I agree that conspiracy theorists can be a nuisance at organizing meetings, and many or most are uninformed and incurious about larger forces at work, but that doesnt mean the theory itself is wrong or not useful. Perhaps we should say "inquiry" instead of "theory", because the teaching value of the event is not who did it, but that the official story is so inadequate.
Most people dont get to political awareness in a single stroke -- they go through stages. One of the early ones is recognition that most of what the government says is shadow play (in Plato's sense.) 9-11 is a prime example of shadow play at work, and a very powerful and in-your-face one because it launched the nation on a hysterical and delusionary course of action. Once you recognize the lie in the official explanation, you are in a position to see the whole web of lies which have followed it, and eventually to ask "who benefits from this?" Even if your thinking only leads you to PNAC, or Israel, or Halliburton, you have gone quite a way to recognizing a fundamental truth -- the existence of classes, and the capture of the mechanisms of government by the owner class.
BobW
--- Yoshie Furuhashi <critical.montages at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 7/13/07, Robert Wrubel <bobwrubel at yahoo.com>
> wrote:
> > There are elements in our government that have
> carried
> > out assassinations and false flag operations
> before
> > this, and it's not beyond the realm of the
> possible
> > that they were involved in 9-11. At the very
> least,
> > they could have known the attack was coming and
> chosen
> > not to prevent it.
> >
> > I dont see anything wrong with contemplating such
> a
> > possibility, or seeing that a ruling class, when
> > backed to the wall, is capable of such dark deeds,
> as
> > long as it doesnt become the end point of one's
> > analysis.
>
> For conspiracy theorists, speculation is the be-all
> and end-all.
> There is no serious leftist who was once a
> conspiracy theorist, though
> there are once serious liberals and leftists who
> have become
> conspiracy theorists, probably because Marxism at
> the most vulgar and
> liberal interests group theory are both similar to
> conspiracy theory.
> Conspiracy theory, as well as vulgar Marxism and
> liberal interests
> group theory, is _not a halfway station but a
> fundamental obstacle_ to
> understanding the most basic insights of historical
> materialism
> regarding how the whole (the capitalist mode of
> production) determines
> its parts and how contradiction (between capital and
> labor) inherent
> in the whole drives its transformation.
>
> Conspiracy theory is now especially popular, because
> Washington's
> Middle East policy is difficult to understand for
> many people, given
> its dual support for Israel and Saudi Arabia, both
> of which complicate
> its Iraq War.* So, some conspiracy theorists, like
> former Marxist
> James Petras, say that Bush is a puppet of Israel,
> and others, like
> liberal Craig Ungar, think that Bush is an Arabian
> candidate. Both
> are dumb ways of looking at Middle East policy, and
> so is "peak oil"
> theory, another conspiracy theory.
>
> What the US government, be it under the Republican
> or Democratic White
> House, seeks to do to oil-rich Iran and Venezuela is
> essentially the
> same as what it seeks to do to resource-poor Nepal
> and Cuba: to
> replace leaders who must take the interests of the
> majority into
> account, to one degree or another, by those who
> represent only the
> interests of the capitalist class and who do not act
> against the
> wishes of their imperial master. That is the
> essence of capitalist
> imperialism, especially after the age of colonial
> empires competing
> with one another to directly colonize and govern
> foreign lands. Often
> Washington succeeds in doing what it wants to do,
> sometimes it fails.
> Sometimes it makes war unilaterally, other times
> multilaterally, yet
> other times through proxies (as in Somalia);
> sometimes it prefers
> coups (like the one against Mohamed Mosadeq's
> government) and other
> styles of regime change (like the so-called "Color
> Revolutions")
> following economic sanctions (the strategy it is now
> pursuing against
> Iran) to war. Whether it succeeds or fails, its
> project will be the
> same as long as it remains the hegemon, the military
> and economic
> guarantor of the capitalist system.
>
> *
>
<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-saudi15jul15,0,3132262.story?coll=la-home-world>
> THE CONFLICT IN IRAQ: SAUDI ROLE IN INSURGENCY
> Saudis' role in Iraq insurgency outlined
> Sunni extremists from Saudi Arabia make up half the
> foreign fighters
> in Iraq, many suicide bombers, a U.S. official says.
> By Ned Parker
> Times Staff Writer
>
> July 15, 2007
>
> BAGHDAD — Although Bush administration officials
> have frequently
> lashed out at Syria and Iran, accusing it of helping
> insurgents and
> militias here, the largest number of foreign
> fighters and suicide
> bombers in Iraq come from a third neighbor, Saudi
> Arabia, according to
> a senior U.S. military officer and Iraqi lawmakers.
>
> About 45% of all foreign militants targeting U.S.
> troops and Iraqi
> civilians and security forces are from Saudi Arabia;
> 15% are from
> Syria and Lebanon; and 10% are from North Africa,
> according to
> official U.S. military figures made available to The
> Times by the
> senior officer. Nearly half of the 135 foreigners in
> U.S. detention
> facilities in Iraq are Saudis, he said.
>
> Fighters from Saudi Arabia are thought to have
> carried out more
> suicide bombings than those of any other
> nationality, said the senior
> U.S. officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity
> because of the
> subject's sensitivity. It is apparently the first
> time a U.S. official
> has given such a breakdown on the role played by
> Saudi nationals in
> Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgency.
>
> He said 50% of all Saudi fighters in Iraq come here
> as suicide
> bombers. In the last six months, such bombings have
> killed or injured
> 4,000 Iraqis.
>
> The situation has left the U.S. military in the
> awkward position of
> battling an enemy whose top source of foreign
> fighters is a key ally
> that at best has not been able to prevent its
> citizens from
> undertaking bloody attacks in Iraq, and at worst
> shares complicity in
> sending extremists to commit attacks against U.S.
> forces, Iraqi
> civilians and the Shiite-led government in Baghdad.
>
> The problem casts a spotlight on the tangled web of
> alliances and
> enmities that underlie the political relations
> between Muslim nations
> and the U.S.
>
> Complicated past
>
> In the 1980s, the Saudi intelligence service
> sponsored Sunni Muslim
> fighters for the U.S.-backed Afghan mujahedin
> battling Soviet troops
> in Afghanistan. At the time, Saudi intelligence
> cultivated another man
> helping the Afghan fighters, Osama bin Laden, the
> future leader of Al
> Qaeda who would one day turn against the Saudi royal
> family and
> mastermind the Sept. 11 attacks on New York and the
> Pentagon. Indeed,
> Saudi Arabia has long been a source of a good
> portion of the money and
> manpower for Al Qaeda: 15 of the 19 hijackers in the
> Sept. 11 attacks
> were Saudi.
>
> Now, a group that calls itself Al Qaeda in Iraq is
> the greatest
> short-term threat to Iraq's security, U.S. military
> spokesman Brig.
> Gen. Kevin Bergner said Wednesday.
>
> The group, one of several Sunni Muslim insurgent
> groups operating in
> Baghdad and beyond, relies on foreigners to carry
> out suicide attacks
> because Iraqis are less likely to undertake such
> strikes, which the
> movement hopes will provoke sectarian violence,
> Bergner said. Despite
> its name, the extent of the group's links to Bin
> Laden's
=== message truncated ===