Reflections on Afghanistan

The government of Afghanistan, with the memory of a brutal and extended war against the Soviet Union, is now about to go to war against the United States. Unlike the Afghan-Soviet War, the US won't supply arms, training, and specialist staffing to Afghanistan, and the Afghan army will quickly be defeated. This, and other evidence, point out clearly to the American public that Afghanistan is not responsible for the rammings. The logic is simple: you don't shoot a spitwad at a person who has a gun pointed in your face.

The US military benefits in three ways from the war in Afghanistan. First, the public perceives there is a military threat abroad, and this helps to increase the military's budget. Second, the war itself vastly increases military expenditure. Finally, the people in control of our military get to use what they've been practicing for decades. The US military probably isn't responsible for the rammings since their Pentagon was hit. However, they are using the rammings as best they can to further their own political goals.

Conspicuous Omission of the Israel Motive

If an Arab group is responsible for the rammings, they did so because of our foreign policy. Specifically, it was a retaliation for our political and material support of Israel and war with Iraq. Whether this motive is justified or not, the US government/media hasn't mentioned this motive at all. Instead the official line is that it was an "attack on American freedom" motivated by our being "a beacon of freedom in the world."

A Military of the People

The US military was made large during the US-Soviet Cold War. The people in control of the military don't want to see it shrink now that the war is over. Plenty of Americans in plenty of other industries have been faced with the same dilemma. They provide a service or product that is no longer needed. How has the typical American responded to this crisis in their lives? They fight it. They fight to keep their job, to keep their factory or business running, to keep government funding, without any rational regard for whether the product or service they provide is actually of value to anyone.

There are two kinds of conspiracy. The simple kind is where an event takes place naturally, and the conspirators manipulate how it's perceived to further their political agenda. The second kind, is where the conspirators also produce the event in question.

The White-House Story

So far, most the primary leads of the ramming investigation are due to tips given by the public. Yet a very surprising revelation was made by our government that the plane that hit the Pentagon was originally going to hit the White House. If even basic leads, like who on the flight might have been the hijackers, were provided by civilians, it's obvious that our government couldn't have figured out this White-House story in less than 24 hours.

The real question to ask, is how do people respond to that claim? They feel a sense of relief. The White House obviously would have been a more devastating target to the US. The people feel that some unknown action on the part of our government must have stopped the plane from hitting the White House. This produces, in the people, a sense of victory in that we stopped the rammings from being worse than they were. The reality however is quite simple. If a plane was going to ram the White House, why would it fly past the White House and hit another target instead? Why during its entire flight was it not vectoring towards the White House? Obviously, the White-House Target story is a lie, calculated to produce a false feeling of victory among us.

Fake Palestinian Rallies

Hours after the rammings, our media plastered our screens with images of Palestinian crowds marching in the streets, rejoicing a victory against us. What did this make us, the American public, feel? It made us feel Arabs were our enemy. It made people suspect they had planned the rammings and were now rejoicing that their plans had come true. The reality is that the photos of rejoicing Palestinians were shameless forgeries, supported as true by our entire media industry. The more apt among us realized that the photos were in mid-daylight even though it was night in Palestine when the photos were supposedly taken. Indeed, the photos were found to match stock footage of Palestinians taken during the early 90s.

What can we, the isolated US public, ascertain from this? First, there were no actual rallies by Palestinians since our media would have shown us pictures of those real rallies instead of forgeries. Second, our media made up the story, effectively pointing the finger at Palestine. Third, our media or at least the majority of it is lying to us when it wants to. Fourth, we as the US public have been and continue to be amazingly gullible. Fifth, the agenda of painting Palestine, and by extention the Arab world, as the perpetrators of the rammings was forced on our media by some group.

John LeFlohic

September 18, 2001