Remembering 9/11

I suppose it's time for a somewhat disjointed September 11th rant. This is a day that will be consumed entirely by pageantry and propaganda about the terrorist attack in that date in 2001. I anticipate a lot of hyperbolic overwrought nationalism from one vociferous crowd, and a lot of crazy conspiracy theory bullshit from another smaller but equally vociferous crowd. We've been through this every year. "9-11 was an inside job!" "Islamo-fascists hate us for our freedom!" "Jet fuel can't melt steel beams!" "We gotta kill 'em over there or they'll kill us over here!" "Support the troops!" "Blame the Jews, because reasons!" The whole rigamarole is making me sick.

People died. Whoever did it, and however it was done, the goal was to use violence to coerce political action. That is what terrorism is always designed to do, first and foremost. It worked. The US government responded with mindless, expensive, stupid militarism that further destabilized the world and created opportunity for various nefarious people to seize power and wealth across the globe. Innocents were slaughtered wholesale, creating the atmosphere ideal for recruiting more people to various extremist factions.

The fallout from this event is still being felt worldwide as the US government responded to a terrorist act by committing mass terrorism on a global scale. The domestic police state has ballooned, and foreign victims of military adventurism are uncountable. Cities have been destroyed. semi-stable despotic regimes have been replaced by a combination of puppet states and local warlords.Senseless murders by drone bombs, artillery, and riflemen has driven angry people into the arms of extremists who promise easy answers there even as our government promises easy answers through terrorist acts here.

I have a background in architecture, though I am by no means a full-fledged architect or engineer. I am not qualified to state categorically whether the WTC tower collapses were the result of plane crashes and fires or not. The jet fuel all burnt off almost immediately in the massive fireballs we saw on impact, but the office furniture and papers inside would have burned for a long time. If the impact did expose structural steel to these fires, the temperatures may have been high enough to compromise the structural steel. It's not entirely outside the realm of possibility.

The WTC7 collapse was especially strange. What bugs me most though is how reasonable questions are discarded in favor of truly bizarre theories. It was not a nuclear weapon, space-based laser, or other sci-fi weapon. Unless you have some really compelling material evidence, SHUT UP. If it was an "inside job," why hasn't anything from such a massive operation leaked in the past 17 years? Wikileaks would have the evidence. Someone would have blown the whistle somewhere.

Government is evil. Government evil through decades of foreign interventionism created the environment for 9/11 to occur. Whether as some inside job conspiracy, or just a rich Saudi nutjob in Afghanistan with a bunch of scumbags, the WTC event was evil. Credit where credit is due, the Pentagon is a valid military target for retaliatory acts, but using a passenger jet (assuming that's what was used... cues X-Files theme) is still not a valid tactic. Every evil act is used to justify more evil in response. It's time to break the cycle and reject evil so we can begin to rebuild. It doesn't matter what flag evil waves, or what slogan it chants or how much it promises that its evil acts further your own interests.