[lbo-talk] Democracy Now 5/26

[Joseph Wanzala]

Actually Doug, so blinded are you by your bias against me that you make an 
argument I have not made, certainly not in my last post. The view that the 
neo-cons used (rather than engineered) the 9-11 attacks as a pretext to 
further their imperial designs is a passe view, which is expounded by 
Chalmer Johnson, Rahul Mahajan, Chomsky, and indeed by even Berlet on DN! 
this morning et al. Using an event as a pretext, is different from having 
necessaril;y engineered it. It is also passe that the Bush admin. had 
foreknowledge of the event, which is consistent with the opportunism theory. 

  and the pipeline is not fantastic see: 
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/1984459.stm

The point you base your attempt at sarcasm on, that elements of the US 
government may have been complicit in the planning and execution of the 
events of 9-11 in order to further aforesaid imperial plans, is one that 
certainly has been argued, but not as crudely as you put it. That is, the 
argument has been *complicity* with elements unknown - i.e Al Qaeda, as 
opposed to the whol pot having been hatched in the White House. It is easy 
to smugly dismiss what is obviously a very complex pattern of events, with 
evidentiary triibutaries leading in all kinds of directions. If you all 
dispise Bush so much, why are you giving succor to his ludicrous conspiracy 
theory that has Osama coordinating a complex terror attack on America froma 
cave in Afghanistan? Even Michael Moore, who has been well received in these 
quarters, has said that the 9-11 attacks, given the precision with which 
they were carried out resembled more a 'military' atack than a crude 
'terrorist' attack and Moore speculated that element of the Saudi military 
may have been involved and said that the alleged pilots, geven the skill 
they displayed could not have been trained at some rinky dink flight school 
in Florida. I have not heard Moore dismissed as a conspiray theorist even 
though he implicates the Saudis and suggests that the Bush adminstration is 
cravenly obligated to them. Can you say 'hypocrisy'?

p.s. what better example of dittoheadism than the posts by other people on 
this thread, which substitute smug sarcasm for honest dialog and analysis.


>From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com>
>Reply-To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org
>Subject: RE: [lbo-talk] Democracy Now 5/26
>Date: Wed, 26 May 2004 15:19:53 -0400
>
>Joseph Wanzala wrote:
>
>>One of the central points argued by Griffin and others is that the 9-11 
>>attacks provided a pretext for the war on Afghanistan, which had among 
>>other things to do with gaining strategic control over that region 
>>(Afghanistan being positioned between Central Asia and the oil rich former 
>>Soviet Republics). Falk wrote the foreward to Griffin's book *after* his 
>>article in the Nation in which he supported the intervention in 
>>Afghanistan. While Falk does not address his earlier position on 
>>Afghanistan, by writing the foreward, he is either contradicting himself 
>>(which I doubt) or changing his position. So, Griffin's book, whether you 
>>view it as conspiracy theory or not, *has* moved Falk in a more 
>>progressive direction. So you obviously have no point other than to attack 
>>'conspiracism' which as far as I can tell, is a phenomenon which occurs 
>>chiefly in the mind of  Chip Berlet and his dittoheads.
>
>So lemme see if I've got the politics of this straight. Bush & Co. 
>destroyed the WTC and a chunk of the Pentagon - killing a lot of its kind 
>of people - to take "control" of a country it still can't control, to build 
>a fantastic pipeline across Afghanistan? Then it invaded Iraq, alienating 
>Russia and the Arab world, to reinforce its control of oil, which it still 
>doesn't control, and isn't likely to? Doesn't that seem like a crazily 
>inefficient way of going about things?
>
>Doug
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