9/11: What was the point?

[Cosmic Yak]

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true, and that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by elements of the US government in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
We are now 20 years past the event, and none of these conspirators has been uncovered or brought to justice. To all intents and purposes, they got clean away with it.
OK? As I say, just for the sake of argument.
Now, if they got away with it, then presumably, they also achieved whatever goals they had in mind when they set this thing up.
This is my question: What were those goals?
This was clearly a complex plot, which must have involved a great deal of time, effort and money to plan and execute. What was its purpose?
The general idea, from what I've seen, is that it allowed America to invade Iraq and Afghanistan with a semblance of legitimacy. Fine. They did that. And then? What did they get from that?
Oil? Can't be. US imports of oil from Iraq fell after the invasion, and American companies do not own or run any significant part of Iraq's oil industry.
A continuance of American power and influence, a la PNAC? Well, that didn't work either. Iraq was a disaster for America: a ruinously expensive quagmire, from which it has only recently extricated itself. US power and influence has diminished, rather than increased. Vast swathes of the world were alienated by the (perceived or actual) anti-Muslim focus of US actions. Russia, Iran and China were able to profit from this debacle and increase their own power and influence. The damage to the reputation of America from such incidents as Abu Ghraib was also massive. The fallout from America's ignominious departure from Afghanistan, after a decade of fruitless occupation, continues to rumble on.
The alleged perpetrators? Rumsfeld, Cheney etc? Gone, and their philosophy discredited.
What, then, was the point? What were the intended goals? What did the orchestrators of this plot actually gain from their endeavours?

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

It's the same problem the Underpants Gnomes had.

"Step 1: Collect underpants.
Step 2.
Step 3: Profit."

 

[theprestige]

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true, and that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by elements of the US government in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
We are now 20 years past the event, and none of these conspirators has been uncovered or brought to justice. To all intents and purposes, they got clean away with it.
OK? As I say, just for the sake of argument.
Now, if they got away with it, then presumably, they also achieved whatever goals they had in mind when they set this thing up.
This is my question: What were those goals?
This was clearly a complex plot, which must have involved a great deal of time, effort and money to plan and execute. What was its purpose?
The general idea, from what I've seen, is that it allowed America to invade Iraq and Afghanistan with a semblance of legitimacy. Fine. They did that. And then? What did they get from that?
Oil? Can't be. US imports of oil from Iraq fell after the invasion, and American companies do not own or run any significant part of Iraq's oil industry.
A continuance of American power and influence, a la PNAC? Well, that didn't work either. Iraq was a disaster for America: a ruinously expensive quagmire, from which it has only recently extricated itself. US power and influence has diminished, rather than increased. Vast swathes of the world were alienated by the (perceived or actual) anti-Muslim focus of US actions. Russia, Iran and China were able to profit from this debacle and increase their own power and influence. The damage to the reputation of America from such incidents as Abu Ghraib was also massive. The fallout from America's ignominious departure from Afghanistan, after a decade of fruitless occupation, continues to rumble on.
The alleged perpetrators? Rumsfeld, Cheney etc? Gone, and their philosophy discredited.
What, then, was the point? What were the intended goals? What did the orchestrators of this plot actually gain from their endeavours?

Purely for the sake of argument: You can't assume that there was no goal just because the perpetrators failed to achieve the goal. Maybe the answer is that Rumsfeld and Cheney did it on purpose and also really sucked at the follow-up.

I mean, that's basically what we say about Bin Laden, right? He had high hopes of a big payoff from the attack, and in the end he pretty much got nothing. TSA security theater is annoying to Americans, but totally useless to terrorist groups like Al Qaeda. The US still supports Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The closest islamofascists have come to establishing a Caliphate was ISIS. And they didn't even emerge until Syria started to fall apart. Long after Bin Laden was dead and gone.

 

[Oystein]

For example:

- "Israel forced our hand to gain or maintain power and land, to derail the Oslo process and keep the Palestinians on their knees"
Well, I think you could argue that Israel managed to preserve a status quo. 9/11 kept the USA deeply involved in Israel's neighborhood and committed to Israel's security.

- "The MIC profits from wars, we got wars, and so the MIC profited". Variation: Cheney, the Bush family, Rumsfeld personally profited by having stakes in private companies running part of the USA's wars

- "Justify an eternal though phoney 'War against Terrorism' and get the US population used to more and more limits to their freedom as a result. What with the GOP working to dismantle democracy altogether? It all started in 2001"


I am not saying these things really happened. I am saying Conspiracy Theorists could see recent history and the world today that way.

 

[Allen773]

The point was to be cartoonishly evil, because that's what EVIL people do.

The US government is made up of supervillains, but don't despair; you, the humble citizen, armed with nothing but a computer and a stable Internet connection, are going to vanquish the Forces of Darkness (TM) with The Truth (TM) that They (TM) don't want told, because you are unique and special and oh-so-much smarter than everybody else, and all the people who mocked you for so long will admit you were right all along.

Or something like that.

 

[theprestige]

To be fair, bin Laden really was cartoonishly evil. 9/11 was exactly the kind of pointless spectacle you'd expect from a comic book villain.

 

[Allen773]

To be fair, bin Laden really was cartoonishly evil. 9/11 was exactly the kind of pointless spectacle you'd expect from a comic book villain.

Unfortunately, it wasn't pointless. He genuinely believed in what he was doing and had plenty of identifiable grievances (whatever you think of them), as undeniably deranged as his overall worldview was and as evil as what he did (or rather, had others do under his direction) was. And he had specific goals - weaken the US to the point it couldn't support its allies in the Middle East, destroy Israel, overthrow the House of Saud and other "traitorous" governments in the Islamic world, and replace all of those governments with Taliban-style regimes that would then somehow lead to the restoration of the Caliphate and "true Islam."

Obviously this is deranged and he failed, though there are still plenty of these Al-Qaeda or ISIS* affiliates or whatnot around ( in countries that most Westerners don't think about.) But it wasn't evil for the sake of evil.

*ISIS is/was even more deranged and in to pointless spectacle, as you put it, than bin Laden. He and Zawahiri were horrified by what Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was doing to Shiites and Sunnis who disagreed with them in Iraq, and Zawahiri absolutely disowned ISIS for similar reasons (plus for prematurely declaring a "Caliphate.") Of course, some of this was petty resentment at the young jihadist hotshots in Mosul and Raqqa sucking away fighters and resources from the old men of al-Qaeda. Jihadists are no strangers to endless infighting, lol.

 

[theprestige]

Nothing that happened on 9/11 could reasonably be expected to further any of those goals.

Even Imperial Japan understood enough to actually attack a bastion of American power. And look where it got them. Bin Laden took a swipe at a product of American excess. He'd have been better off stealing all the gold in Fort Knox.

 

[Allen773]

Nothing that happened on 9/11 could reasonably be expected to further any of those goals.

I would certainly never argue that Osama bin Laden, of all people, was reasonable. But he did have those goals, however deluded and high off of his own ********* he so obviously was.

 

[Axxman300]

The old CTist in me likes to think the dark forces did 9-11 on a $5 bet.

That's the only dumb thing that would make sense if you're a hardcore Truther.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

For example:

- "Israel forced our hand to gain or maintain power and land, to derail the Oslo process and keep the Palestinians on their knees"
Well, I think you could argue that Israel managed to preserve a status quo. 9/11 kept the USA deeply involved in Israel's neighborhood and committed to Israel's security.

OK, but I would argue that this would have happened with or without 9/11. In fact, one of the dangers of the Iraq invasion was that Israel would get involved, thus triggering a more general ME conflict. The Bush administration had to work hard to restrain Israel after Saddam started lobbing missiles at them.

- "The MIC profits from wars, we got wars, and so the MIC profited". Variation: Cheney, the Bush family, Rumsfeld personally profited by having stakes in private companies running part of the USA's wars

I get this argument, and have heard this before from the CT-ists.
My counterargument is that, although some parts of the US economy benefitted from the wars, more would have suffered. Insurance, from the 9/11 payout, for example. The oil industry, for another. Any company looking to sell goods or services to the Middle East. I'm really not sure that war is profitable when taken in context of the entire economy. Not that Bush, Rumsfeld etc would necessarily have cared about that, of course. Perhaps that was their aim, and they were just too blinkered to see the big picture.

- "Justify an eternal though phoney 'War against Terrorism' and get the US population used to more and more limits to their freedom as a result. What with the GOP working to dismantle democracy altogether? It all started in 2001"

Plausible, in the CT context. The old 'slippery slope' argument. Problem is, of course, is that we always seem to be at the top of that slope, and never actually descending it. The same arguments are being used now about vaccine mandates. But, as I say, plausible in a CT context.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

Purely for the sake of argument: You can't assume that there was no goal just because the perpetrators failed to achieve the goal. Maybe the answer is that Rumsfeld and Cheney did it on purpose and also really sucked at the follow-up.

That is entirely possible.
However, that level of ineptitude rather jars with the idea of a near-omnipotent deep state. Such inconsistencies rarely trouble conspiracy theorists, but, even if we assume there was a cabal capable of planning a false flag of that magnitude, for them to fail so dismally in the aftermath should at least give them pause for thought before the next Evil Plot.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the 9/11 conspiracy theories are true, and that the attacks were somehow orchestrated by elements of the US government in order to achieve their nefarious goals.
We are now 20 years past the event, and none of these conspirators has been uncovered or brought to justice. To all intents and purposes, they got clean away with it.
OK? As I say, just for the sake of argument.
Now, if they got away with it, then presumably, they also achieved whatever goals they had in mind when they set this thing up.
This is my question: What were those goals?
This was clearly a complex plot, which must have involved a great deal of time, effort and money to plan and execute. What was its purpose?
The general idea, from what I've seen, is that it allowed America to invade Iraq and Afghanistan with a semblance of legitimacy. Fine. They did that. And then? What did they get from that?
Oil? Can't be. US imports of oil from Iraq fell after the invasion, and American companies do not own or run any significant part of Iraq's oil industry.
A continuance of American power and influence, a la PNAC? Well, that didn't work either. Iraq was a disaster for America: a ruinously expensive quagmire, from which it has only recently extricated itself. US power and influence has diminished, rather than increased. Vast swathes of the world were alienated by the (perceived or actual) anti-Muslim focus of US actions. Russia, Iran and China were able to profit from this debacle and increase their own power and influence. The damage to the reputation of America from such incidents as Abu Ghraib was also massive. The fallout from America's ignominious departure from Afghanistan, after a decade of fruitless occupation, continues to rumble on.
The alleged perpetrators? Rumsfeld, Cheney etc? Gone, and their philosophy discredited.
What, then, was the point? What were the intended goals? What did the orchestrators of this plot actually gain from their endeavours?

You are describing how possible goals failed, but that is not an argument. Goals fail. The putative US perpetrators might have strived for one or several of the goals you mention, but failed.

After all, the actual perpetrators didn't really get much out of it, either.

ETA: Ninjaed ...

Hans

 

[Cosmic Yak]

You are describing how possible goals failed, but that is not an argument. Goals fail. The putative US perpetrators might have strived for one or several of the goals you mention, but failed.

After all, the actual perpetrators didn't really get much out of it, either.

ETA: Ninjaed ...

Hans

Yes, they might have failed. It still isn't clear to me what those goals might have been. Given that the failures of the goals I have described were reasonably predictable, or, at the very least, dependent on factors beyond the control of the supposed plotters, it does still raise the question of why they went to all that trouble.

 

[MRC_Hans]

Yes, they might have failed. It still isn't clear to me what those goals might have been. Given that the failures of the goals I have described were reasonably predictable, or, at the very least, dependent on factors beyond the control of the supposed plotters, it does still raise the question of why they went to all that trouble.

Oh, I basically agree. But you can't treat it as evidence. Not that any is needed.

Hans

 

[Venom]

After all these years I'm still wondering which came first: the "hey the way that building collapsed looked weird" or "**** George W. Bush".

If I recall in one video in New York on the day of the attack, a bystander remarked that he thought one of the Twin Towers was demolished or bombed after seeing it collapse. And though the invasion of Afghanistan was a while later I don't think the controlled demolition talking point picked up until much later when mainstream Truthers came up with a narrative that included it.

 

[Cosmic Yak]

After all these years I'm still wondering which came first: the "hey the way that building collapsed looked weird" or "**** George W. Bush".

If I recall in one video in New York on the day of the attack, a bystander remarked that he thought one of the Twin Towers was demolished or bombed after seeing it collapse. And though the invasion of Afghanistan was a while later I don't think the controlled demolition talking point picked up until much later when mainstream Truthers came up with a narrative that included it.

You're right, or at least your recollection tallies with mine. The initial talk was mostly about how the attacks were staged to provide an excuse for Dubya and his sinister coterie to invade Iraq. I don't recall much being said about exactly how that was done until some time later.
That said, the anti-semitic ideas were there from the very start. The Saudi Defence Minister phoned Bush the next day to tell him the Jews had done it.

 

[Crazy Chainsaw]

You're right, or at least your recollection tallies with mine. The initial talk was mostly about how the attacks were staged to provide an excuse for Dubya and his sinister coterie to invade Iraq. I don't recall much being said about exactly how that was done until some time later.
That said, the anti-semitic ideas were there from the very start. The Saudi Defence Minister phoned Bush the next day to tell him the Jews had done it.

Anti Semitic views and outright Propaganda was what we saw in the Conspiracy theories, some from Aqueda some from Moscow, all by design.

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Bin Laden took a swipe at a product of American excess. He'd have been better off stealing all the gold in Fort Knox

Haven't you heard? There isn't any gold in Fort Knox, and hasn't been for many years. Just imagine how disappointed the terrorsists would have been to fight their way in there, only to discover the vaults were bare!

 

[Roger Ramjets]

Anti Semitic views and outright Propaganda was what we saw in the Conspiracy theories, some from Aqueda some from Moscow, all by design.

Well the Saudis certainly had good reason to pin it on Israel - or anyone except themselves. And it's not like Israel hasn't done similar stuff in the past.

But as for Dubya and his sinister coterie, all the evidence suggests they had no involvement in 9/11 and simply took advantage of it. The simplest proof of this is that there was no obvious finger pointing at Iraq - which there should have been if they had orchestrated it.