September 11 Attacks: A Conspiracy of the American Government ?
The Military-Industrial Complex Thesis
A dreadful plot
Six months after the attacks of September 11, 2001, a book appears in France which tries to demonstrate that this tragedy is in fact a formidable manipulation of the American military-industrial complex. Rumor has it ...
Aftermath of September 11, 2001
The ruins of the World Trade Center like those of the Pentagon are still smoking when in March 2002, a Frenchman named Thierry Meyssan publishes a story intended to reveal to the whole world the truth about the attacks which affected the United States. His thesis is as simple as it is brutal: only an organization that is extraordinarily well prepared has been able to commit such acts which cannot be committed by Islamist militants who are said to be hiding in caves in Afghanistan. Above all, the author claims that no Boeing has ever crashed on the Pentagon, and that American soldiers would have fabricated this catastrophic scenario to raise public opinion and justify future reprisal operations which are just but one more step in the inexorable American imperialist domination.
The truth is elsewhere
Meyssan's work, entitled 9/11: The Big Lie, first goes unnoticed. No doubt this is yet another ranting as many began to circulate the day after the attacks of September 11. But the author is not unknown: director of the Voltaire Network who has repeatedly proven his commitment to the social debate and promoted critical thinking, Meyssan is known and appreciated by many journalists. In just a few weeks, his thesis, actively relayed by websites, spread. The rumor circulates, swells, takes shape. Meyssan is invited on the television sets. His so-called revelations, as astounding as they are, are credible to many. However, they will not last long.
At the origin of these assertions, the observation from simple photographs posted on the internet that the Pentagon was not hit by an airliner. The proof ? No plane debris is seen in these photos. This observation is enough to dismantle the Machiavellian plot hatched by a mysterious and powerful pressure group within American institutions. The idea is not new since the literature and the cinema of the Cold War years are filled with this kind of scenario, and the political thriller is all the better as certain turpitudes of the CIA have been denounced for a long time. If the rumor this time is enormous, it has as a corollary : the extraordinary emotion caused by the most deadly terrorist acts ever committed. Rumor has it that the entire world has been the victim of unprecedented manipulation, the cynical aim of which is to grant the United States the freedom to act as it pleases, in the name of self-defense and the values of freedom to further establish their hegemony.
America punished
Despite the emotion aroused by the attacks of September 11, the conspiracy thesis seduces some who would like to make Uncle Sam and his politics pay back. Moreover, international compassion for the thousands of victims is not unanimous; voices were immediately raised to castigate American diplomacy which, in many parts of the world, stirred up or even provoked civil wars in order to defend its economic interests. America would then have suffered only a just punishment.
But the rumor will stop quickly as the accusations are fragile and clumsy. The Americans themselves pay no attention to it. In France, two journalists immediately signed a pamphlet, The Horrifying Lie, to denounce Meyssan's “rubbish”. But, like all rumors, this one deserves an attention to the reasons which allowed it to circulate. The rumor, far from being a simple malevolence intended to harm, always reveals a part of truth in the unconscious fears which underlie it and on which it makes its soil.
Manipulated democracy
In this case, 9/11: The Big Lie with which Thierry Meyssan is trying to convince us is a new avatar of the great conspiracy (Jewish conspiracy, carried out by Freemasons or even big capital if not the three confused ...) aimed at undermining the foundations of democracy. “We are hiding everything”, “the real decision-makers are not those we believe”, or “the truth is elsewhere” ... Time and again it is true, the American diplomacy of recent decades has been able to lend the flank to these lively rumors, some recall the attitude of the United States in Cuba, or the assassination of several opposition leaders in countries where American oil interests are not negligible. Hasn't the American Congress just voted for an unprecedented increase in military credits? The attacks of September 11, 2001, would then take place at the right time to satisfy the wishes of the military-industrial lobby which is pulling the strings of a White House transformed into a puppet in the hands of an occult power. Such a scenario is not new, it is the one that best reinforces the concerns of democracies often confronted with their weaknesses. And it is the strength of rumors to reveal these weaknesses.
