Basic argument

koala · Site Admin Joined: 12 Oct 2006 Posts: 712

Unlike the official account, which suggests that the perpetrators (the terrorists) got much more than they bargained for, conspiracy theorists assume that the 9/11 attacks achieved more-or-less exactly their intended result. They therefore draw conclusions about the motives for 9/11 by looking at its consequences. Among these they emphasize the powerful military presence of the US in the Middle East (implying, they say, increased control over oil and natural gas reserves), the significant increase in funding for the American military and the intelligence community, the restrictions on civil liberties (often presented as an attack on the US constitution), and a general will to rule the world through brute military force. 9/11, the argument goes, was a convenient opportunity for certain elements of the American establishment, and the Bush administration in particular, to achieve key foreign and domestic policy goals that had been determined in advance of the attacks.

Many point to the writings of neoconservative strategists to suggest that 9/11 was, at best, on their 'wish list' and, at worst, on their list of 'things to do'. The standard reference in presenting this idea has become a document titled Rebuilding America's Defenses, which was written by the Project for the New American Century. This document outlines a global strategy that conspiracy theorists say is very similar in its details to the military strategy of the War on Terror. The document includes the line "the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event - like a new Pearl Harbor." On this basis, David Ray Griffin and others have presented an argument that draws a parallel to a particular interpretation of the Japanese Attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941, according to which Roosevelt both provoked the attack and allowed it to happen in order to have a pretext for American entry into the second world war. Conspiracy theorists believe that 9/11 constitutes a "new Pearl Harbor" in at least this sense (LIHOP), many also adding the element of "false flag terrorism", i.e., that the attacks were organized by at least some of its supposed beneficiaries (MIHOP).