Herland Report: On September 11, 2001 the world was in shock as the World Trade Center buildings melted to the ground in a massive showdown of power. Nearly 3000 were killed and the United States launched its war on terror and Islamism.
Since then, we have had endless wars. Country after country in the Middle East has erupted in civil strife, wars and militia mercenary clashing.
Read the account on what happened, as told by the chief historian at Ammo.com, Sam Jacobs, who is regularly published at The Herland Report.
With American military personnel now entering service who were not even alive on 9/11, this seems an appropriate time to reexamine the events of September 11, 2001 – the opaque motives for the attacks, the equally opaque motives for the counter-offensive by the United States and its allies known as the Global War on Terror, and the domestic fall-out for Americans concerned about the erosion of their civil liberties on the home front.
Before venturing further, it’s worth noting that our appraisal is not among the most common explanations. Osama bin Laden, his lieutenants at Al-Qaeda, and the men who carried out the attack against the World Trade Centers and the Pentagon are not “crazy,” unhinged psychopaths launching an attack against the United States without what they consider to be good reason, writes chief historian, Sam Jacobs at Ammo.com. His work has appeared at Bloomberg, USA Today and National Review, ZeroHedge, Lew Rockwell and Sons of Liberty Media.
The 9/11 Attacks: Understanding the Fall-Out from America’s Secret War: Nor do we consider then-President George W. Bush to be either a simpleton, a willing conspirator, an oil profiteer, or a Machivellian puppet whose cabinet were all too happy to take advantage of a crisis.
The American press tends to portray its leaders as fools and knaves, and America’s enemies as psychopathic. Because the propaganda machine hammered away so heavily on the simple “cowardly men who hate our freedom” line, there was not much in the way of careful consideration of the actual political motives of the hijackers, the Petro-Islam that funded them, the ancient, antagonistic split between Sunni and Shi’a, the fall-out from the 1979 Iranian revolution or the 1970s energy crisis, the historical context of covert American involvement in the Soviet-Afghan War and the Iran-Iraq War of the 1980s, nor the perceived “imperialist humanitarianism” of American military adventures of the 1990s in Muslim nations like Bosnia, Iraq, Somalia and Kosovo. Alone, none of these factors were deadly. Combined, they provided a lethal combination.
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It is our considered opinion that the events of 9/11 and those that followed in direct response to the attacks – including the invasion of Iraq – were carried out by good faith rational actors who believed they were acting in the best interests of their religion or their nation. There are no conspiracy theories here; sometimes truth is stranger than fiction.
This opinion does not in any way absolve the principals from moral responsibility for the consequences of their actions. It does, however, provide what we believe to be a more accurate and nuanced depiction of events than is generally forthcoming from any sector of the media – because we see these principals as excellent chess players who, in the broad sweep of events, engaged in actions which are explicable.
How the Hijackers Pulled Off the Intelligence Coup of the Century
The 9/11 Attacks: Very few people dispute one simple fact: On 9/11, 19 men hijacked four planes, three of which hit their targets: the World Trade Center Building 1, the World Trade Center Building 2, and the Pentagon. The fourth crashed in a field in Pennsylvania.
What is less often talked about is perhaps an even more stunning feat the hijackers pulled off: Being able to evade the attention of the United States intelligence community while planning their attacks. Indeed, their acumen with regard to covert operations was so great that they were effectively able to steal an air force for the attacks. It’s not that they were absent from the radar of U.S. intel services – it’s that no one was ever able to connect the dots.
Indeed, they understood the game so well that Osama bin Laden was able to call his mother two days before the attack to tell her: “In two days you’re going to hear big news, and you’re not going to hear from me for awhile.” He knew he was under surveillance by the NSA, but he also knew the turnaround time on intel was three days.
Another oft overlooked quality that the hijackers had was discipline and intestinal fortitude. It is important to remember that courage is a virtue, but it does not carry a moral weight of its own. The men who perpetrated the attacks on 9/11 went to their deaths in a disciplined fashion, carrying out their orders to the letter. This is not something a coward, a simpleton, or a psychopath does.
While the evidence for the attack was able to be collated in hindsight, it is not an exaggeration to say that the United States was more surprised by the attack of 9/11 than it was by the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Petro-Islam and the 9/11 Hijackers
The 9/11 Attacks: Understanding the Fall-Out from America’s Secret War: In a cruel twist of fate, the radicalization of the Islamic world against the U.S. was further exacerbated in large part with American dollars in a process known as Petro-Islam.
Consider the following cycle: The U.S. – along with just about every other industrialized country – buys oil from Saudi Arabia. The Saudi royal family uses a portion of their oil revenue to fund the spread of Wahhabism abroad, encouraging the creation of mosques and madras.
From 1982 to 2005, during the reign of King Fahd of Saudi Arabia, over $75 billion is estimated to have been spent in efforts to spread Wahhabi Islam to various, much poorer Muslim nations worldwide. By comparison, the Soviets spent about $7 billion spreading communism worldwide in the 70 years from 1921 and 1991.
The money was used to establish 200 Islamic colleges, 210 Islamic centers, 1,500 mosques, and 2,000 schools for Muslim children in both Muslim and non-Muslim majority countries. The schools were “fundamentalist” in outlook and formed a network “from Sudan to northern Pakistan.” By 2000, Saudi Arabia had also distributed 138 million copies of the Quran worldwide.
- September 11, 2011: America, a Land Without Truth – Paul Craig Roberts.
- A critical examination of the 9/11 official story, Hanne Nabintu, WND.
These Saudi-backed Wahhabi institutions radicalize Muslims. The majority of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi nationals, and all of the hijackers are believed to have been practitioners of Wahhabism.
To make this nefarious cycle worse, the U.S then sells weapons to the Saudi royal family so that they can maintain their grip on power via military force – all whilst vacationing abroad in opulence in places like the south of France, while their citizens suffer under totalitarian rule back home. It’s a sick, vicious cycle driven by petrodollars funneled from the U.S. to Saudi Arabia and then back to the American military-industrial complex.
The Domestic Response to 9/11
The 9/11 Attacks: It’s almost a cliche, but in some manner of thinking, the terrorists have been wildly successful. American civil liberties have been severely curtailed since 9/11 and a culture of unquestioning obedience to authority under the guise of “security” has been ushered in. The TSA has effectively groomed the American populace to accept totalitarianism at its airports, despite the fact that the TSA is ineffective at preventing terrorism in airplanes (some airports have a zero-percent compliance rate during audits and security checks, and all attempts at airplane bombings since 9/11 have been thwarted by passengers, not the TSA).
It’s worth noting that 9/11 was a massive intelligence failure on the part of the NSA and the CIA. Rather than being held to account, they had their powers massively expanded in the wake of the attacks. Maureen Baginkski very candidly said just weeks after the attacks, “You have to understand, 9/11 is a gift to the NSA…We are going to get all the money we want.”
The PATRIOT Act was passed with virtually no oversight after 9/11. It has not been dialed back one iota since, despite the revelations of Edward Snowden. Snooping agencies like the NSA and CIA, who had their power severely curtained in the 1970s, now effectively have a blank check, both literal and figurative. This doesn’t even include the number of private security firms receiving big money from the federal government.
We are now all living in what is effectively a soft totalitarian state, where our every communication is tracked unless we are willing to take extreme measures to protect ourselves. By all outward appearances, there is no going back.
What’s more, there is still a fundamental inability to acknowledge who the United States is actually at war with. The Global War on Terror is sometimes spoken of in terms of criminal justice and sometimes in terms of a war on a concept. It is telling that the enemy is now frequently referred to not even as “terrorism,” but “terror.”
Such confusion did not exist after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. FDR did not speak of bringing the perpetrators to justice – he spoke of an act of war. What’s more, FDR was squarely focused on the state actor who committed the attack, namely Japan. He did not speak about Japan’s allies or even unrelated countries like George W. Bush did when he spoke of an “Axis of Evil,” none of whom had anything to do with the attack on 9/11, some of whom (North Korea) were tangentially related at best to a militant global revolutionary Islam.
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President Bush did not want to declare war on the Islamic world, so he chose Al-Qaeda. But then he confused the issue by invading first Afghanistan, then Iraq. President Obama created further obfuscation when he took pains to divorce the religion of the perpetrators from their ideology whilst massively expanding covert drone strikes all over the world, thus blurring the line between warfare and assassination.
18 years later, we are no closer to a clear definition of an enemy and a statement of goals than we were on September 12, 2001. What would constitute victory in the Global War on Terror? No one knows.
The Geneva Conventions have provisions for guerrilla fighters. Two rules must be met for protection under the Conventions: First, fighters must carry their weapons openly. Second, they must wear uniforms. The Islamist terrorists do neither and are thus not protected. During the Second World War, such fighters would have been treated to a perfunctory military trial and summary execution, whether caught by the Axis or the Allies.
Indeed, both the Hague Accords and the Geneva Conventions are very clear about the role of irregulars in a war: They have 72 hours to don either uniforms or identifying pieces of clothing (for example, armbands). If they fail or refuse to do this, they are no longer covered by the Geneva Conventions or Hague Accords, and they are not to be treated by the regular rules of war. There is no obligation to capture them, accept their surrender or do anything else but shoot.
This means that America accepts the surrender of enemy combatants who do not enjoy the legal protection of either surrender or trial.
Unless the United States is clear about who its enemy is and the price it is willing to pay to defeat it, we are destined for an endless war with ever-growing encroachments on American liberties. If this is the path America chooses, then there can be no doubt that we have already lost the war. Read the full article here.
Also check out The Rubin Report, Ron Paul Liberty Report YouTube channel, as well as Jordan Peterson, the BBC and FOX on the same topics.
Sam Jacobs is the chief historian at Ammo.com. He has an affinity for the individual and the common man against centralized forms of power and elites, whether they be in the government or the private sector. Jacobs is the lead writer and chief historian with Ammo.com, and is the driving intellectual force behind the content in the Resistance Library. He is proud to see his work name-checked in places like Bloomberg, USA Today and National Review, but he is far more proud to see his work republished on websites like ZeroHedge, Lew Rockwell and Sons of Liberty Media. You can catch him on Quora and Twitter as well as on our very own Resistance Library podcast.
