Top Ten Myths About 9/11- Debunked!

(Originally published on WordPress on September 11th, 2021. I’ve chosen not to edit the parts where I talk about it being uploaded on the 20th anniversary of the disaster.)

It was, without a doubt, one of the worst tragedies to happen to the United States since the end of World War II. Twenty years ago, on September 11th, 2001, 19 Islamic extremists, employed by the terrorist organization al-Qaeda, wrested control of four American jet airliners from their pilots and cut a swath of destruction that would leave nearly 3,000 innocent Americans dead. Two jets slammed into New York City’s iconic Twin Towers at the World Trade Center, which soon collapsed. Another jet crashed into the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia. Yet another was presumably headed for a target in Washington D.C. but crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania, after the passengers heroically fought back against their captors. In the aftermath, the U.S. government took the offensive, declaring war on terror that resulted in some successes, not the least of which was the assassination of al-Qaeda’s founder, Osama bin Laden.

That is the official story, but some Americans believe the whole event was a false-flag operation; that is, an operation made to look like it was perpetrated by someone other than the actual perpetrator. In other words, the U.S. government carried out the attacks, not Middle Eastern terrorists. In honor of the twentieth anniversary of the attacks, I would like to take some time to debunk some common myths about that infamous day, mainly from the 9/11 Truther movement but also some myths spread by the U.S. government itself in the wake of the attacks.

First of all, though, I feel it is essential to examine what the Truthers think the government's motives were in murdering its own citizens in such a brutal manner. According to Monte Cook in his book The Skeptic's Guide to Conspiracy Theories, "a poll in 2007 indicated that about 5% of Americans believed that the U.S. government was involved with the attacks in some way." One page on 911truth.org titled "40 Reasons to Doubt the Official Story of 9/11" lists several possible motives, including but not limited to "The Need for a New Pearl Harbor" (the government had been waiting for an excuse to invade the Middle East and achieve "worldwide military hegemony"), "Perpetual War on Terror" (so the government can attack anyone it perceives as an enemy), and "Resource Wars" (so that the government can more easily obtain oil from the rich fields of the Middle East). But as the old saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and unfortunately, much of the Truthers' so-called "evidence" simply does not hold up to scrutiny.

1. Flights 11 and 175 were unmanned military drones.

According to the official story, American Airlines Flight 11 crashed into the North Tower at 8:46 a.m., leading to its collapse at 10:28. United Airlines Flight 175 crashed into the South Tower at 9:03, leading to its collapse at 9:59. This led to the deaths of over 2,700 people, including the terrorists and other occupants of the planes. This account is backed up by cockpit recordings, mobile phone calls from passengers, and the simple fact that none of those passengers or crew returned home.

But that hasn't stopped Truthers from arguing that several photographs of Flight 175 show an anomaly under the base of the right wing that could be construed as a missile, bomb, or piece of equipment consistent with something one might find on an air-refueling tanker. One of these photographs is Rob Howard's infamous photograph of Flight 175's final descent toward the South Tower (pictured above).

However, when Popular Mechanics sent the photograph to be analyzed by Ronald Greely, director of the Space Photography Laboratory at Arizona State University, he came away with a much different conclusion. He discovered that the "pod" was actually the right wing faring, a pronounced bulge typical of all Boeing 767s containing the landing gear. It was simply a trick of the sunlight glinting off it that gave it an exaggerated look.

Some other Truthers have seized on statements by witnesses of Flight 175's crash, perhaps most notably that by FOX employee Marc Birnbach, to claim that there were no windows on the planes that crashed. They also point to video footage that apparently shows that the aircraft had no windows.

Of course, these claims ignore that a) Birnbach was nowhere near the WTC site when the plane crashed, b) the video footage only seems to show no windows because of low resolution, and c) we have photographic evidence of windows in the plane wreckage!

This photo was taken by a FEMA team led by W. Gene Corley on the roof of WTC 5. It features a section of fuselage from Flight 175 with clearly visible windows.

2. Flight 93 was shot down.

United Airlines Flight 93 was the last plane to crash that day, slamming upside down into a field that had once been a coal strip mine at 10:03 a.m. The official story was that the passengers fought against the hijackers, sacrificing themselves to stop the plane from reaching Washington, D.C.

But the Truthers have come to believe that inconsistencies in the evidence suggest that a heat-seeking missile brought down Flight 93. For example, they argue that there was no way that one of the plane's engine fans could have ended up 300 yards south of the crash site unless there was a pre-crash breakup. This ignores the fact that the aircraft was heading south at the point of impact, meaning that it's perfectly reasonable to suspect that the force of the impact threw it that far.

Other Truthers have pointed out the presence of wreckage floating in Indian Lake, which they claim should be impossible because a) Indian Lake is six miles from the crash site, b) the plane crashed west-southwest of the lake, and c) a cold front moving from south to north was passing through the area, meaning that the wreckage would have had to travel perpendicular to the wind.

The problem is that none of these statements are true. Indian Lake is only 1 1/2 miles away from the crash site. The plane came down to the northwest of the lake, and the wind was blowing in the same direction the aircraft was traveling. Therefore, lightweight debris finding its way to the lake's surface is perfectly consistent with the official account.

As this map should hopefully demonstrate.

Of course, if a heat-seeking missile downed Flight 93, one must wonder if any other planes were around to fire it. Truthers have pointed to two candidates: a mysterious white jet seen in the area shortly after the crash and a General Dynamics F-16 Fighting Falcon piloted by North Dakota Air Guard Major Rick Gibney. Retired Army Colonel Donn de Grand-Pre made the latter accusation on Alex Jones's radio show in 2004.

Because we all knew he had to show up in this story at some point.

First of all, the white jet was a Dassault Falcon 20 business jet owned by the apparel and footwear company VF Corp., which happened to be in the area at the time and was asked to survey the crash site by the FAA.

As for Lieutenant Colonel (not Major) Rick Gibney, he was flying an F-16 that morning, but he was nowhere near Shanksville. He first traveled from Fargo, North Dakota, to Bozeman, Montana, to pick up Ed Jacoby Jr., the director of the New York State Emergency Management Office, and then flew him to Albany so he could coordinate the 17,000 rescue workers engaged in the state's response to the attacks on the Twin Towers. Jacoby, in particular, had some nasty words for those implicating Gibney in the plane's crash:

It disgusts me to see this because the public is being misled. More than anything else it disgusts me because it brings up fears. It brings up hopes- it brings up all sorts of feelings, not only to the victims' families but to all the individuals throughout the country, and the world for that matter. I get angry at the misinformation out there."
-Ed Jacoby Jr., Interview with Popular Mechanics, Feb. 3 2005.

So basically, the theory that Flight 93 was shot down has itself been shot down. Ironic, isn't it?

3. The military was ordered to stand down.

This myth comes from the Truthers' lack of comprehension of how the U.S. military could have possibly let these attacks go unimpeded. Indeed, considering there were no less than 28 Air Force bases within range of the four hijacked flights, it's no wonder some conspiracists suspect foul play. The only logical explanation, they say, is that NORAD either issued a stand-down order or deliberately delayed the scrambling of the fighter jets to allow the attacks to proceed.

The problem with this theory is that it assumes that NORAD and Air Traffic Control even had systems in place to automatically warn those on the ground of planes going off course. The truth was that there was no such system before September 11th, especially since there had been no hijackings in American airspace since 1979. As Major Douglas Martin, public affairs officer of NORAD, said, Air Traffic Control "had to pick up the phone and literally dial us."

Not helping matters was that, except for Flight 175, the transponders on all the planes were turned off by the hijackers, making it extremely difficult for ATC to track down the missing aircraft, especially in some of America's busiest air corridors. Not to mention that NORAD's radar only looked outside U.S. airspace for threats (remember: not since 1979).

That should also explain why no military jets intercepted the flights before they crashed, and even if they could find the planes, they wouldn't have reached them in minutes, as conspiracists claim. Take the only NORAD intercept of a civilian aircraft in the previous decade, for instance. In October 1999, a Learjet belonging to golfer Payne Stewart experienced a cabin decompression, rendering all six passengers and crew unconscious. It took an F-16 intercept about one hour and 22 minutes to reach the derelict plane, mainly because supersonic flight was forbidden on intercepts. The plane eventually crashed in a field in Edmunds County, South Dakota, after it ran out of fuel.

Keep in mind that there were only 14 fighter jets on alert over U.S. airspace on September 11th. Also, remember that NORAD's warning time before each flight crashed was eight minutes for Flight 11, nothing for Flight 175, three minutes before for Flight 77, and three minutes after for Flight 93. It really shouldn't be a mystery why the military was so slow to respond.

4. The Twin Towers' collapse was a controlled demolition.

The reason why the Twin Towers eventually collapsed should seem pretty straightforward. Two large jet airliners loaded with fuel crashed into them, virtually gutting the interiors and starting fires that weakened the structures so they could no longer stand. But conspiracy theorists are convinced that the crashes alone could not have brought the towers down. They insist that the crashes were covering for a controlled demolition project.

One piece of evidence they cite is the extensive damage documented in the lobbies of both Towers shortly after the planes hit, especially by Jules Naudet in his acclaimed documentary 9/11 that came out the following March. At first glance, it doesn't make sense how impacts on the 94th-98th floor of the North Tower and the 78th-84th floor of the South could wreak havoc on the buildings' lobbies. But keep in mind that the burning fuel carried by both jets would have inevitably started flowing downward after the initial impacts. Also, the results would have certainly severed elevator cables, leading to several plunging to the ground floor. Indeed, Naudet even saw people on fire in the lobby, which didn't make it into the final film for obvious reasons.

Conspiracists also insist that the fire couldn't have brought down the Towers because the melting point of steel (2,750 degrees Fahrenheit) was higher than the highest temperatures recorded in the buildings (1,832 degrees). However, experts agree that the steel frames didn't need to melt to make the Towers give way; they just had to lose their strength. At 1,832 degrees, the steel in the frames lost 90% of its strength, which wasn't helped by the fact that the impact of the jets likely blasted the fireproofing insulation off the beams.

20010911NKM 1/X A view along Sixth Ave. shows One World Trade Center collapsing nearly an hour after a terroristic attack in New York City. NOAH K. MURRAY-THE STAR LEDGER 9/11/01

Other conspiracists point to strange puffs of debris being ejected from the Towers as they collapsed, like in the above photo. They insist that only explosive devices, not the force of the collapsing buildings, could have created those puffs. However, as Popular Mechanics points out, “Like all office buildings, the WTC Towers contained a huge volume of air. As they pancaked, all that air, along with concrete and other debris pulverized by the force of the collapse, were ejected with enormous energy.”

Yet another piece of evidence cited by conspiracists is the presence of iron-rich spheres found among the dust clouds kicked up by the collapse. They claim that these spheres could only have been produced by temperatures hotter than a typical office fire, such as a thermite charge explosion. However, other engineers have pointed out that thermite reacts far too slowly to be a practical tool in building demolition. Also, the type of iron-rich spheres found in the dust of the Towers can be produced by temperatures much lower than Truther’s claim.

5. WTC 7 is the smoking gun for the demolition theory.

A little-known fact about the World Trade Center complex was that it didn't just consist of the Twin Towers. There were seven buildings at the WTC site, all of which were destroyed or damaged beyond repair by the attacks. WTC 7, in particular, interests conspiracists because of how it collapsed without the aid of burning jet fuel. Indeed, it's not unusual to see Truthers claiming its collapse as the smoking gun for their controlled demolition theory.

The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) begs to differ: "...[T]here was, in fact, physical damage to the south face of building 7. On about a third of the face to the center and to the bottom-approximately 10 stories- about 25% of the depth of the building was scooped out." The problem was exacerbated by an unusual design, which caused columns and trusses near the damaged areas to support an impossibly large amount of weight. And if that wasn't bad enough, a fire on the fifth floor burned for seven hours until the building collapsed at 5:21 p.m., fed by diesel fuel that many tenants in the building used for their generators.

Perhaps Popular Mechanics puts it best: "WTC 7 might have withstood the physical damage it received or the fire that burned for hours, but those combined factors- along with the building's unusual construction- were enough to set off a chain reaction collapse."

6. The fact that no steel-framed building had ever collapsed due to fire proves demolition was involved.

There are two main reasons why this argument doesn't hold up. First, the statement that no steel-framed high-rises have ever collapsed due to fire is untrue. There have been plenty of steel-framed buildings that have collapsed due to fire, even before 9/11. Some examples, in chronological order, include:

1967: The heavily steel-constructed McCormick Place exhibition hall in downtown Chicago collapsed only 30 minutes after a small electrical fire broke out.

February 1991: Firefighters evacuated the 38-story One Meridian Plaza in Philadelphia due to fear that the fire compromised the structure. While it did not collapse, it was still written off as a total loss and remained abandoned until it was demolished in 1998. Three firefighters died of smoke inhalation.

December 20, 1991: Four firefighters are killed when part of a floor from a burning unprotected steel-frame building in Brackenridge, Pennsylvania, collapses on top of them.

May 10, 1993: The Kader Toy Factory fire in the Sam Phran district of Thailand's Nakhon Pathom province claims 188 lives and injures a further 469, thus making it the worst industrial factory fire in history. The disaster is exacerbated not only by the fact that the doors were locked and fire escapes were not even built but by the fact that the steel frames holding up the facilities' three buildings were uninsulated, causing one of them to collapse.

January 28, 1997: The state-of-the-art Sight and Sound Theater in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, collapsed due to fire despite having similar fireproofing insulation to the Twin Towers, albeit newer and higher quality. And yet, it still managed to be knocked off the steel beams by everyday renovation work. It makes you wonder how it would have fared against a crashing 767, doesn't it?

The second reason this argument doesn't hold up is that the conspiracists aren't considering specific abnormalities of the Twin Towers' construction. They assume the Towers were built with a steel web like most steel-framed buildings.

The Twin Towers were instead built with a "tube within a tube" design, with most of its steel web built into the skin and around a central core to make more room for office space.

This shows the obvious: the Twin Towers weren't constructed like other steel-framed buildings, so it's not reasonable to assume that they would behave like other steel-framed buildings, given the unique factors that led to their collapse. Indeed, none of the other buildings mentioned above had their fireproofing insulation sheared off by an errant Boeing 767, as well as had its vertical load-bearing columns removed in such a violent manner.

7. A satellite-guided missile hit the Pentagon.

American Airlines Flight 77 smashed into the first floor of the Pentagon's west side at 9:37 a.m. 189 people were killed: 64 on the plane and 125 in the building itself. There are dozens of witness testimonies and well-publicized security footage showing a passenger plane crashing into the Pentagon. But again, the Truthers insist on a different set of events, mainly that a radar-guided missile hit the Pentagon.

One thing that the conspiracists seem to have trouble wrapping their heads around is the fact that the holes left by the crashing aircraft seem to be way too small for a Boeing 757. For example, the hole in the exterior wall was 75 feet wide, which seems awfully small for a plane with a 155-foot wingspan. A hole left in Ring C seemed even smaller, at only 16 feet across.

One of the clearest photos I could find that shows the damage to the building’s exterior in the thirty minutes between the impact and the section collapsing on itself.

Several experts justifiably ask if the conspiracists expected the plane to leave an "impact silhouette," which is TV Tropes.com's name for the cartoon trope involving a character or object passing through a solid and leaving a perforation shaped exactly like that character or object.

Indeed, given that the holes left by the planes that hit the Twin Towers were shaped like planes, wings and all, you might be forgiven for seeing this as a logical complaint... until you factor in that a) the plane had struck the ground before impact and thus had reduced its speed, b) one wing had been partially severed by hitting the ground, and c) unlike the Towers, the Pentagon's concrete walls are specifically designed to withstand being shelled at point-blank range by enemy battleships, meaning the wings likely just disintegrated on impact.

Meanwhile, the fuselage "flowed into the structure in a state closer to liquid than a solid mass," as Popular Mechanics puts it. This can help explain the 12 ft. (not 16 ft.) hole in ring C; it wasn't made by the whole fuselage, merely a piece of the plane's landing gear.

Conspiracists are also puzzled about how some windows even right above the impact point remained intact… even though they're part of a military facility and were obviously designed to be blast-resistant. Indeed, if they were still intact after an outside impact from a derelict Boeing 757, that means they were doing exactly what they were designed to do.

Finally, for any Truther who insists that there was no plane wreckage found at the site, take the testimony of blast expert Allyn E. Kilsheimer, the first structural engineer to arrive at the crash site to coordinate the emergency response:

It was absolutely a plane and I'll tell you why. I saw the marks of the plane wing on the face of the building. I picked up parts of the plane with airline markings on them. I held in my hand the tail section of the plane, and I found the black box. I held parts of uniforms of the crew members in my hands, including body parts. Okay?
-Allyn E. Kilsheimer, CEO of KCE Structural Engineers PC, Washington D.C.

Or if you want a more concrete example, try this photograph on for size:

Unless you want to say that the Secret Service raided a nearby scrapyard, which... I mean... whatever, I guess.

8. Insider traders knew in advance.

This is admittedly going to be tricky for me to comment on since, at least for me, trying to understand the stock market is like trying to understand how people think Donald Trump was in any way qualified to be President of the United States. Snopes.com summarizes the gist of the theory like this: "In the days just prior to the September 11th attacks, large quantities of stock in United and American Airlines were traded by persons with foreknowledge of the upcoming 9/11 attacks."

Market analysts have confirmed that unusual trading activity involving the two airlines was noted in the month before the attacks, with put and call options being 25 to 100 times normal. Bloomberg's electronic trading system also registered the options volume of UAL (United Airlines' parent company) as 36% higher than usual. These abnormalities reached their highest spike on September 6th, when the number of options on UAL jumped from 27 the previous day to 2,000. And if that wasn't weird enough, the investment firms Merryl Lynch and Morgan Stanley, which were significantly damaged by the attack, experienced a downturn in value.

But is this necessarily evidence of foul play? According to investigators, no. Per the 9/11 Commission's official report:

...[F]urther investigation has proved that the trading had no connection with 9/11. A single U.S. based institutional investor with no concievable ties to al-Qaeda purchased 95% of the UAL puts on September 6 as part of a trading strategy that also included buying 115,000 shares of American on September 10. Similarly, much of the seemingly suspicious trading in American on September 10 was traced to a specific U.S. based options trading newsletter, faxed to its subscribers on Sunday, September 9, which recommended these trades.
-The National Commission on Terrorist Attacks Upon the United States

Once again, I don't know shit about how the stock market works, so I have no way of checking whether this is true. But considering that most of what the 9/11 Commission seems to be verified by what I've debunked so far, I'm tending to think they may know what they're talking about here as well.

9. Israeli employees knew in advance.

Here's where the conspiracy theories take an uncomfortable turn into anti-Semitic territory. Once again, Snopes.com summarizes the basic gist of this theory: "Four thousand Israelis employed by companies housed in the World Trade Center stayed home on 9/11, warned in advance of the impending attack on the WTC."

This rumor started with a September 12th report from the Israel-based newspaper The Jerusalem Post commenting on how 4,000 Israelis were believed to be around the WTC and the Pentagon during the attacks. Syria's state-owned Al Thawra newspaper somehow spun that into the "4,000 Israelis mysteriously failed to show up for work" claim as little as three days after the attack. The Lebanon-based television news station al-Manar soon followed suit.

However, if Israel really was that bent on making sure no Jewish people died due to terrorist attacks it knew about in advance, they did a rather poor job. Estimates of the number of Jewish people who died in the World Trade Center run from as low as 270 to as high as 400. Only five have been confirmed to have been Israeli citizens, and at least one Manhattan synagogue reported to have lost six members. It just goes to show that the 9/11 attacks affected everyone equally. Be they Christian, Muslim, Jew, atheist, or agnostic, no person of any faith (or lack thereof) was spared the wrath of the hijackers that day.

10. The government had advance knowledge of the attack but chose not to act on it.

Perhaps one of the more reasonable conspiracies of the Truther movement is the theory that the government didn't directly perpetrate the attacks. Still, they knew the attacks were coming and didn't do anything about it. It's very similar to the conspiracy that Franklin Roosevelt's administration knew in advance that the Japanese would attack Pearl Harbor but chose not to act because they wanted to join World War II.

Indeed, Wikipedia lists several potential warnings about the possibility of terrorists using planes as missiles that the government received in the years before 9/11. Many conspiracists are baffled as to why the Bojinka plot didn't ring any alarm bells. For those curious, the Bojinka plot was another planned al-Qaeda escapade involving planes set to go forward in January 1995. The plan was to assassinate Pope John Paul II, destroy 11 airliners en route from America to Asia to shut down air travel and crash a plane into CIA headquarters in Fairfax County, Virginia. Fortunately, the plan was foiled by an inopportune chemical fire drawing the attention of the Philippine National Police, but not before one of its architects, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad, escaped and helped plan the 9/11 attacks.

Indeed, that seems like a significant oversight, especially in the eyes of the conspiracists. However, while this may just be my inner anarchist talking again, I think these people are vastly overestimating the U.S. government's competence and its ability to keep a secret. Former National Security Advisor Sandy Berger testified, "We heard of the idea of planes being used as weapons, but I don't recall being presented with any specific threat information about an attack of this nature, or highlighting this threat, or indicating that it was more likely than any other." For its part, NORAD reported that "The threat of terrorists hijacking commercial airliners within the United States and using them as guided missiles was not recognized by NORAD before 9/11."

Perhaps it would be wise for conspiracy theorists to keep Hanlon's Razor in mind before accusing the government of hiding things: "Do not attribute to malice that which can be easily explained by stupidity."

Conclusion

But still, out of all the different ways that we can debunk the conspiracies of the 9/11 Truth movement, I don't think any is more devastating than the sheer number of people who would have to be sworn to secrecy to stop the truth from coming out. As this writing, the list includes President Bush's administration, the NYC firefighters, the NYPD, the courts, the NYC Port Authority, everyone who works at the Pentagon, the more than 1,600 widows and widowers of 9/11, the media, the photographers, Popular Mechanics, PBS Nova, the NIST, then New York Governor George Pataki, the NYC scrapyards, every single structural engineer in the world, the CIA, FBI, FEMA, NORAD, the FAA, the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Airlines, United Airlines, every airport that the planes took off from...

Yeah, I think you get the idea. I believe Jason Pargin, writing about the Truther movement for Cracked.com, put it best when he wrote, "Covering this [controlled demolition of the Twin Towers] up would be like trying to keep the atomic bomb a secret after Hiroshima." He especially questions the standard Truther narrative that everyone in on the conspiracy could possibly be paid enough to keep quiet about the whole affair, especially the NYC fire department who, need I remind you, lost 343 firefighters in the attacks.

Indeed, when you examine the implications of the Truther conspiracists, it seems that they think everyone except them is willing to take any amount of money to cover up a deadly false-flag operation and subsequent government cover-up. It makes them seem to have a view of humanity as a whole so cynical that it would make even Thomas Hobbes go, "Dude, that's messed up!"

Indeed, when viewed through that light, it's probably easy to see how the 9/11 Truth movement may have led to the proliferation of even darker conspiracy theories like the QAnon movement. Pargin even mentions in the Cracked article how the infamous Truther documentary Loose Change was funded by a man who "says the world is run by a massive Satanic cult that enslaves prominent politicians by delivering kidnapped boys for them to molest and then blackmailing them about it later." Did I mention this article was written in 2007?

Perhaps the most succinct summary of everything wrong with the 9/11 Truth movement comes from this 2006 interview with Noam Chomsky:

I think the Bush administration would have to be utterly insane to try anything like what is alleged, for their own narrow interests, and do not think that serious evidence has been provided to support claims about actions that would not only be outlandish, but that would have no remote historical parallel.
-Noam Chomsky, 2007, What We Say Goes, Allen & Unwin, New Zealand

He even speculated that the government itself might be secretly fueling the conspiracy theories to draw attention away from more pressing humanitarian concerns. What sort of humanitarian concerns, you may ask? To answer that question, let us examine another 9/11-related myth, one that we know for sure the government has been pushing for years:

Bonus Myth: The terrorists did it because they hate our freedom.

Americans are asking, "Why do they hate us?" They hate what we see here right in this chamber- a democratically elected government. Their leaders are self-appointed. They hate our freedoms- our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote and assemble and disagree with each other.
-President George W. Bush, Address to a Joint Session of Congress and the American People, September 20, 2001

It certainly is a nice thought that Bush is expressing here- that the terrorists attacked us simply because we're the good guys. But it's a blatant lie that relies on us believing that the real world operates on fantasy novel "black and white morality." But, as even CIA operative Michael Scheuer (leader of the agency's bin Laden unit) was quick to admit:

Bin Laden has been precise in telling America the reasons he is waging war on us. None of the reasons have anything to do with our freedom, liberty, and democracy, but everything to do with U.S. policies and actions in the Middle East.
-Michael Scheuer, quoted in Lies My Teacher Told Me by James W. Loewen

In a 1998 fatwa titled "Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders," bin Laden listed three main grievances against the United States. First, he criticized the U.S. occupation of the Arabian Peninsula, the Muslim holy land. Second, he criticized its embargos against Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. Third, he criticized America's continued support of the state of Israel in the face of its continued persecution of the Palestinian people.

Let me make something explicitly clear here: I am not saying that the September 11th attacks were in any way morally justifiable. Bin Laden and his recruits willingly murdered innocent Americans who had nothing to do with his people's oppression in the course of committing these attacks. Plus, his characterization of all Jews as morally responsible for Palestinian oppression rather than just the Israeli government is wildly anti-Semitic and wrong on so many levels.

But that doesn't mean he wasn't right about the United States' culpability in horrific crimes of imperialism in the Middle East. The U.S. has been ruining democracy overseas ever since the Age of Imperialism, as has been documented as early as 1935's War is a Racket, where former Marine Corps Major General Smedley Butler recalls his services in Mexico, Central America, the Caribbean, and China helping American corporations secure profits in foreign markets through the art of war. Indeed, September 11th is also the anniversary of the fall of Salvador Allende's socialist government in Chile in 1973, engineered by the CIA to install the murderous right-wing junta of Augusto Pinochet, who was more amenable to U.S. corporate interests. It happened in the Middle East, too, most infamously when the U.S. and U.K. teamed up to oust Iranian Prime Minister Mohammad Mosaddegh after he moved to nationalize Iran's oil fields in 1953.

And to whoever 9/11 Truthers who may still be reading this, I want to ask you: Why do you think the U.S. would need to engineer 9/11 to justify blowing up brown kids overseas? When has the United States ever needed an excuse like that to maim and kill nonwhites? Do you forget that this country was literally built on the backs of enslaved Africans? Do you forget that America only has as much land as it does because we slaughtered countless indigenous people to get it? Do you forget that these peoples are still overwhelmingly kept in poverty because we refuse to acknowledge that the racist ideas of our forefathers are still enshrined in our laws and institutions, and our lionized view of them means we are still, after two and a half centuries, unwilling to face up to this fact?

To this, I have only one thing to say, my friends.

And that's the end of this article. I based it on an essay I wrote for a high school English class in May 2012. It was very loosely based, though; for instance, one of the sources I cited in the original was a book called 48 Liberal Lies About America. It was written long before I managed to extricate myself from the philosophical cul-de-sac that is American neoconservatism, so don't judge me!

As for the sources of this article, those include:

Jason Padgin's Cracked article "Was 9/11 an Inside Job?", which focuses on the sheer lunacy of the conspiracy theories (be warned, though: the writer is a bit cavalier with the word "retard." Did I mention this article was written in 2007?).

The website Debunking911.com, which has sadly gone defunct in the nine years since I wrote the original essay.

www.911truth.org, my primary resource for the Truther side of the argument.

And, of course, good old Wikipedia.

Join me next time for another installment of P.J.'s Ultimate Playlist. See you soon!