For anyone who has read this blog over the last few months it should come as no surprise I am completely skeptical about the official government story of the 9/11 attacks and, therefore, skeptical of the “War on Terror” as a whole. There is a great deal of evidence to suggest the attacks on 9/11 were more complex than commonly believed and required too much coincidence to really be carried out by merely 19 hijackers as the official story claims. This issue, however, is not the point of this post exactly, but it does tie in to it in a big picture sense. And it is a matter I will be fully fleshing out within the next few posts as well.

Beyond thinking about 9/11, there has been one question, in particular that has made me very doubtful of the portrayal we are given of “Al Qaeda” and “Islamic terrorism/extremism”. To put it simply, why have we escaped all manner of terrorist attacks in our country since 9/11? Supporters of the president and the War on Terror love to point to this fact as one of the successes of the administration’s handling of the “war.” The reasoning behind such thinking is, in part, since we are agressively “taking the fight to terrorists” and disrupting their operations, they are too unorganized and busy fighting us to effectively plot and execute attacks in our country. This reasoning, however, does nothing to account for our lack of security in so many areas (such as our borders) and the ease with which random terrorist attacks, requiring only one person and little to no planning, could be executed.

With a certain amount of surprise, I heard Glenn Beck raise this very question on his radio program last Wednesday. In response to the train bombings in India on the day before, he was talking about how completely vulnerable and easy to attack trains and subways seem to him. He said he has wondered why the kind of train bombings which have happened around the world are not happening in this country. He began to pose possible answers to this question. Ultimately, he concluded that the best answer was to say, “Just give it time.” As if to say, they just haven’t gotten around to it yet.

I was disappointed, but not surprised, Glenn didn’t keep going and fully think through the question. It is one we all should seriously consider. Sadly though, his answer represents the typical line of thought which drives our war on terror; the thinking that it is not a question of if, but when we get attacked again. This is also a vital element for endlessly pushing and growing the “war on terror” because it keeps people constantly afraid of the possibility of terrorism, thinking no matter what we do or how much time goes by we will always be vulnerable to imminent threat of attacks until we somehow defeat all our “terrorist enemies.”

The question of complete lack of attacks is just one of many regarding the war against “terrorism” which gives me cause for intense skepticism. I suppose it is not a bad argument, per se, to suggest that we are preventing “terrorists” plotting capabilities, but, even if that were the case, why does this supposedly fanatical enemy need to only execute large-scale planned attacks? Clearly, insurgent attackers in Iraq – many of whom our military and goverment directly link to Al Qaeda – execute simple, small and crude attacks nearly every day with car bombs and “IEDs” which cause great chaos and destruction. And yet, we don’t see anything of that nature whatsoever on our shores.

I simply don’t know if there is a good explanation for this. During our fierce debating over letting a state-controlled Arab company run our seaports and also over illegal immigration, it was revealed how unequipped and unable we seem to secure our borders and ports to protect our cities from any who may wish us harm. If we know this, than certainly our enemies know this. Assuming that the official story of 9/11 were true, terrorists were able to live in this country safely and plan their attack without hinderance. What is really stopping one “extremist” or even a small group from being in the country now and simply blowing up things, such as unprotected trains and subways?; no planning, no communication, just simple surprise terrorist action to bring fear and destruction.

After all, we are constantly told this is a radical enemy who hates us and wants to kill us, our wives and our children and rid the world of our nation. My question for now is, where are they? Looking beyond the complicating fighting within Iraq and much of the Middle East where is this “vast, capable, ruthless terrorist enemy”. I realize this is a complicated question, and in lieu of real evidence, many could come up with a dozen answers to explain it perfectly to themselves and still be convinced of the official government story of 9/11. Still, this problem causes me to find it fully plausible elements of our government have at best exaggerated the threat we face from “Islamic extremism” and at worst completely lied to us about everything from 9/11 to the present. If either of those conclusions are true, then clearly the people’s fear and patriotism have been viciously exploited and manipulated for agendas which have nothing to do with them or safety or freedom.

Postscript
For those still reading, I will leave you with some food for thought pertaining to the topic. One of the numerous reasons for skepticism among those who don’t believe the official story of 9/11 is the belief that, had our defense security measures worked as they are normally supposed to, the attacks could have been prevented quite easily or, at the very least, the airplanes would have been intercepted by fighter jets long before they reached their targets. This did not happen for strange reasons which have all been written off in the official story as simply confusion. Let us look at it from the perspective that under normal circumstances the “terrorist” perpetrators, or anyone else, should have had no reason to suspect such a total failure of our defense measures which would allow them to pull off such a long-shot attack (unless they or others knew something everyone else didn’t). It is strange they would hedge all their bets on this one daunting test of our national security instead of attacking more vulnerable and insecure areas (such as subways). What is truly frightening is such vulnerabilitly would be completely open to such attackers before 9/11 and all the way up to today. This is an inevitable reality living in a free society. This is why I don’t understand why “terrorists” wouldn’t be taking advantage of any of our greater vulnerabilities and keep attacks coming as much as they could. If that were actually happening, (and I certainly don’t want it to) I might be able to somewhat sympathize with our current stance in the “War on Terror”. As it is though, I think it incredibly unwise and tragic we engage in war and escalating violence without being able to see real threats or even experience attacks. How can we ever determine now when threats are real and more importantly when they’re not? Particularly when so many now accept the awful policy of preemptive striking against those we dubiously declare to be threats.