Joining Rosie On The Melted Steely Knoll
Mark Steyn coins a new phrase for the folks who are screeching that 9/11 was an "inside job". The man has a way with words. Today's column in the Orange County Register looks at the war on terror and the odd way people are looking at it and some of the bizarre, uniquely American responses.
Six years on, most Americans are now pretty certain what they'll wake up to in the morning: There'll be a thwarted terrorist plot somewhere or other – last week, it was Germany. Occasionally, one will succeed somewhere or other, on the far horizon – in Bali, Istanbul, Madrid, London. But not many folks expect to switch on the TV this Tuesday morning, as they did that Tuesday morning, and see smoke billowing from Atlanta or Phoenix or Seattle. During the IRA's 30-year campaign, the British grew accustomed (perhaps too easily accustomed) to waking up to the news either of some prominent person's assassination or that a couple of grandmas and some schoolkids had been blown apart in a shopping center. It was a terrorist war in which terrorism was almost routine. But, in the six years since President Bush declared that America was in a "war on terror," there has been in America no terrorism.
In theory, the administration ought to derive a political benefit from this: The president has "kept America safe." But, in practice, the placidity of the domestic front diminishes the chosen rationale of the conflict: if a "war on terror" has no terror, who says there's a war at all? That's the argument of the left – that it's all a racket cooked up by the Bushitlerburton fascists to impose on America a permanent national-security state in which, for dark sinister reasons of his own, Dick Cheney is free to monitor your out-of-state phone calls all day long.
Judging from the blithe expressions of commuters doing the shoeless shuffle through the security line at LAX and O'Hare, most Americans seem relatively content with a permanent national-security state. It's a curious paradox: airports on permanent Orange Alert, and a citizenry on permanent … well, I'm not sure there's a Homeland Security color code for "Gaily Insouciant," but, if there is, it's probably a bland limpid pastel of some kind. Of course, if tomorrow there's a big smoking hole where the Empire State Building used to be, we'll be back to: "The president should have known! This proves the failure of his policies over the last six years! We need another all-star commission filled with retired grandees!"
That very lack of terrorist acts inside America is partially responsible for the rise in conspiracy theories. Its an odd problem. The British became essentially numb to terror because of over-familiarity, we appear to have become numb to terror because of a lack of terror. (Neither Steyn nor I am arguing that there should be any terror, mind you. It's just pointing out that you can reach the same end result from two completely different paths.) Steyn points out the exact same thing one commenter did here about the "truthers": any government sufficiently evil and sufficiently capable of actually attacking its own citizens on 9/11 - performing that "inside job - would have simply made the truthers disappear when they first raised their heads. Period. If you can buy the garbage that CheneyBushHailliburtonHitlerCo pulled off 9/11, making a truther disappear in an accident would be child's play. And it would have happened.
So we reach a point where easily-led people are jostling to take their place with Rosie on her melted steely knoll and are paying no attention to the real menace that really does exist. We have 9/11 families suing everyone in America over the terror act - but not the real perpetrators. We have grown numb to the reality and turned inward. We allow ourselves to become mired in a swamp of legalities and conspiracies and our (quite real) enemies laugh at us.
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By blubonnet, Sunday, 9 September , 2007 @ 4:25 pm
Click onto the various links throughout the site to hear testimonies of those that were there, including firemen. AT the top of the screen are the various categories of individuals, including structural engineers, architects, physicists, mettalurgists, Congress people, pilots, former CIA, former FBI director, military intelligence people, military intelligence people who have studied terrorism their entire careers, former NASA director, investigative journalists, and many many other highly credible individuals, who have studied the films, dozens of which have firefighters stating the multiple explosions, before the gag order had been put on them. At the bottom of the screen are half dozen films which you should watch. The evidence is irrefutable that explosions, that baffled and horrified the firefighters (who know what to expect in any fire, since they have studied every scientific aspect of fire). Please study the information, and pass it along. Thank you.
There are numerous peer reviewed reports from relevant (to the collapse of the twin towers) professionals that have studied the events and made assessments of what occurred, and it is obvious that the government story is full of holes. EVEN the 911 Commissioners were angry at the deceptions, and stonewalling that occurred while they were trying to do their work, and have made statements expressing just that.
Yes it is shocking. Yes it is hard to believe. Yes, however, it is all true!!! The majority of the population is now questioning ther government story, rightfully so, and with a raised eyebrow, you should be to.
By Gaius, Sunday, 9 September , 2007 @ 5:02 pm
DO not put links to your particular derangement on my site. If it was true, oh brave truther - you would be dead right now.
By Gaius, Sunday, 9 September , 2007 @ 5:29 pm
One thing about your amazing 200 or so engineers and architects that you’re so very proud of: there are, as of 2006, 2,430,250 people in that category according to the BLS.
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm#b00-0000
In other words, you have noise on the system, not a wave. Compare your sample with the mental health statistics. It might be informative.
But do not ever hotlink to any of your madness on my site. Ever.