> I totally reject the right wing efforts to shoot down Churchill, to
> censor him over *anything*.
> But his position is really bad on two accounts. First, He supports the
> official story, ie that 9/11 was an attack from the outside on America,
> only he celebrates it, much as the article by the Retort Group (my
> friend Iain Boal & Co.) in the New Left Review from last Summer did.
> Such people WANT to believe 9/11 was an attack on America, because such
> a view corresponds to their ideological needs. Two, his branding of the
No, it reflects the facts and the evidence. I'm willing to be skeptical of the official story, but I've found little if anything to be credible in the arguments of the 9-11 conspiracy critics. Truth be told, our friends on the Left have a tendency to believe elaborate theories that fit what they want to believe. It's also no surprise that the people who were involved in the 9-11 truth movement instantly flipped over into yelling about the "stolen election" last year. This is all pseudo-intellectual nonsense that is not much diferent than right wing theories we laugh at, like "intelligent design."
I believe that these conspiracy theorists are engaged in a racist reframing of the 9-11 events which aren't much different than what the UFO-Art Bell crowd think about the origin of the pyramids in Egypt. In case you don't follow these theories, they can't accept the fact that a bunch of brown people living in Egypt several thousand years ago were smart enough to build these great mountains of rock. They argue that these structures are so complex that aliens from outer space must have built them.
The conspiracy theory that the U.S. government organized the 9-11 attacks isn't much different. They refuse to accept Occam's Razor when it comes to what happen. A well-organized conspiracy to attack America was executed by a global network of people who took advantage of America's arrogance. The U.S. government didn't organize the attacks nor did they let them happen. The attacks were successful because the American ruling class was arrogant and complacent about their superpowers. Sure, they were aware that the attacks were a possibility, but being the racist, arrogant pricks that many Americans are, they thought that nothing on the level of 9-11 could ever happen to the U.S. In many ways, the American arrogance about it's power and impregnability are similar to other follies in world history such as the Maginot Line.
These are some of the reasons why I find Churchill's arguments so compelling. He is also articulating what many of the Left believe, but won't admit in public. 9-11 was the chickens coming home to roost after two centuries of American empire and imperialism.
Chuck