9/11 Conspiracy Theories Live
When most Americans hear these theories, they just laugh – it never occurs to them that anyone could take them seriously. The New York Times does an article on 9/11 conspiracy theories just as that tragic anniversary approaches:
9/11 Rumors That Become Conventional Wisdom
Justin Lane for The New York Times
CAIRO — Seven years later, it remains conventional wisdom here that Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda could not have been solely responsible for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, and that the United States and Israel had to have been involved in their planning, if not their execution, too.
Many in Cairo see the attacks as part of an anti-Muslim plot.
This is not the conclusion of a scientific survey, but it is what routinely comes up in conversations around the region — in a shopping mall in Dubai, in a park in Algiers, in a cafe in Riyadh and all over Cairo.
“Look, I don’t believe what your governments and press say. It just can’t be true,” said Ahmed Issab, 26, a Syrian engineer who lives and works in the United Arab Emirates. “Why would they tell the truth? I think the U.S. organized this so that they had an excuse to invade Iraq for the oil.”
It is easy for Americans to dismiss such thinking as bizarre. But that would miss a point that people in this part of the world think Western leaders, especially in Washington, need to understand: That such ideas persist represents the first failure in the fight against terrorism — the inability to convince people here that the United States is, indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims.
“The United States should be concerned because in order to tell people that there is a real evil, they too have to believe it in order to help you,” said Mushairy al-Thaidy, a columnist in the Saudi-owned regional newspaper Asharq al Awsat. “Otherwise, it will diminish your ability to fight terrorism. It is not the kind of battle you can fight on your own; it is a collective battle.”
There were many reasons people here said they believed that the attacks of 9/11 were part of a conspiracy against Muslims. Some had nothing to do with Western actions, and some had everything to do with Western policies.
Again and again, people said they simply did not believe that a group of Arabs — like themselves — could possibly have waged such a successful operation against a superpower like the United States. But they also said that Washington’s post-9/11 foreign policy proved that the United States and Israel were behind the attacks, especially with the invasion of Iraq.
“Maybe people who executed the operation were Arabs, but the brains? No way,” said Mohammed Ibrahim, 36, a clothing-store owner in the Bulaq neighborhood of Cairo. “It was organized by other people, the United States or the Israelis.”
You can read the entire article at The New York Times.
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watch zeitgeist. period.
i was wondering why did you post this story now ?
i can’t believe it , i totally forgot that tomorrow is the 911 anniversary .
Age is catching up wz me i guess
its never gonna end… people would come up with more and more ideas and theories
lol i love that attitude here,… it says “we cant have been responsible cos we’re too stupid to pull it off”
meh, maybe theyre right.
Mrm – WHHHAAAATTTFFFF? What is zeitgeist? A movie?
Daggero – It’s a day or mourning for me. A day when hatred and differences captured the attention of the world. It’s not the world I want to build.
Ansam – some of the theories are truly whacko, and some have created entire subsets of conspiracy theories to support them.
Skunk – Funny and sad at the same time, huh?
“indeed, waging a campaign against terrorism, not a crusade against Muslims”
This sentence actually reminded me of GW bush,, aparently he believed it was a new crusade and told the world so !
As for who had done it, the important thing now is that people who had nothing to do with 911 were and still are being killed for that incident, i truly wish this file would just end and everyone would go on with their lives !
My heart goes out to the thousands killed on 911 and the hundreds of thousands killed after and their fammilies ..
thanks for the post
http://www.zeitgeistmovie.com/
good movie
Thanks for your comments, Abdul Aziz.
Thank you, Hasnah. I will take a look.
At a departure gate area in an American airport maybe Houston i once noticed a lot of the passengers were hugging and kissing each other passionately , and i thought to myself hmmm how come those passengers doing this ,i mean you cant be already messing your companion if they are traveling with you ????!!!!!
Then i found out that they were the passengers’ families , relatives and friends saying their goodbyes as they were allowed to come all the way up to the departure gates with them.
Of course that was in the 90s’. when American airports had so much freedom and were lots of fun to go to as evidenced by the throngs of Harri Krishna followers asking for donations and giving you a small American flag sticker or something as a token of their appreciation.
Those days are gone for good unfortunately , now airports world wide are just human processing plants with a touch of cruelty added for good measure and something to put up with or to avoid altogether if at all possible .
third line typo Missing not messing , maybe a freudian slip
I agree with you about airports being a cruel kind of cattle call, Daggero, at least the departure side of it.
We love to be waiting for people coming in at the Kuwait airport – brides arriving in their white wedding dresses and flowers being thrown, grandma and grandpa arriving back from the Hajj and veiled women ululating, huge crowds of family greeting returning college students – sometimes grads in their robes . . . we love the airport arrivals in Kuwait.
Oh yeah the arrival scene at Kuwait airport , you know the arriving bride in her white dress is strictly an Egyptian thing , i have not seen any other nationality do this .
I always get worried when this happens because i look at the face of the Egyptian groom who inevitably has a wicked smirk on his face waiting for the bride to show up .
Can you imagine what would this horny guy who has been hold up in a Farwaneya apartment as a bachelor for say the last five years would do on their first night alone . That send shivers down my spine , and i am no relative to bride either but in humanity only.
Daggero – that groom has years ahead of him with this woman, and all the restraint and self-discipline of Islam to help him restrain himself! God willing, he is patient and gentle and tender with a new bride!
And if the groom is Coptic then what :)?