Like tent poles pushing up a tent, political events give shape to society, defining the social environment in which we live our daily lives. As we look back over time we may seem to see the tent poles shift and move, lengthen or shorten, grow in number, or shrink in number. And, curiously, as our perceptions change we find that the very shape and nature of the tent we all exist in may change, too, as a result.

It's not always immediately recognizable. And, once in motion, events have a way of getting behind us -- we forget how the tent got to be the shape it is.

During the Cold War the tent was easy to understand -- one side of the tent was for the Allies, the other side for the "Russkies." And, just as no decade or era ends neatly on December 31 of a year, the Cold War era, though over, continues to effect a certain mass mentality through to today, well after the demise of the Soviet Union.

So even though the after-effects of the Cold War can be felt today, it would be too easy to simply say that the Grand Schism between "East" and "West" continues to exist, now almost 15 years after the end of the U.S.S.R. *No one* would say that life today is still the same as it was in the '60s, or the '80s -- or, arguably, even compared to 2000.

Really the September 11, 2001, event has now become our contemporary paradigm, as foundational as one of the four original elements: Earth. Air. Water. 9-11.

In effect, the horrific events of that day have been manipulated into far more than just a defining calendar event -- the political packaging of it bears all the designs of a Year Zero for America -- the signature, telltale markings of a petty, thuggish style of Third World politics, now seeping up into American soil. (And thank the U.S. for the Khmer Rouge, too, by the way.)

This Year Zero paradigm has all the all-or-nothing drama of a forced tightrope walk -- the act serves above all else to intensify the question: "How will we ever live through this?!", as if the words were permanently burned across our field of vision. We are put into the position where one head-turn away from the miniature "good angel" on our right shoulder will forever damn us to be the "terrorist sympathizers" of Our Era.

This high-stakes game of life in the 21st century means that we may feel like we have Supreme Responsibility to be "anti-terrorist" and "patriotic." But to whom, or what, exactly, would we be signing our allegiance over to by being patriotic in 2006? Living up to patriotic standards could be a gargantuan and interminable project -- how do we know when we've gotten there?

I put that question there to serve as a disclaimer -- certainly there's nothing wrong with appreciating your country, especially the everyday people who compose it, but then what? Does patriotism have to mean the post-9-11-style of patriotism prescribed by the White House?

But if the White House line isn't really that satisfying, what then? Just giving the post-9-11 world a *definition* may be daunting enough, and yet we're also expected to live in it.

This is a very high price to ask for admission. Obviously much is riding on the day of 9-11 if we are said to be living in a post-9-11 world. The importance of the event behooves us to not allow any mystery or vagueness about the day to go unexamined.

Yeah, sure, sure, whatever -- it's been about 5 years now and we've all taken time to come to grips with it, right? -- surely no one's a straggler by this time, right?

But where is the clarity? Why the outstanding vagueness? What questions haven't been covered? Why, in comparison to the Hurricane Katrina disaster, do we not know more about what happened on 9-11 and about what was preventable?

9-11 is a multifaceted issue and becomes a complex proposition, no matter what someone's take on it is. A good starting point is to simply accept that it was a massive tragedy. Families everywhere were devastated by the loss of life, never mind the "events" and "politics" of it -- but this impact on human lives unfortunately pays right into the pool of political capital that funds the definition of 9-11.

So, once again, there is much at stake. How could this tragedy *possibly* have occurred *at all*? To narrow it down we can consider the options: There are only three possibilities, in terms of the role of government. Either it failed to defend itself on that day, it had some measure of crippling incompetence or inability -- or, it had some degree of complicity with the attacks. Please take a moment to think about this, and I dare anyone to point out an un-thought-of possibility here.

To further address this key issue of responsibility I will borrow from Epicurus by rhetorically asking:

- Was the government willing to prevent 9-11 but not able? (Incompetence.)

- Was the government able, but not willing? (Negligence or complicity.)

- Was the government both able and willing? (Negligence or incompetence.)

- Or, was the government neither able, nor willing?

This fourth possibility defines precisely what is at stake for all of us regarding 9-11. Regardless of who you are or what your political persuasion is, the question is inescapable. Could the government be systematically, functionally *incapable*, or even *unwilling*, to have forestalled the tragedies of 9-11?

It would not overstate things to say that this question has already become the number-one defining and determining political question for the 21st century so far.

I will not even attempt to run down every piece of evidence that's available, or try to convince the reader of my perspective on 9-11. There is already an abundance of freely available research -- I think one can only make the journey oneself, to try to fill the void on how this terrible day could have happened.

If the reader decides that the government is partly culpable for the tragedy then one must also be living in a world in which some forces are able to level the World Trade Center buildings and then blame it on Arabs and Muslims.

But Arabs, Muslims, and even al Qaeda would be off the hook if at least one of the participants used their U.S. government access, or power, to facilitate the attacks.

I, for one, have now come to see Moussaoui as being a lynching victim. This comes from my conclusion that the government had a hand in perpetrating both the initial tragedy, and also the subsequent frame-ups. Many regular Arabs and Muslims became immediate targets and victims in the rush-to-war hysteria, premised on the government's line on 9-11.

So the ins and outs of 9-11 are gigantic. The entire nature of U.S. foreign policy has been shaped in a post-9-11 mold. Will the average consumer, after perceiving 9-11, view the U.S. as poor-little-rich-boy or as vile insider?

If you haven't examined the available evidence yet, please do so. A sound scientific forensic method will yield sound conclusions and judgments about what happened that day -- despite the size of the stakes one can still manuever well through the issues to arrive at a response to the key question: *Could the government have been incapable or unwilling to have forestalled the 9-11 tragedy?*

I have reached the conclusion that the upper levels of the U.S. government had its hands on the levers which set the tragedies to unfold.

But, being at the end of *my* investigative journey, I have made certain commitments based on the implications of 9-11 being an "inside job."

This "inside job" conclusion is *not* shared by everyone, but more and more people are taking another, closer, careful look at the events. They are reaching conclusions that conflict with the government's "main line" explanation for it. And we are not ending our activities with the statement that "The U.S. government was complicit in facilitating the attacks of 9-11."

Culpability begets moves towards *some* kind of process of justice: What should happen to the perpetrators? What motivated them? What did they gain from it?

The most shocking thing from all of this is the reality that there is an elite which was able to use government machinery to pull it all off. Fortunately the elite left their calling card *before* the 9-11 attacks, in well-worded documents of intent -- the group is PNAC, the Project for a New American Century.

The forces of PNAC's ilk were enabled to pursue their foreign policy plans against Afghanistan and Iraq, all thanks to 9-11.

At this point I will go out-on-a-limb here and ask the reader to entertain the notion that, even if the elite were not specifically PNAC, that the U.S. would still have made moves towards occupying Afghanistan and Iraq regardless.

In other words, there are larger, longer-term forces at play which would only be satisfied with aggressive moves against nations in the Middle East. The attacks of 9-11 facilitated a mood of public opinion which allowed the pre-meditated invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq to proceed.

Further global territory has been breached since '01, thanks to the 9-11 world -- we've seen the U.S. rattle its saber against Iran and North Korea, and it's made large-scale moves into China's spheres of influence, most notably in foreign exchange rates and in elbowing China over mutually sought-after sources of energy reserves.

Reflecting yet another side of U.S. foreign policy, the mainstream press has recently been touting the reality of a new 'Cold War' against Russia, over economics and energy reserves, which has been playing out in the breakaway Caucasus republics.

Amidst this turbulence will we now be content to go back to the recliner, or to the armchair, and tune in to the nightly news, anxiously awaiting the next installment of reality as if it were a soap opera?

I certainly hope not. 9-11 is well past being an event at this point, and is better defined these days as a *movement*. This 9-11 Revealing the Truth conference in Chicago is a major part of a momentum that is snowballing, and will continue to snowball. As I write this I am looking forward to attending and getting a good sense of where things can go now that more people have done some homework.

At the same time it's valid to ask: In the face of such a determined and powerful faction -- one that kicked over the castle and blamed foreign invaders -- how do we face down such a force?

Are we doomed to individually slash at shadows, or is there a strategy, for the short-term and long-term, that will present an effective counter-force against such brazenness and grand schemes of power?

There is precedent -- this is not the first awakening of ordinary people to the machinations of power. The human story contains a solid history of rebellion, and even victories, against privileged power.

To finish, I would simply ask the reader for one last point of consideration -- that the machinery is motionless metal without the willing cooperation of those who are told to run it. While the powers-that-be may have the means to dastardly actions that the rest of us do not have, and would not want to have, they could be manuevered to a standstill if workers of all stripes turned toward collectively controlling the machinery instead of just conventionally carrying out orders for the murderous nation.

At this point, nothing less than a massive, worldwide cooperation of workers, acting in their own interests with the machinery in front of them, will be enough. We know that nothing from the White House or Wall Street will be in our best interests -- indeed, our requirements from the bounty of society will be ignored, as they have been to-date, unless we wrench it away from those who prefer to steer us like cattle.

Should we merely wait to suffer additional, future indignities on our lives and our intelligence from those who tirelessly work with the implements of mass deception?

Society, as it is, is set up to collectivize the costs of an operation while privatizing its benefits -- our goal, as ever, is to use the power of class to reverse that. Only class-based, collective action can throw that dynamic into reverse to build a society which will, intrinsically, collectivize the fruits of society while privatizing the costs involved -- with all invoices sent to the paymaster of the bourgeoisie.





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