview, and the first step in developing it must be to throw away such childish ideas.
For a start, as with all conspiracy theory, much is presented out of context and selectively. Endless news footage from 9/11 is put forward to flag up various discrepancies and contradictions in the contemporary accounts. All this really points to, however, is the chaos and confusion of that day and the notorious problems of eye witness testimony. Avery also contradicts himself in an attempt to bring every aspect of the events into question. In one sequence he shows a close up of the second airplane to hit the Twin Towers, supposedly revealing some kind of instrument affixed to the fuselage. Subsequently the audio of a Fox News broadcast is replayed, in which a journalist claims the airplane we have just been looking at, clearly a passenger jet, was a cargo plane. Such overlapping layers of fantasy infect any such conspiracy theory, and anyone who has read the exhaustive and methodical report of the 9/11 Commission will find Avery’s account shallow and unconvincing.
There are even more serious problems with the logic of 9/11 conspiracy theories. If the claims of a conspiracy were true, the planning and execution of the events would have involved thousands of people; dynamiting buildings, hiding the passengers of the original hijacked planes (presuming they existed in the first place…), creating the ‘faked’ Bin Laden confession tape etc. This administration has been marked by an inability to keep anything secret and its minions have been little better. The past four years have produced a litany of leaked intelligence reports, photographed torture sessions and insider tell-alls. How they would have kept a major activity like 9/11 quiet is a mystery.
And what did they really gain from it anyway? They set up Hamid Karzai in an impoverished and unstable country, got bogged down in Iraq, and, on the domestic front, attempted to find out what library books we’re reading. Surely a group devious enough to fake the 9/11 attacks would have an agenda more extensive than this up their sleeves. If there was a conspiracy, the total inability to take advantage of it would suggest that this blog has been right in asserting that the contemporary elites suffer from a highly limited political imagination. Furthermore, the discrepancy between pulling off one of the greatest acts of deception the world has ever seen, and the lack of planning for post-invasion Iraq is too much to believe.
Such childish fantasies can only get in the way of hard thinking about the genealogy and significance of the war on terror. Conspiracy theory is compelling because it offers a silver bullet explanation that saves us from doing the hard work of understanding the complexities and contingencies of contemporary politics. The world of conspiracy is a fairy tale land where, once the wicked witch is slain, everyone can live happily ever after. Unfortunately the real world requires a more sophisticated worldview, and the first step in developing it must be to throw away such childish ideas.
1 Comments:
And I suppose the next thing you all will be claiming is that The Revelation of St. John the Divine, which I'll remind you, is the very word of God, is a childish fantasy. Infidels!
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