[Translated from Gegenargumente broadcast January 20 2004]
There are plenty of cryptic theories about what really happened on September 11, 2001. Two years after the attacks on the World Trade Center, a set of best-sellers were put on the market by renowned and esteemed authors, e.g. Andreas von Bülow, the expert on intelligence agencies and former German Minister of Defense, which follow one “enormous suspicion”: did the American government let the attacks happen with a blind eye, or did it possibly commit the attacks itself? Did the “geopolitical chess masters” in the White House sacrifice the “two towers” in order to achieve “global supremacy”?
“Qui bono?” – “who benefits?” – these authors ask and arrive at unambiguous findings:
“The most important lead for solving a crime is the motive. While one can prepare fingerprints, telephone calls, radio messages, pieces of rubble and even pieces of corpses or let them disappear according to discretion, the motive can never disappear. Because without the motive the act would never have happened. One can try at most to make false motives available in order to overlay the true motive. Also in in the case of 9/11 the true and false motives are in circulation … if one draws a sober balance according to the ‘who benefited from it’ principle, one finds that nearly the whole world had only disadvantages from the attacks … The only governments to which the attacks of September 11 are really useful are the United States and Israel. The USA used the unique opportunity and legitimacy in order to get a grip on the entire globe. They could change the subject from their disastrous economic situation and from home-made financial scandals as well as search at the same time for access to the oil resources of the Arab world.” (Gerhard Wisnewski, Operation 9/11, p. 289)
These dissenting theories begin with the question of “the motive“ for September 11 and with it they are basically finished: because the USA uses the attacks to justify its war, the authors conclude: the Bush administration must have devised the attacks or at least authorized them. They are so sure of their reason that with the argument “qui bono?” every circumstance that does not fit this accusation is explained as a mere appearance which they will not let mislead them. Every fact that doesn’t fit is denied or inserted into the worldview: it’s all not only an appearance, but a purposely constructed appearance, a consciously placed “false lead,” a “forgery.” In this way, the propagandistic exploiters of the act become criminals and conspirators who cover their evil deed with a yarn of “lies, deceptions and false leads,” those of “Brainwashington D.C.,” which are all the more finely woven the more inspection contradicts them. In short: if the suspicion is first of all in the world, it “grows” completely by itself and is hardly unsettled any more. The authors strictly insist that because of the cover up by the US authorities nobody can know exactly what really happened there – and they speak at such lengths free from the obligation to prove their assertions; their accusation can satisfy itself by casting doubts on the official version. Testimonies, documents, press reports, photos, etc., are questioned for “inconsistencies.” Each discrepancy bears new “open questions,” and the raising of so many open questions only proves too well that one has raised it rightfully and the thing must be somewhat fishy.
Certainly, this can convince only those who can be happily convinced and are already half convinced, but is also in reverse not refutable, particularly as the validity of every single piece of evidence is of no further importance anyway.
The authors of the conspiracy theories can present themselves as thinking “the unthinkable,” the staging of the attacks by US authorities, not primarily because of this “accumulation of inconsistencies,” but because they do not approve of the consequences which America sees itself entitled to by the attacks:
“It would be foolhardy to want to clear up the prehistory and action of 9/11 in detail without help from the giant apparatuses of the FBI, the CIA, the NSA or the Mossad. But doubts about the official version are sufficient to simply refuse allegiance to the American government with its representation of the events and the political as well as the military strategy derived from it of a ‘world war.’ This strategy endangers… the global peace. Ultimately, the extremely bloated American military apparatus not only threatens ‘preventive war,’ but also the removal of the United Nations as a countervailing factor between nations, it threatens the destruction of international law developed over decades, centuries.” (von Bülow, The CIA and September 11, p. 10).
In the foreign policy line that America has struck under the appeal to 9/11, von Bülow notes the averting of the established international agenda – which appears to him now and afterwards alike as a stronghold of peace and international justice. He does not want to let the official reasons count for this dangerous act of destruction of a world order dear to him – “war against the terrorism” – and promptly finds the truth in the strategic papers of American foreign policy:
“The plans laid down long before 9/11/2001 in discussion and in writing by the decisive representatives of the present American administration … aim at the protection of a century of American world domination, the containment of the billions of peoples of China and India, the prevention of the rise of competitive counter-powers on the Eurasian continent and ultimately access to oil reserves, the raw material becoming of strategic importance as it becomes more scarce, and the financial power associated with it. The Bush administration used the events of 9/11 without hesitating even for a moment in order to be able to implement and justify this already formulated policy in the course of the war against terror.” (von Bülow, p. 8)
Von Bülow thus does not delude himself about the imperialism of the USA – and if he would go into the reasons and goals of the American war program, then he would have a substantial list together and would already be finished. But it is just not like that. Of all things, the military re-organization of the world which, as he himself writes, is about nothing but US interests, about imperialistic competition maneuvers, about power and force, means that as a result he must critically examine whether it really happens because of the terrorist attack. Although they are against it, von Bülow and others do not want to say no to the legitimacy of such a “war against the terror” without further ado – but they rise very constructively and affirmatively to examine whether the tremendous break with the practices of international politics because of a just as tremendous, unprecedented attack on the American territory could perhaps nevertheless be in order.
Because to these critics of the USA, the right of official government authorities to destroy unofficial “terrorist” aggressors and insubordinate states appears to be so natural, they do not notice how much the different moral weights of the two violent sides in the eyes of the world public rely on the size and success of their respective power, and on nothing else at all. The authors do not find the radical use which Bush makes of the legal title for the “war against terror” sufficiently unmasked. If under the slogan “war against terror” America takes the occasion of the destruction of the two skyscrapers to define the entire globe as a battlefield and to dictate the inviolability of its power as a condition for peace for the rest of the world, then the authors do not believe the Americans, certainly not that this incident was really the reason for the “response” – but against it they dare only to contend that they did not in actual truth give the reason for it.
Here it is not enemies of imperialism who pipe up, but idealists of the existing international law and alternative Euro-nationalists who deny authorization to the annoying imperialism of the superior superpower. People who want to say nothing bad either about the annihilation of unofficial “terrorist” combatants nor the violent arranging of the world order, thus who do not find anything to oppose in the content of the American policy, think they are only able to oppose the war if they deny the facts from which the Bush administration builds the justification for it: von Bülow and the other fanatics of the just war against terrorism would not know how to make objections against a brute right to world wide self-defense and preventive attacks if the attacks on the twin towers had really taken place in the way they are represented. And vice versa – those who do not want to entitle this mental attitude of the gangsters in Washington must fiddle with “inconsistencies” in the “official version”!
The conspiracy theorists (Bröckers, Wisnewski, von Bülow) happily round off the idea that Bush and his crew do not deserve the confidence of the world with a character picture which has nothing more at all to do with the current wars and the 9/11 attacks. Digressions bring the authors to the core to the matter: here one finds out – from another author – that George Bush is a member of the same “reactionary New England fraternity” in whose order grandfather Prescott Bush “stole the head of the Apache chief Geronimo as a trophy,” later also still “became one of the most important financiers and supporter of the Nazi regime” (Bröckers); or that the US secret services are involved “closely with organized crime and the illegal weapons and drug trade” (Bröckers and Wisnewski), and above all that the administration maintains the best of relations with assassins (“Cads’ fighting when ended is soon mended: the Bush-bin Laden Connection”; “Bush and Bin”; “old comrades”; all in unison). Such an administration discredits itself by collaboration with the evil one! “The same terrorist!”, shout the authors and know exactly how they have to regard such a government that appoints itself to as holy a thing as the war against terrorists.
Thus the conception of the world is complete and, in the opinion of the authors, also everything that needs to be said about the current wars: one consistently sees in a power to which one does not want to believe in its legal title only the offense against law and morality: what interests the USA may have – this power is “only” concerned with power, thus “naked self-interest” and, already again laid bare, “naked force,” or a “real power politic without connection to morality and law,” von Bülow complains, apparently a follower of “interests” dressed up in a lot of prettified “morality” (von Bülow, p. 226). He calls it an “attack on the world,” the innocent; the war is not on terrorism, but “civilization,” the good. “Does the leading strata of the USA descend into blood lust?” asks Wisnewski (p. 349).
Conspiracy theories about September 11 may be popular – but in the democratic media they have a bad reputation. From the conservative NZZ (“an uncontrolled imagination run amok”) up to the alternative taz (“for some, life is marvelously simple”) the respectable press feels challenged to form a kind of counter-publicity and clear away the “wild conspiracy theories.” However: the conspiracy theorists did not invent the procedure of disgracing the world power by their own justifications and phraseologies, but take this over from the established press. Who familiarized its readers with revelations that the far-reaching actions of the world power are “in truth” not about the honorable fight against terrorism, but “only” “occupying the oil fields” or changing the subject from “bad economic data” or “polishing up the image of the President” in the fight against sinking poll numbers? Who then incessantly certifies that American propaganda lacks credibility and sees “George Bush’s failure of evidence!” – only because specialists searching in occupied Iraq cannot find “weapons of mass destruction”?! Where the respectable (European) press accuses the US more or less openly of abusing the terrorist attacks on the USA for the enforcement of national interests, the conspiracy theorists only continue this one step further and place the question on the authenticity of this “pretext”!
Obviously, the inability to perceive politics in a different way than from the standpoint of state morality and propaganda titles is not a matter of the eccentricity of a few journalistic outsiders, but an occupational illness. The democratic media makes a habit of thinking about politics primarily under the criterion of compliance with venerable principles; it knows nothing else of the world of politics than the dichotomy of a nice appearance – for which it has a lot to spare – and the pertinent suspicion that it could also be a mere appearance. Because it clings to the facade of politics, it is also ready to explain recent events as a mere facade which it is a matter of seeing through. That one may not believe politicians anyway, and above all foreign politicians, is a journalistic commonplace, certainly when they stress noble and venerable motives. One therefore does not find out the goals of politics in press conferences or take them from political acts – one views the “true” intentions of the powerful in scattered “indiscretions” – which one may not however carelessly fall for! – as well as through “insider information” – a modern word for the earlier servant’s perspective.
Then the view from “behind the scenes” always shows the same picture: behind the facade of responsibility for the community romps “party squabbling,” “jockeying for positions,” “nepotism” and other synonyms for the absence of responsibility. A critical media does not shy away from explaining the political program in a class society to be mere deception: the fulfillment of an honorable agenda is only faked, the politicians in truth are “only” – as if this would be a contradiction! – concerned with holding their own power. In the need “to be fooled by nothing,” the readership consumes publications which render outstanding services in the confusion of grounds with backgrounds, of criticism with exposé. People who do not allow their confidence in the free-market economy and democracy to be shaken are full of distrust for those responsible for them and gladly see hidden forces in control behind the events of recent history: the death of Lady Di – an assassination; the moon-landing of NASA – only faked in the desert, etc., etc.
If the conspiracy theorists are nevertheless inundated with such reproaches, then that is not because they abandon the spectrum of customary absurdity, but the terrain of the politically opportune. With all the bitterness in old Europe about the new course of “our American friends”: the provocative theory, which would have the new world rulers in the White House, in a repetition of a classical conspiracy theory about the Roman emperor Nero, covering their own metropolis with friendly fire in order to create a pretext for the establishment of a “new American century” – this assertion is then too venomous to be made diplomatically by the European junior partners of the USA and journalistically represented by the respectable press of these countries.
However, life itself always makes the most brutal jokes: while the world of bourgeois journalism cooks up their alternative conspiracy theories, the world of imperialism is full of practically effective conspiracy theories. The mother of all conspiracy theories about “9/11” comes, by the way, directly from the White House and includes not only a complete worldview, but also a world war program in an handy metaphor. The talk is of “the axis of evil,” together with its “weapons of mass destruction.”
As with every conspiracy theory from the centers of power, “the axis of evil” also originates in the view that the national interests of the USA are a profoundly entitled affair, thus naturally have to be considered limitless and absolute. In the process, God’s own country insists on transforming the attribute “justified” directly into its own subject: that is the starting point of the good, which from now on it signs under its name to authorize the interests which extend from America all over the globe. The world is to be ordered in its sense, and the world of “rogue states” begins wherever American directives are not welcomed as an unquestionable basis for the respective state reason. They assault this order, and therefore their state reason is a crime: evil. The fact that America takes exception to them is perceived as if their true state reason would consist of wanting to destroy the empire of the good.
With the “axis of evil” an image of a world conspiracy is drawn in which the individual rogue states are not only connected to each other, but also to a secret collective of aggressive anti-Americanism – it doesn’t matter that some of the states so designated may also be hostile to each other, such as Iraq and Iran which led a ten year war against each other. All the same: states produce “weapons of mass destruction” to pass them on to secret societies which can use them unrestrainedly because they have nothing to lose. If UN weapons inspectors cannot prove this, despite their intensive search for the possession of such weapons by these states, then this only proves too certainly their insidiousness – the worldview is just as waterproof as that of the conspiracy theories.
As a theory, the American version of the events is thus no less crackpot than that of von Bülow and company: where in one case it is the Mossad and the CIA, in the other case it is Saddam Hussein and the Taliban who are identified as the attackers behind the attackers. But the conspiracy theory from the White House does not aim to set a moral conception of the world into the right in order to then resign itself to the run of the world. In contrast to a worldview which ordinary people afford on occasion, the persecution complex fits not only a world power determined to wage war for its interests, but is also meant most practically: the US administration takes bloody seriously its moral fundamentalism, which knows in the world only good – which entitles it therefore to any atrocity – and evil which has no right to exist. With war it lets its value judgment about evil become reality and provides practical validity for its interests. And the USA requires adherents from the rest of the world by requiring belief in its conspiracy theory.
For this worldview, the USA has used the September 11 attacks as the material for an appeal. The disaster is constructed into an unforgettable item in the emotional life of the nation: “Ground Zero” is a monument to the inviolable unity of people and leaders, welded together by a sneak attack by foreign criminals, and a symbol of the justice of American power, which expiates this crime. All this is so common to the American public that a mere indication of the date of the attacks is sufficient, with “9/11,” to call up everything that is needed for the justification of the current wars. The American administration does not undertake this effort because such a peace-loving people as the Americans can only be enticed to wage war through deceit. The reverse: the argument “9/11” can make sense only to someone who is ready to be dragged into war by the validity of the American legal claims. Exactly like with the dissenting opinions, partisanship is the father of the conviction with national propaganda; also here the moral attitude requires only illustrative material which does not manufacture the attitude, but offers to confirm it.
In order to explain to itself and to the rest of the world its own right to the respective war, no party to war wants it to be said that they took the first step in the competition of weapons without necessity; the belief that in each case one always only “shoots back” belongs to the self-representation of every nation that wages war. The history of war of civilized nations is full of myths and legends; and a number of fabricated incidents, for example in its time the famous “incident of Tonking” as the occasion of the escalation of the Vietnam war, also belong to the history of the American entry to war. Thus a patriotic sense of justice creates facts for itself, and the patriotic mind gets the deception that it asks for.