There is much abused quote about war being diplomacy by other means. The gist of this book is that disguised, state sponsored terrorism is domestic politics by other means. It is chillingly convincing. Tarpley begins with a summary of what he terms The Myth of the Twenty-First Century: the lies about September 11. His next chapters contain a summary of how synthetic, or disguised state sponsored terrorism, works, with limited but excellently chosen examples. He follows this with a chapter setting out the American Empire's situation, which he says is approaching collapse, and why it chose brought synthetic terrorism into the US. One of the flaws of this book, in its accessibility at least, is immediately evident. Tarpley constantly mentions the rogue network responsible for September 11 and the oligarchy behind the network, and refers to "the corporate controlled media". But he never once defines the oligarchy, or the rogue network for that matter. He assumes that the reader has penetrated the first and larger myth, that America is a moral, free speech loving democracy, with a government for whom ethics and morality are more than buzzwords to attract voters. If the reader hasn't, this is a really bad book to start with.
Tarpley then spends eight chapters on, first, the creation of Al Qaeda by the CIA, and the events of September 11. He uses a very simple criterion: is what the government says happened, physically possible? The gist of all these chapters is simple, shocking and frightening: no matter where you probe the government's account, it fails. Call it 20/20 hindsight if you will, but ... I watched the Towers collapse, live on TV. I remember how eerie it felt, to see them collapse with such perfect symmetry, just like a controlled demolition. Tarpley provides evidence beyond a reasonable doubt that it looked like a controlled demolition because it was. The chapters also deal with what hit the Pentagon, the total failure of the US military to respond to attacks on a critical city, the nation's capital, and its own headquarters, the anthrax attacks immediately after September 11, what foreign intelligence services were doing during that time, and an account of the threat directly to Bush and his movements during that day.
"Conspiracy theorist" is a term of denigration. Tarpley provides a wonderfully entertaining defence. The first and most obvious point is that the government's story is itself a conspiracy theory, which brings the second point, that conspiracy is a criminal offence. Next he relates how the first appearance of conspiracy theory in American history is ... the Declaration of Independence, which charged the British King with a conspiracy that was to end with the abolition of freedom in the American colonies. The theory was believed by most of the Founding Fathers, Tarpley specifically naming George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. And that's just the high point of the chapter.
The next and last few chapters deal with the rogue network. He goes into the psychology of President Bush, and the philosophy of the neo-conservatives. This is the only area where I do not find Tarpley's arguments convincing. He focuses too narrowly on the neo-conservatives, treating them as virtually the only element within the American oligarchy. He also spends a lot of time in the earlier chapters stating and showing that Bush is a figurehead, and then treating him as a critical element in current events. With that said, Tarpley never fails to give the evidence behind his conclusions. Finally, he provides an excellent overview of what amounts to a new, concealed world war: the conflict between the euro and the dollar.
I apologise for the length of this, and I feel I am still missing important points! To finally start summing up, Tarpley provides strong evidence that September 11, specifically, was a disguised act of terror, by elements in the US government, to achieve exactly what it did, ever increasing restrictions on freedom in the name of defending it and expanding military spending. He shows that this is simply the largest of such incidents within the US, and that most terrorist networks are ultimately controlled by the states the terrorists target, including Al Qaeda and America. It is a shocking idea, a horrifying idea, but it works. If you want to truly understand terrorism, I highly recommend this book.
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- Luc REYNAERTReviewed in the United Kingdom on February 17, 2006
The neocon death warrant for civilization, all human values
