The Americans love a good conspiracy theory. It's been their major export for some decades now, so when the 9/11 attacks occurred the cynical could have placed safe bets on the emergence of a fresh series of conspiracy theories about the events of that terrible day. I'm not going to try to answer all the hair-brained stuff that's come to light from dark corners of the internet - that has been done much more comprehensively and expertly than I could do, but I do want to talk about some of the things the conspiracy theorists have right and wrong.
The origin of conspiracy
I think the conspiracy theories are very significantly influenced by the convenience that the attacks afforded the US government, particularly Dick Chainey. In all times of great tragedy there are those that abuse it for gains in power or status or money, or all of the above. Those that capitalise on the events for personal gain are perfect fodder for the conspiracy theorists' delusions - after all, the gains are great, so they had motive to cause these events. In the case of 9/11 the invasion of Iraq is particularly glaring. To this day I don't know the motivation for doing it. By comparison, invading Afghanistan was perfectly logical (Bin Laden was a Saudi) and a measured response (more than 8000 civilians dead and counting) to the 9/11 attacks. I can only assume that it was galling that in 1991 they couldn't actually invade and they wanted to make up for it, combined with a perceived need for the oil security. If so, it's just about the most expensive oil ever bought, since it has cost at least $3 trillion, which is short to write but it's a truly catastrophic amount of money, and if anything it's a gross underestimate since many fine young men have suffered severe and permanent physical and mental trauma, and of course a fair number have been killed in action.
Leaving aside the legitimacy and pointfullness of the war, though, it's a great "motive" for the 9/11 theorists to cite. Apparently the desire by some to go to war was so extreme that they would go to enormous lengths to make it happen, even orchestrating a terrorist attack. Here follows some conspiracy theories and my generalised rebuttal.
Controlled demolition
For me, this one pretty much takes the cake in terms of implausibility. The American government secretly wired a building in the middle of their greatest city with explosives? The explosives were not set off by the massive shock of a heavy jet hitting them and the resultant jet-fuel fireball? And they worked perfectly, just at the moment the towers were starting to fall?
and someone was watching, waiting for the perfect moment to set them off even though the buildings might easily have collapsed anyway? This gets a full 5/5 flying saucers. There are some outstanding facts that are hard to explain for the "conventional" school (i.e., the buildings came down because they were hit by heavy jets and exposed to extensive, raging fires) but 9/11 is a unique event, so there are bound to be some facts that are hard to understand. A mysterious fountain of sparks that looks suspiciously like thermite is one example. Unfortunately quite a few "experts" have gone on record as saying that it was controlled demolition. I'm all for academic freedom, but these guys are missing a trick: THE BUILDINGS WERE HIT BY HEAVY JETS. Stress concentration is one thing I see not mentioned by any structural or materials engineer who goes for the controlled demolition theory. When combined with fire, it's obvious to me why these buildings failed while no other steel structure has ever collapsed due to fire. A significant amount of the supporting structure had been wiped out asymmetrically. This would seem to cause a torque on the whole building around where the plane hit, and combined with the effect of heat lowering the yield stress of steel ... like I said, obvious.
Aircraft autopiloted into WTC
This is as daft possibly even dafter than the one above. The terrorists were in the cockpit. They had taken flying lessons. We have lots of documentary evidence for both of those facts. So why is it that someone would insist the planes were guided into the WTC by their autopilots which had been remote programmed? I'm not saying this is impossible, but on a scale of 1 to 5 UFOs it gets 4.5 for sheer brain shutdown.
United 93 was quickly removed/shot down by missile
This is one the conspiracy theorists have right. The wreckage from United 93 was removed very fast - at the moment of impact, in fact. By an enormous jet fuel fireball. The circumstances of its crash were unlike most aircraft crashes. Most aircraft crashes that happen on land are what you might call a severely botched landing. The pilots try to land or mitigate the crash so lose altitude slowly if possible and come in parallel to the ground. Tragically, the evident struggle in the cockpit of that plane caused the controls to be manipulated in such a way that the plane made a hard right bank - I'm guessing a rudder hard-over, which would be consistent with someone kicking indescriminately if they were struggling - and then went nose first into the ground. Such an impact is unusual in that there is a lot of force acting directly on the airframe, causing it to shatter into much smaller pieces than normal. The concomitant fireball would send these pieces right out of the park. The sheer number of witness accounts make this one a fairly watertight case so I give it 4.5 crop circles out of five.
In a sense all of these conspiracy theories are the same. It's always the government or "they" - forces within the government - that is doing it to its own people. And in a sense they have it right - all governments do terrible things to their own people, especially in this current age of unprecedented power over their people. But conspiracy theorists also miss the point. Airing conspiracies with house of cards levels of documentation is not going to convince people en masse - indeed, a lot of sites propound a whole swathe of conspiracy theories, some legitimate concerns, and others complete bunkum, and in doing this play into the hands of any forces that genuinley want to keep certain information out of public eye. The best place for a true conspiracy is among half a dosen fakes. That way no one with an ounce of common sense is going to believe any of it. In that way there is conspiracy hegemony: either you believe all the conspiracies (if you have taken leave of your senses) or you believe none. To give serious thought to any conspiracy automatically moves you in to the conspiracy camp and gives your word the same weight as someone who still believes in aliens, so few people would do it.
Conspiracy theorists' credibility problem derives from their ignorance of Ockham's razor and Hanlon's razor. Combine this with sources that themselves are not credible (some have reasonably scientific methods but also point to other conspiracy sites or known conspiracists) and cherry-picking of evidence, and you have total loss of credibility. The only difference between an investigative journalist and a conspiracist is that one is a lot more rigorous. In short, conspiracists suffer from insufficient skepticism and rigor. Until and unless they get their act together there's little chance that any genuinely concerning things they report will ever become known before it's too late to do anything about them.
The other major problem with all of these conspiracy theories is they fail to draw attention to the civil liberties that were considered basic human rights before the attacks but have since been eroded or destroyed. New powers were granted the government, just as new powers were granted Hitler during crises, and these powers were mostly used to repress ordinary citizens, although the rhetoric was about protecting the public from sleeper terrorists and the like.
I always cringed when Bush said something like, "They hate us for our freedoms." From day one I knew that couldn't possibly be true. No one attacks someone else just because they have more liberty. The reasons for the attack are complicated no doubt, but they tend to boil down to a reaction to American imperialism. Speaking of liberty in this way debases it by making it a pretext for treading on the liberties of foreigners in the middle east and the people at home. Governments around the world have proved that Bush's retoric has a place: we the free people can say of most governments that, "They hate us for our freedoms."
The origin of conspiracy
I think the conspiracy theories are very significantly influenced by the convenience that the attacks afforded the US government, particularly Dick Chainey. In all times of great tragedy there are those that abuse it for gains in power or status or money, or all of the above. Those that capitalise on the events for personal gain are perfect fodder for the conspiracy theorists' delusions - after all, the gains are great, so they had motive to cause these events. In the case of 9/11 the invasion of Iraq is particularly glaring. To this day I don't know the motivation for doing it. By comparison, invading Afghanistan was perfectly logical (Bin Laden was a Saudi) and a measured response (more than 8000 civilians dead and counting) to the 9/11 attacks. I can only assume that it was galling that in 1991 they couldn't actually invade and they wanted to make up for it, combined with a perceived need for the oil security. If so, it's just about the most expensive oil ever bought, since it has cost at least $3 trillion, which is short to write but it's a truly catastrophic amount of money, and if anything it's a gross underestimate since many fine young men have suffered severe and permanent physical and mental trauma, and of course a fair number have been killed in action.
Leaving aside the legitimacy and pointfullness of the war, though, it's a great "motive" for the 9/11 theorists to cite. Apparently the desire by some to go to war was so extreme that they would go to enormous lengths to make it happen, even orchestrating a terrorist attack. Here follows some conspiracy theories and my generalised rebuttal.
Controlled demolition
For me, this one pretty much takes the cake in terms of implausibility. The American government secretly wired a building in the middle of their greatest city with explosives? The explosives were not set off by the massive shock of a heavy jet hitting them and the resultant jet-fuel fireball? And they worked perfectly, just at the moment the towers were starting to fall?
and someone was watching, waiting for the perfect moment to set them off even though the buildings might easily have collapsed anyway? This gets a full 5/5 flying saucers. There are some outstanding facts that are hard to explain for the "conventional" school (i.e., the buildings came down because they were hit by heavy jets and exposed to extensive, raging fires) but 9/11 is a unique event, so there are bound to be some facts that are hard to understand. A mysterious fountain of sparks that looks suspiciously like thermite is one example. Unfortunately quite a few "experts" have gone on record as saying that it was controlled demolition. I'm all for academic freedom, but these guys are missing a trick: THE BUILDINGS WERE HIT BY HEAVY JETS. Stress concentration is one thing I see not mentioned by any structural or materials engineer who goes for the controlled demolition theory. When combined with fire, it's obvious to me why these buildings failed while no other steel structure has ever collapsed due to fire. A significant amount of the supporting structure had been wiped out asymmetrically. This would seem to cause a torque on the whole building around where the plane hit, and combined with the effect of heat lowering the yield stress of steel ... like I said, obvious.
Aircraft autopiloted into WTC
This is as daft possibly even dafter than the one above. The terrorists were in the cockpit. They had taken flying lessons. We have lots of documentary evidence for both of those facts. So why is it that someone would insist the planes were guided into the WTC by their autopilots which had been remote programmed? I'm not saying this is impossible, but on a scale of 1 to 5 UFOs it gets 4.5 for sheer brain shutdown.
United 93 was quickly removed/shot down by missile
This is one the conspiracy theorists have right. The wreckage from United 93 was removed very fast - at the moment of impact, in fact. By an enormous jet fuel fireball. The circumstances of its crash were unlike most aircraft crashes. Most aircraft crashes that happen on land are what you might call a severely botched landing. The pilots try to land or mitigate the crash so lose altitude slowly if possible and come in parallel to the ground. Tragically, the evident struggle in the cockpit of that plane caused the controls to be manipulated in such a way that the plane made a hard right bank - I'm guessing a rudder hard-over, which would be consistent with someone kicking indescriminately if they were struggling - and then went nose first into the ground. Such an impact is unusual in that there is a lot of force acting directly on the airframe, causing it to shatter into much smaller pieces than normal. The concomitant fireball would send these pieces right out of the park. The sheer number of witness accounts make this one a fairly watertight case so I give it 4.5 crop circles out of five.
In a sense all of these conspiracy theories are the same. It's always the government or "they" - forces within the government - that is doing it to its own people. And in a sense they have it right - all governments do terrible things to their own people, especially in this current age of unprecedented power over their people. But conspiracy theorists also miss the point. Airing conspiracies with house of cards levels of documentation is not going to convince people en masse - indeed, a lot of sites propound a whole swathe of conspiracy theories, some legitimate concerns, and others complete bunkum, and in doing this play into the hands of any forces that genuinley want to keep certain information out of public eye. The best place for a true conspiracy is among half a dosen fakes. That way no one with an ounce of common sense is going to believe any of it. In that way there is conspiracy hegemony: either you believe all the conspiracies (if you have taken leave of your senses) or you believe none. To give serious thought to any conspiracy automatically moves you in to the conspiracy camp and gives your word the same weight as someone who still believes in aliens, so few people would do it.
Conspiracy theorists' credibility problem derives from their ignorance of Ockham's razor and Hanlon's razor. Combine this with sources that themselves are not credible (some have reasonably scientific methods but also point to other conspiracy sites or known conspiracists) and cherry-picking of evidence, and you have total loss of credibility. The only difference between an investigative journalist and a conspiracist is that one is a lot more rigorous. In short, conspiracists suffer from insufficient skepticism and rigor. Until and unless they get their act together there's little chance that any genuinely concerning things they report will ever become known before it's too late to do anything about them.
The other major problem with all of these conspiracy theories is they fail to draw attention to the civil liberties that were considered basic human rights before the attacks but have since been eroded or destroyed. New powers were granted the government, just as new powers were granted Hitler during crises, and these powers were mostly used to repress ordinary citizens, although the rhetoric was about protecting the public from sleeper terrorists and the like.
I always cringed when Bush said something like, "They hate us for our freedoms." From day one I knew that couldn't possibly be true. No one attacks someone else just because they have more liberty. The reasons for the attack are complicated no doubt, but they tend to boil down to a reaction to American imperialism. Speaking of liberty in this way debases it by making it a pretext for treading on the liberties of foreigners in the middle east and the people at home. Governments around the world have proved that Bush's retoric has a place: we the free people can say of most governments that, "They hate us for our freedoms."
2 comments:
The true masterminds behind 9/11 were clearly the Hollywood movie studios. Motivation? They'd made all the Vietnam war movies they possibly good and needed new material. I found the proof for this when decoded the secret message that can be seen while watching Jarhead backwards at 1.5x normal speed.
That's funny, I tried watching Jarhead backwards at 1.5x speed and the secret message turned out to be "9/11 conspiracy theories are nonsense, any questions?"
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