Tag: Dick Cheney

What to Believe?

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bush-cheney-coverIn the second part of the book Bush and Cheney, whose first part I reviewed in my post Too Much Reality?, David Ray Griffin sets out the facts behind the events of 9/11. Essentially 15 miraculous events would need to have happened for the ‘official’ story of what happened on that day to be true.

Particularly notable:

  • The twin towers and WTC7 were the only steel framed high rise buildings ever to come down without explosives or incendiaries. And they came down in free fall and more symmetrically than engineers would expect.
  • Uniquely, the fires from the debris could not be extinguished for months.
  • The hijackers did not have the skills to fly the planes as they did. Incredibly, passports were found among the debris, phone calls were received from planes that had no contact with the ground, and intercept aircraft were not scrambled.
  • There was never a proper and thorough independent inquiry, and the evidence was removed from the site with indecent haste, before it could be analysed.

There’s lots more, certainly enough to suggest that there was some sort of cover-up. An organisation Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth is in accord with Griffin’s contentions. But then one wonders, how could such a massive project possibly be kept under wraps?

But what was/is being covered up? Griffin suggests that there is a remarkable concordance between what was enabled after 9/11 with the so-called War on Terror and the dreams of the neocon Project for the New American Century, whose 1997 signatories included Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. It gave just the excuse and the public support to implement these dreams. But is it really conceivable that (possibly rogue) individuals would commit such heinous acts? It appears to be of a scale far greater than the known rogue acts performed by such as Oliver North during the Reagan years (when George HW Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld were part of the leadership). But these people do have form.

Basically, we don’t know. I wonder if we ever will.

Too Much Reality?

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“Humankind cannot bear very much reality.”

― T. S. Eliot, Four Quartets

Bush and Cheney: How They Ruined America and the World

I’ve had this book by Professor David Ray Griffin for some time, but hesitated to put it on top of the reading list. Having taken an interest in world affairs over the years, I sort of knew what it says. It’s still quite disturbing to see it all laid out in one place.

The neoconservative ideology, of which Dick Cheney was a major leader, had been around since the Reagan years, culminating in the articulation of the Project for the New American Century, aimed at maintaining American ‘full spectrum’ domination of world affairs. It seems that those ‘hanging chads’ in Florida in November 2000, and the resulting ‘stolen’ presidential election that brought George W Bush and Cheney to power allowed these ideas to have full effect. This had a profound impact on future decades, leading to the multiple crises we see today. Consider the contents of part I of this tome.

  • The failure to prevent 9/11
  • The nonsensical ‘war on terror’ and the Afghanistan war
  • The increase in military spending and policy of pre-emptive war and regime change (carried forward from the Reagan years)
  • The corruptly-justified Iraq war and incompetent dissolution of the Iraqi army that led to the formation of ISIS
  • The extreme Islamaphobia
  • The global chaos caused by America’s ‘war for the greater middle east’ – American supported insurrections in Libya, Syria, Yemen. (The policies were basically carried forward by Obama/Clinton/Kerry). The uncritical support of Israel’s unjust stasis. All this of course leading to Europe’s current refugee crisis.
  • The flouting of US and international law in drone killings and targeted assassinations, even of US citizens. A counter-productive policy that continues to this day.
  • Changing the US constitution that limited the ability of the Executive to make war, many violations of the first, fourth and fifth amendments, including warrantless searches, use of torture, capturing huge amounts of data as revealed by Edward Snowden.
  • Confrontation with Russia by moving Nato and weapons nearer to the Russian border, with the probable aim of regime change in Russia. Regime change in Ukraine that appears to have involved dirty tricks, as has the subsequent confrontation with Russia. Griffin suggests that similar confrontation with China led to the construction of the disputed islands in the China Sea. All this greatly increases the risk of nuclear holocaust.
  • Finally, the persistent denial and refusal to act on climate change and global warming has already closed the window on when the major problems could be averted. Continued refusal to act pushes us ever nearer climate breakdown (‘ecological holocaust’).

This first part of the book is profoundly depressing, and recalled the many occasions when I have personally recoiled at the grossness and lack of intelligence in the US’s policies.

You could just see this all as a grand conspiracy theory, but it seems that the cap fits. US exceptionalism and the thinking of Empire really is perhaps the greatest danger to today’s world.

But we do need to sometimes face the reality of the world as it is, in order to move towards a better world tomorrow. It should be clear to most thinking people that the US has been for two decades travelling up a long blind and self-defeating alley. Donald Trump just makes it all a bit more unpredictable.

Do they really want to be the Emperors of a dead world?

I thought this second Eliot quote might be appropriate, but I’m not so sure about the good intentions.

“Most of the evil in this world is done by people with good intentions.”

― T.S. Eliot

Maybe I’ll get to read part 2 of the book, on 9/11, when I’ve recovered.

Featured image of Bush and Cheney at 2003 State of the Union, from Wikimedia Commons