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Proving Nothing

I really have no interest in debunking all the nutty conspiracies revolving around September 11, 2001. I find the exercise about as entertaining as discussing the virgin birth with a Christian fundamentalist. The truth is, it’s is damn near impossible to convince a zealot of their senselessness.

I concede that there are a lot of questions yet to be answered about that dark day five years ago. But of all of the inquiries, none, in my opinion, if answered, would ever indicate the US government was behind the bloody affair. Sad thing is most 9/11 conspiracy theorists, conveniently dubbed the 9/11 Truth Movement, are on par with Bush for the Super-Negligence Award: what they are now propagating will never stop this out-of-control administration or any of our government’s homicidal policies.

With all the banter about the Bushies and the neocons taking down the World Trade Center or flying a missile in to the Pentagon, the Truth Movement seems to willfully ignore that we’ve got real wars going on in the Middle East right now. And most of these battles started well before Bush took office or Bin Laden’s combat teams flew commercial airliners in to the WTC.

I’ve yet to comprehend how sending out mass emails, which “prove” George W. Bush and company were behind 9/11, will ever bring our troops home or curb US imperialism. Never mind these hollow tirades “prove” nothing, the senders’ obsessive tendencies (my inbox overflows with this nonsense) are a huge diversion from the actual crimes our government commits on a daily basis.

While some BYU physicist rattles his brain over the intricacies of WTC #7’s collapse, our government is dropping toxic gas on poor peasants in Colombia in attempts to eradicate coca production. While David Ray Griffin pens his next best seller, forests in Alaska and Appalachia are being obliterated in the name of corporate profit. While so many truth seekers attempt to convince us (how they can seek the truth when they already think they have all the answers is beyond me) that the Jews who worked in the WTC were told ahead of time not to come to work on 9/11, Lebanon is being invaded and destroyed by Israel.

What’s the Truth Movement doing about the hundreds of thousands of poor non-violent drug offenders who are rotting in US prisons, or the thousands more who are decaying on death row? What are they doing for the teenage girls who slave away in sweatshops piecing together our clothes and sneakers? What have conspiracy theories ever proven, anyway?

Just last week Al-Jazeera (not exactly an apologist for US aggression) aired an old video, which allegedly showed Osama hanging out with a few 9/11 perpetrators. Will the conspiracy pushers now try to convince us that Al-Jazeera is in cahoots with Fox News?

Indeed this administration, like so many before it, needs to be stopped at once. But we certainly don’t need conspiracy theories to make the case.

JOSHUA FRANK, author of Left Out! How Liberals Helped Reelect George W. Bush, edits http://www.BrickBurner.org