Nobel Peace Prize Winner Reaffirms Endless War, or, How I Became a 9/11 Truther

Were the 9/11 attacks an “inside job”—a controlled demolition of the World Trade Center and a missile strike on the Pentagon, planned and executed by a nefarious cabal within the U.S. government? Or were they, as the officially sanctioned story goes, the work of Islamofascist evildoers who hate us because of our freedom and precious American way of life?  Is the United States well on the way to becoming a militaristic Empire, loathed and feared the world over, or is this nation still a beacon of democracy and liberty, defending itself against a worldwide conspiracy of terrorists? These are the questions that strain against the tissues of the American body politic—at least those of us whose flesh is not too numbed by Prozac and high-fructose-induced diabetes.

Today’s top story on Yahoo was Celine Dionne’s new image makeover—she’s apparently abandoned her demure look for a more vampish persona—but more compelling—to me, anyway—was the report that the Obama administration has now admitted that the War on Terror is expected to last for another decade or two, if not longer—in effect, that we’re in a Permanent State of War. That’s right, and even though we already spend more than the rest of the world combined on the military, we probably have to increase that (even if granny must eat cat food because her Social Security is cut.) Yes (so the story goes), even though master evildoer Osama bin Laden is “sleeping with the fishes” deep in the Indian Ocean, his malevolent spawn continue to proliferate all over the planet, and so Good Cop America must hunt down and eradicate all these threats. Especially now in Africa, with its rich mineral and energy resources. Lucky for us, the Pentagon is quickly moving to recolonize that continent.

What has been so remarkable about the past decade is the increasing absurdity in the operations of the U.S. propaganda machinery—the way that it’s so easy to see through all the justifications and rationalizations for military intervention. Take the invasion of Iraq, for instance. It was obvious to millions that this was about oil—but you simply couldn’t say this on any mass market news venue. No, it was about Saddam’s WMD and liberating the Iraqis from tyranny. LOL.

And, hence, the growing disillusionment of the American populace. While there are still, of course, huge pockets of ignorance and obedient yahooism, I would dare to say that a majority of Americans are on the verge of utter disbelief, if not utter hatred of Washington, DC. Poll after poll has shown that more than a quarter of the nation’s population believes that 9/11 was, in some form or another, an “inside job”—either through an intentional failure of the Bush administration to heed warnings, or through a more direct conspiracy. In fact, because of this vast failure of propaganda, officials within the Obama administration (see Cass Sunstein) have even called for “counter-intelligence” operations to disrupt and discredit the “9/11 Truth movement”—using tactics such as placing agents provocateurs within local organizations and staging psyops campaigns on the Internet.

To their credit, Americans continue to abandon the official narratives in droves. On what might be called the “far right,” the Libertarian movement catalyzed by Congressman Ron Paul has proven the equal (if not the better) of the “far left” in its debunking of mainstream imperialism and the “War on Terror” abridgement of civil liberties. Ron Paul’s outspoken anti-war, anti-imperialist platform completely embarrassed those on the official Democratic “left” who had placed their faith in Obama; so threatening was Paul’s message that the media essentially blacked him out, even though he won or placed second in several primaries. But this exclusion of a genuinely popular candidate only served to alienate millions, and to further radicalize those who see no future in the present system.

What’s clear is that this is an empire in decline, if not free fall, and that we are following the historical trend of all empires, which have always tended, in their final days, towards militaristic fascism. Between the Bush/Cheney regime and the Obama regime we have seen an extraordinary concentration of wealth in the One Percent, and an equally extraordinary concentration of police and military power within the domestic realm, which has no other purpose than to repress uprisings within the citizenry.  Although the outward trappings of a fully fascist state haven’t arisen yet, all the ideological and police state apparatus have been implemented. Consider the way that the Occupy movement was summarily quashed in one fell swoop, on a coordinated national level.

Was the collapse of the Twin Towers a controlled demolition?  Perhaps we will never know. But the anomalies, evasions, and lies of the government about this, the justification for Permanent War, should convince all Americans that they live in a State that has cut itself loose from all Constitutional governance, and in fact, the rule of law. We are in the endgame now.