David Ray Griffin: Preeminent Importance of 9/11

2007-06-25

Richard Moore

Original source URL:
http://www.serendipity.li/wot/importance_of_9-11.htm

The Preeminent Importance of 9/11
by David Ray Griffin

Introduction

In March 2007 the progressive Jewish magazine Tikkun published an article by 
Professor David Griffin entitled "The American Empire and 9/11". This is in fact
the first substantial 9/11 truth article ever published in a national magazine 
in the U.S., and is an excellent, succinct overview of the most powerful 
arguments for 9/11 being an inside job.

Prof. Griffin begins by noting that it is now generally acknowledged that there 
is an American empire, the only disagreement being as to its nature, whether 
benevolent and magnanimous, or aiming at a fascist domination of the world. He 
writes:

The historical evidence clearly supports [a] non-benign view of the American 
empire. Part of this evidence is the fact that U.S. political and military 
leaders have arranged ³false-flag operations² as pretexts for war. We did this 
to begin the wars with Mexico and the Philippines and to begin the full-out 
attack on Vietnam.

After mentioning Operation Northwoods he raises the question as to whether in 
fact

[the] 9/11 attacks were false-flag attacks orchestrated by the Bush 
administration to enlarge the U.S. empire under the cover of the ³war on 
terror.²

He states that an examination of the evidence provides a strong prima facie case
for official complicity, and goes on to summarize the evidence in answers to six
questions:

  1. How Could Hijacked Airliners Have Struck the WTC and the Pentagon?

  2. Why Did the Twin Towers and Building 7 of the WTC Collapse?
  3. Could the Official Account of the Pentagon Possibly Be True?

  4. Why Did the President and His Secret Service Agents Remain at the School?

  5. Why Did the 9/11 Commission Lie about Vice President Cheney's Activities?

6. Did the Bush-Cheney Administration Have Motives for Orchestrating the 9/11 
Attacks?

Interested readers (and who cannot be interested in solving the most heinous 
crime committed so far this century?) may read the evidence presented in Prof. 
Griffin's answers to these questions either in the article published on Tikkun's
website here or in this PDF file (82 KB). The remainder of this web page 
contains the Conclusion from Prof. Griffin's article (which is followed by an 
Afterword, which is not reproduced here).


Conclusion: The Preeminent Importance of 9/11

The above evidence [presented in the answers to the six questions], plus the 
fact that all the ³evidence² that seems to implicate the alleged hijackers, such
as cellphone calls, airport photos, and discovered luggaqe and passports, 
appears to have been fabricated, leads to the conclusion that 9/11 was a 
false-flag operation orchestrated by the Bush administration for primarily 
imperial reasons.[88]

If this conclusion is correct, then exposing the falsity of the official account
of 9/11 should be high on the agenda of all people committed to reversing the 
present policies of the U.S. government, for at least four reasons.

First, 9/11 has provided the pretext for at least most of the malevolent and 
destructive policies carried out by the Bush-Cheney administration since that 
day. When any objection is raised to this administration¹s illicit policies ‹ 
from illegal invasions to torture to illegal spying to weaponizing space to talk
of a nuclear first strike ‹ the answer is always the same: ³The critics fail to 
understand that the world changed on 9/11.² Until the truth about 9/11 is 
exposed, it will remain a blank check for virtually anything desired by this 
administration.

Second, the truth about 9/11 is one truth that the American people would not 
tolerate. They have proven remarkably, even disturbingly, tolerant of many other
things ‹ such as the clear indication from the Downing Street memo that the Bush
administration planned to ³fix² the intelligence about Iraq¹s WMDs ‹ that should
have led to demands for impeachment.[89] But the American people simply would 
not allow an administration to stay in power after learning that it had 
orchestrated the attacks of 9/11.

Third, the orchestration of the attacks of 9/11 goes far beyond any previous 
instance of ³high crimes and misdemeanors² that have previously been cited as 
cause for impeachment. The attacks were ‹ in the words of Bush, Cheney, and 
Rumsfeld themselves ‹ heinous crimes. Any U.S. citizens who participated in 
planning, carrying out, and/or covering up these attacks are guilty of treason, 
as defined by Article 3 of the U.S. Constitution, because these attacks were 
acts of war against the United States ‹ again, according to the assessment of 
Bush, Cheney, and Rumsfeld themselves. If this treason is not publicly uncovered
and prosecuted, there is little hope for the survival of the democratic forms we
still have. If we fail to have a serious investigation of the prima facie 
evidence for such treason ‹ especially given the fact that this evidence, once 
examined, is overwhelming[90] ‹ we will in effect be telling the perpetrators 
that they can get away with virtually anything.

Finally, to reverse the policies of the Bush-Cheney administration will require 
more than simply removing this administration from office ‹ something that could
be legitimately done for any number of reasons. The attacks of 9/11 were 
orchestrated to further the project of creating an American empire of truly 
global scope and, as we saw earlier, this has been a long and bipartisan 
project. Differences have involved strategy, emphasis, and demeanor more than 
the goal itself. The replacement of the BushCheney administration by a 
Democratic administration for some reason other than 9/11 would probably simply 
result in a reversion to the subtler, more sophisticated, and hence more 
effective form of imperialism that the United States previously exercised.[91]

What needs to be publicly recognized is that the bipartisan global domination 
project is, as I have put it elsewhere, ³propelled by fanaticism based on a 
deeply perverted value system.²[92] Those who read books and magazines about 
U.S. imperialism know that there has long been abundant evidence for this 
assessment. But the public revelation of the truth about 9/11 could have an 
educative value extending far beyond the circles of those who read 
policy-oriented books and magazines. If Americans came to see that the attacks 
of 9/11 were, in the minds of those who planned them, justified by the goal of 
creating an all-encompassing empire, this realization could lead to widespread 
revulsion against the goal itself and the values implicit in it ‹ values that 
are diametrically opposed to basic values embedded in all the world¹s religions 
and ethical systems.


Footnotes

88  ³False-Flag Operations, 9/11, and the New Rome: A Christian Perspective,² in
Kevin Barrett, John B. Cobb Jr., and Sandra Lubarsky, eds., 9/11 and American 
Empire: Christians, Jews, and Muslims Speak Out (Northampton: Olive Branch, 
2007).

89  For an analysis of the memo and the press coverage, see Mark Danner, ³Why 
the Memo Matters,² New York Review of Books, July 14, 2005 
(http://www.tomdispatch.com/index.mhtml?emx=x&pid=3602).

90  In calling the evidence ³overwhelming,² I mean the total evidence now 
available (much of which is contained in my five books on 9/11), not merely the 
brief summary given here.

91  See David Ray Griffin, John B. Cobb, Jr., Richard Falk, and Catherine 
Keller, The American Empire and the Commonwealth of God (Louisville: Westminster
John Knox, 2006).

92  ³9/11 and the American Empire: How Should Religious People Respond?² 
Originally on BookTV (C-Span 2), April 30, 2005; text published at 9/11 
CitizensWatch, May 7, 2005 
(http://www.911citizenswatch.org/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=535).
A somewhat revised version, entitled ³9/11, the American Empire, and Common 
Moral Norms,² is in Griffin and Scott, eds., 9/11 and American Empire: 
Intellectuals Speak Out. I have used the term ³demonic² for this value system in
³The Divine and the Demonic,² chap. 8 of Christian Faith and the Truth Behind 
9/11.


Copyright 2007 David Ray Griffin

The World Trade Center Demolition and the So-Called War on Terrorism
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