The long-term legacy of 9/11

.

By David Sirota

Fascinating Article About the Legacy of 9/11, Terrorism, Norway... etc

Nearly 10 years later, new studies point to lasting effects on the nation's mental, physical and political health

Like most Americans, I can still remember it as if it were yesterday: The images of the burning building on the screen, the murmurings of bewildered morning TV anchors, the burst of "holy shit!" subject lines in my email box and then, shattering the slow-mo dreamlike quality of it all, the bark of a police officer telling me to get out of the Capitol complex as quickly as possible because a plane-turned-missile was headed our way.

This was my particular 9/11 experience -- a Washington of complete chaos where chest-thumping tough-on-terror congresspeople were instantly transformed into cowering child-trampling George Costanzas as they fled for the door. I'm sure everyone fortunate enough to survive that day has their own unique flashback -- it was, after all, a generation's "where were you when" moment a la the JFK assassination. Only now, approaching the 10-year anniversary of 9/11, a trio of new studies show the post-traumatic stress of the attacks resulted in deep cultural shifts that go way beyond mere haunting mental images and bouts of insomnia.

As probably the single most politicized event in modern American history, 9/11's most obvious long-term impact can be seen in the electoral arena -- and not merely in individual election cycles or races.

Just as the Vietnam-era draft once produced a structural shift toward the Democratic Party among potential draftees, a recent analysis by the University of Warwick shows that 9/11 generated a permanent shift to the Republican Party among newly registered voters. Using voter data from citizens who registered just before and just after the attacks, the May 2011 study found "that voters with birthdays in September were more likely to register as Republicans than voters with birthdays in August" and that "the political affiliation of these voters persisted through to the year 2008...even for those voters who moved and, thus, had to change their registration." In short, a psychologically traumatized electorate ran to a party that promised quick, easy and vengeful solutions to the terrorist threat.

Less obvious but equally profound is the effect 9/11 had on the health care system, according to two University of California studies looking at what researchers call "collective stress." As reviewed by Miller-McCune, the studies found that:

Among a nationally representative sample of about 2,000 American adults, reports of physical ailments increased 18 percent over the three years following the attacks of September 11, 2001…

It turns out watching [the attacks] in real time had huge health consequences. "When compared to individuals who learned about the attacks only after they happened, those who watched the attacks live on TV reported a 28 percent increased incidence of physical ailments over three years post-9/11," Holman and Silver write.

But maybe the most profound legacy of 9/11 is the attack's effect on our very concept of wars and enemies. Before 9/11, those ideas were finite and tangible -- though there were red scares and McCarthyist crusades that argued otherwise, we for the most part believed that conflicts had beginnings and ends and that villains could ultimately be thwarted. But the post-traumatic stress of 9/11 has elicited a kind of neurotic psychosis that embraces Permanent War and allow enemies to occupy a psychological space usually reserved for immortal bogeymen.

That's the takeaway from Ohio State University's recent national poll, which, thanks to serendipitous timing, inadvertently tracked how Americans attitudes shifted sharply after the killing of 9/11 architect, Osama bin Laden. Here are the key findings:

In the weeks following the U.S. military campaign that killed bin Laden, American attitudes toward Muslim Americans took a significant negative shift, results showed. Americans found Muslims living in the United States more threatening after bin Laden's death, positive perceptions of Muslims plummeted, and those surveyed were less likely to oppose restrictions on Muslim Americans' civil liberties…

Changes in attitudes were not related just to preventing a possible terrorist attack, but also included attitudes about religious tolerance of Muslims. For example, nearly one in three respondents surveyed after bin Laden's death agreed that "Muslims are mostly responsible for creating the religious tension that exists in the United States today." That was up from about one in five respondents before the killing... The negative feelings even carried over to personal relationships. The percentage of respondents who said they were unwilling to have a Muslim as a close friend doubled after the death, going from 9 percent to 20 percent.

Intensifying hatred after an enemy is killed -- this particular particular 9/11-related symptom is rooted in classic paranoia and it explains quite a bit about recent events. For instance, it explains why America barely flinched when, after bin Laden's killing, our government announced plans to stay in Afghanistan, increase the defense budget, begin a new war in the Muslim world and expand the president's authority to unilaterally initiate even more foreign conflicts in the future. It also explains why so many American media outlets initially blame Muslims for terrorist attacks that we later find out had nothing to do with Muslims -- and it explains how we so quickly define terrorism exclusively as violence committed by Muslims, but not by anyone else. In the 9/11-addled psyche, the war must continue even when the threat is neutralized.

No doubt, America's political and media class will collude to turn the upcoming anniversary of 9/11 into yet another platitudinous display of pomp, circumstance and hyper-nationalism that celebrates our abiding Americanness (whatever that means), trumpets our supremacy -- and ignores any of these findings. That's become the standard simplified script for 9/11, and its 10-year anniversary will likely be no exception. Lost in that spectacle, however, will be any effort to develop a deeper understanding of 9/11's impact -- one that both honors the dead, and better appreciates the grave psychological injuries that continue to scar the living.

Ignoring that deeper story, of course, is no accident. Exploring 9/11 as a complex and enduring psychological event requires an uncomfortable look at how the mass PTSD that followed the attacks fundamentally differs from standard PTSD.

Think about it: Whereas the mere act of physically experiencing a natural disaster may psychologically damage a victim, 9/11's immediate aftermath was at least as responsible for its negative stress-inducing psychological effects as the attacks themselves (especially for the majority of Americans who did not actually physically experience the attacks) -- and the 9/11 aftermath was anything but natural. On the contrary, the rank saber rattling and the carefully crafted fear mongering that became the Official 9/11 Reaction was exquisitely manufactured at the highest reaches of the political and media establishment -- and as we see, it worked like a charm, with significant downsides.

To understand those downsides and begin any kind of mass healing process, though, asks the political and media establishment to be willing to scrutinize itself. And in America, that remains the ultimate taboo.

David Sirota is a best-selling author of the new book "Back to Our Future: How the 1980s Explain the World We Live In Now." He hosts the morning show on AM760 in Colorado. E-mail him at ds@davidsirota.com, follow him on Twitter @davidsirota or visit his website at www.davidsirota.com.

Deep Parallels Surface – Norway, 9/11, 7/7 and Bali By Gordon Duff, Senior Editor veteranstoday.com The greatest controversy in the world today is Israeli involvement in 9/11. Israeli terrorists were captured with explosives in New York on 9/11, others with electronics gear. Bali Bombing, Reported as Suitcase Nuclear Weapon A planeload were flown out of the country on presidential order the next day but, in the end, Muslims were blamed and two “revenge” wars buried America. In fact, then Mossad operations chief Mike Harari, who escaped Norwegian police in 1973, after murder charges were leveled against him for killing an innocent Muslim he misidentified as a terror suspect, is the same Mike Harari who confessed to organizing the 9/11 attacks while having breakfast with VT staffer, Dimitri Khalezov on September 12, 2001 in Bangkok. If you don’t remember the Bali bombing of 2002, it was Australian’s 9/11 just as 7/7 was Britain’s 9/11. These attacks were all political, all involved the same people, the same “event planners” and benefited the same players, Israel and right wing extremists in the US, Britain and Australia. Mike Harari planned and executed the Bali bombing but he needed help, he said. What he needed was a “fall guy” to blame and Dimitri Khalezov, former Soviet nuclear weapons intelligence officer was a perfect patsy, or so Harari believed when he approached him. Harari was looking for help in a bombing project he was doing in Bali. Murdering innocent people for economic and political ends can be so tiresome. 202 people died that day, Muslims were blamed, the media said it was planned in Bangkok 10 months before. They just had the wrong “event planners.” If Khalezov were stupid enough to join the crew, news would have gotten out. Bali was a “suitcase nuke” bombing. Now, despite the fact that a “domestic terrorist” has confessed in Norway, the terror attacks there are being tied to Israel, just as with 9/11 and the 7/7 attacks in London. The organizations in Norway and the United Kingdom, tied to the Tea Party in America, being hunted down by police are Israeli trained and funded, part of an operation tying “Islamophobia” to Christian Zionism, bringing to the surface dormant racist traditions. The US result was the Project for a New American Century, the Bush administration and 9/11. In Britain, Tony Blair became an Israeli “lapdog,” joining Bush in America’s failed wars. Britain’s “9/11″ was July 7, 2005. Again, Muslim terrorists were blamed, another one of those predictable coincidences. 9/11 sold a decade of war, 7/7 kept Blair in office and was meant to propel the British into another Galipoli/Dieppe in Iran. Again it was a false start and a far more dangerous enemy proved responsible, having covered its tracks carelessly, perhaps with even less skill than the Neocon/Israeli nexus responsible for 9/11. Not long ago, responsibility for the 7/7 attack was laid at the feet of the British government and its Israeli friends. You missed that one in the news? Two months ago, a British jury, based on evidence presented by John Anthony “Maud Dib” Hill, found exactly that. No, you didn’t see it in the press but you can read about it here and see the video that started one of the most controversial human rights cases in history. After 151 days in dismal Wandsworth Prison, much of it in solitary confinement, John Anthony Hill is finally free. The crime he was accused of was the mailing of a “7/7 truther” DVD from Ireland to the United Kingdom. Yes, you are hearing me right, he was extradited from Ireland for sending a copy of the film, “Ripple Effect,” which outlines complicity by the Blair government in terror attacks that killed 56 back in 2005, including 4 “suicide bombers” now believed by many to have been murdered in a bizarre plot. (see that “restricted” video here) This week, a Norwegian ultra-nationalist laid down his weapons before police after having butchered 93 people. Beyond this, we know little. It is now clear he had accomplices, on the island, more waiting, he says, to duplicate his effort. The puny police response, a “Keystone Cops” schtick, piling into a jalopy and then into a leaking rowboat made it all possible as did counter-terrorism officials who turned a highly focused “blind eye” to the real threat of domestic terrorism. As the day has gone on, the search for accomplices has, overtly, crossed Norway, Sweden and Denmark. The search has spread to the UK, to the ranks of the infamous EDL and even to the United States and the Christian Zionist community, once the “apple” of George “W” Bush’s eye. The very real enemy, right wing terrorism, international in flavor, fascist in nature and underwritten by ultra-nationalists across Europe, closely allied to security agencies in Israel, has finally become a real target. We have seen all this before, New York City, September 11, 2001. Who was arrested that day? A white van filled with explosives was stopped by police on the George Washington bridge. The passengers, armed terrorists, were arrested and jailed. A second white van was pulled over, 5 were arrested there. They had been seen “photographing” the attack on the World Trade Center and openly celebrating the carnage. The "Larynx," a Cruise missile, circa 1925 However, no film, no digital media was seized, in fact no filming went on at all. Why? The “cameras” were very likely something else, laser marking systems such as those used for guiding remote controlled bombs to their targets. Remote controlled aircraft used as weapons are old as the hills, the first dating to September 1925, yes, that old, the British “Larynyx. This radio controlled ramp launched plane traveled at 200 mph and was intended to be used against attacking Zeppelins. What are the parallels with 9/11? The terrorists arrested in the “White Van” incidents were Israeli citizens, “art students” they claimed. Months later, over the objections of the FBI, they were repatriated to Israel without criminal charges tied to 9/11. Why? The Abe Foxman and the ADL, AIPAC, Netanyahu, Barney Frank and the entire Israeli wing of congress demanded it. The real 9/11 terrorists were arrested by NYPD on 9/11, two of the teams at least. How did we honor the dead? We released the culprits, failed to follow the leads which went, went where? Tel Aviv? The White House? This is where all evidence, endless evidence, now leads and America is stuck in neutral, forever damned to a false history. A decade later, America is foiled by two imaginary enemies, the non-existent “Al Qaeda” and the long dead CIA operative, bin Laden while a small group of half starved tribesmen has beaten the greatest military machine in history to, not a standstill, but to full retreat. Where have I seen this before? Norway The initial flurry of “Islamo-blamia” died down, crushed by tons of evidence and, perhaps, the most theatrical mass murderer of all time. Photos have been pouring onto the internet, Brevik dressed in comic opera garb, many of the photos in the monumental style of Mussolini or his young protege, Julian Assange. Only hours after the police announced that they had captured the “lone gunman,” 6 accomplices were arrested. They have since disappeared. One accomplice was seen on the island, a fact pushed out of police statements but which has resurfaced. More are sought but, more likely, the real accomplices are in government itself, inside the security services and the police. It was that way in 1973, according to the Guardian, and it is likely that way still. Israel’s intelligence service, Mossad, acted without Norwegian help in a botched 1973 assassination in the ski resort of Lillehammer, a national commission concluded yesterday.Norwegians have long speculated about involvement by their own police or intelligence service in the killing, which has been shrouded in secrecy for 27 years, and which has been a sore point in otherwise warm relations between Norway and Israel The killers in 1973 were released, unpunished. The real planners of this weeks mass murder are probably already out of the country and will remain unpunished Mike Harari escaped prison and planned both 9/11 and the Bali bombing that we know of. He is one of Israel’s greatest national heroes. Who are the secret heroes this week?

9/11: Who Really Benefited? Fact and Not Fiction... Global Research Editor's Note We bring to the attention of our readers this provocative review of the strategic and corporate interests behind 9/11 including Wall Street, the Texas oil companies and the defense contractors. The statements in this article are corroborated by numerous studies, books, news articles and research reports published since September 2001. In the course of almost ten years, Global Research has conducted a detailed review and analysis of the 9/11 attacks, focussing on their broad implications as well as their historical significance. See our 9/11 and the War on Terrorism Dossier by Captain America Forget so-called conspiracy theories. Instead look at reality. Dare ask yourself who actually seems to have benefited from the 9-11 calamity. In light of the debt ceiling debates and the continuous corrupt politics as usual of Washington D.C., it is time for the American people, and individual states of this federation, to look at a troubling set of facts. It seems there were “several” beneficiaries of 9-11 that don’t exactly fit the story line we were constantly fed by the propaganda machine and mainstream media as to how to connect the dots (which we were rhetorically asked to do). Here is a list of peoples that benefited. Most of this list is factual. Some are more opinion but with strong support in reality-based argument: 1) The New York Port Authority was having difficulty renting out space in the Twin Towers. More importantly there was a huge asbestos liability. Surprisingly these Towers were sold to a new owner Larry Silverstein just three months prior—who managed to get an insurance contract for a big payout if any of the Tower buildings got hit by an airplane. This is a fact. 2) Our first international move was to bomb Afghanistan under the assumption that people there were involved. So the heroin industry of Afghanistan came back to life in a big way—that is international and local drug cartels rediscovered a gold mine of money supply. Bin Laden and the Taliban, because of their religious fanaticism, pretty much closed down the trade to a trickle. But after the bombing shake-up, people connected with the heroin trade in Central Asia reaped billion dollars rewards—including money-laundering groups of financiers—such as banksters, etc. (And this is pretty much all the U.S. military/ intelligence has really accomplished—despite all the rhetoric and high-sounding goals about exporting democracy.) This is fact and not fiction. 3) Investors of profitable corporations connected to the military industrial complex made a killing (pun intended). Obviously war has been profitable for some industries for eons as we are told by most war historians profits are an inevitable consequence of war for merchants of death yet they say profit is “not” the driving force behind war. Think again. For our American culture, since at least the Vietnam War, it seems to have become the driving force. (What else does America still manufacture?) Prior to 9/11 there was little in the way of war material inventories being depleted. But soon after 9/11 this all changed. In fact some corporate stocks immediately went up in value—as did some military contracts. Note as well that after the cold war both the Pentagon and the Intelligence apparatus should have cut their budgets in half. (But then no one would have been promoted and the Pentagon would have lost some of its clout.) That did not happen. Rather the budgets doubled in size. How is that for financial austerity? This is fact and not fiction. 4) Some powerful industry leaders and think tank politicos believed it was necessary for certain “companies” to “control” various strategic resources such as oil and gas. And not surprisingly the very countries in which we declared a war against terrorists are surprisingly the same countries that contain such resources—especially in the Middle East. Gas and oil reserves are coveted by every industrial civilization and every military as a necessity. For example, there was a plan to build an oil pipeline through Afghanistan and Pakistan to ship out from the Indian ocean—requiring stable societies that don’t sabotage pipelines. Nevertheless despite things not going as planned oil companies for whatever reason reaped huge profits. Fact and not fiction. 5) Advocates, such as Paul Bremer, for extreme laissez faire economic policies, attempted to rewrite an Iraqi constitution to promote a free market system of neo-liberal economic principles to make it especially easy for foreign nations to own Iraq’s resources. And if you do your research you will come to learn that the U.S. did not have any gripes with Saddam Hussein until he kicked oil companies out of Iraq because they wanted to take the lion’s share of the profits. He nationalized oil. This is fact and not fiction. 6) Israel benefited by having one of their neighboring enemies, namely Saddam Hussein and his standing army, weakened and preoccupied. It is not a coincidence that advocates and newspaper pundits most defensive about our invasion happen to be strong advocates of Israel’s right-wing will. Evidence clearly shows that some Israeli supporters were part of the culture of deception to take us to war with Iraq—as they are now working to take us to war with Iran with a similar pattern of phony intelligence. Equally it is a fact that whatever Middle East group harbors hostility toward Israel is now considered terrorist in nature to Americans. It is a fact that the Israeli lobby pushed hard for war with Iraq. 7) Right-wing politicos, especially Christian and Judaic, who like to promote prejudice against anything Muslim and Arab benefited. Since 9-11 there has been a constant propaganda war against Muslims throughout Western countries. (This is not to argue that Americans should not be wary of foreign motives.) But the fact is that those who do not wish Muslims to have influence in this culture have clearly wages a major propaganda campaign for Westerners to fear and distrust a huge segment of the world’s population—as a “cultural clash” or clash of civilizations like the medieval era of The Crusades. This is to say that Israel’s enemies have become our enemies as “neocon” propaganda campaign harps on “Islamo-fascism,” “Islamo-extremism,” and “Islamo-fanaticism”. Meanwhile this event is used to further persuade Americans Israel is America’s “natural” ally and partner against the forces of evil. (Yet rightwing Israelis too are not willing to separate Church and State and so they discriminate against those not Jewish. Therefore they too do not share our democratic values of equality for “all” people—like many of the theocratic countries in the Middle East.) This is opinion but it still reflects reality. 8) Politically motivated people with the desire to use “fear,” namely terrorism, as an excuse to curtail and destroy civil liberties and freedoms normally honored in democratic countries. We have become more a fascist state with Homeland Security surveillance. This curtailment is similar to those who continue to try to censor free speech—and make it more difficult to have the right to “associate” via technologies such as the Internet. Such mentality has allowed spying on citizens by “privatized” corporations not accountable to the tax paying public who pay organizations to secretly spy and keep records on its own citizenry. Obama and his team have done nothing to make real, substantive changes, and in fact have reinforced this tyranny. The curtailment of our freedoms is fact and not fiction. 9) Some international political operatives willing to take American bribe money in exchange to playing and saying our tune have benefited, such as some political factions in the Middle East who equally play they game with our tax dollars—including journalists who will write and say whatever Uncle Sam wants as long as there is a brick of one hundred dollar bills as “disappeared” just like military contracts that did not get performed—but were still played. This could also include those creating phony websites to spew messages or take credit for events done by others. 10) People with a desire to destroy the political strength and good will of the American people and government. Our country is no longer looked upon as a “positive” force for democracy. Further our economy has been severely damaged by corrupt forces willing to sacrifice real national security to greedy and self-interested ends. We are seen as the rogue state by too many. It doesn’t seem to bother some profiting that America goes broke invading foreign countries—irrespective of what the rest of the world thinks—and what could be a long term disaster—if not a World War 3. (It almost seems like a deliberate foil to destroy military preparedness and to weaken our security.) Furthermore, those who believe in a two class system benefited because the wealth investor class, including most of the Congress and Senate, are “not” sending their kids to die—rather they rely on a volunteer military of lower and middle class kids that can’t find jobs or have few prospects to go to school. 11) Along with this financial bust is a drive to destroy liberal notions of any kind of welfare for the less fortunate—save welfare for corrupt corporations. While it is true that there is no free lunch (unless you live in the beltway) there is also way too much scorn for people who are not super-rich as deserving some kind of humanity. Perhaps Obama should let the country default. Perhaps individual states “should” give serious consideration to secede from the Union. It has become one massive failure anyway. This litany is as contentious as the list of grievances in the Declaration of Independence written over two hundred years ago. And there is good reason to modify our current banking system and the Federal Reserve. The U.S. Congress, like most pseudo-liberal chicken lefties, who have not had the guts to look seriously at what likely happened on 9/11, or why, have succumbed to the cowardliness of voting to not close the U.S. gulag. They are more afraid of their own lost of stature than they are of honoring the rights of law and justice. Meanwhile the legal system—id est lawyers—have been far too compliant. This is to say that the U.S. is being strangulated by corporate America and its finance sector. This is a form of slavery to be manipulated into doing things under false assumptions. Why the ultra rich became even more so, they “own” Congress with their bribery of lobby money and especially the Republican party—despite all the Tea Party advocates. You may not like these realities. Few do. So go ahead and continue to shun all “theories” about 9-11 as mere skewed imagination. Because while it is true that 99.99% of the Government is innocent that doesn’t mean a relatively small, but high-ranking cabal, could not have been involved—especially given all the security transgressed and air force stand down that ensued. Still it is easy to point fingers at identifiable groups of people as over-generalizations. Nevertheless many people looked the other way to not notice the dots the machine was drawing was itself tainted—which had its own wisdom of reticence. But where are we to go as a culture if we continue to play blind? You can believe in fantasy as most people choose—because in the short term it feels easier. But it may turn out to be worse in the longer term with both parties being irremediably corrupt. More importantly to the sell out of our human rights to corporations with laws like Citizens United vs. the Federal Elections Commission. Good Luck to all people who think they know something because they have been conditioned to believe what they currently do. Yet ask yourself how many Muslims actually benefited? Then ask that irrespective of who did it, does it not seem that our culture has some issues to contend with and some bureaucracy to address besides the liberal agenda? If lawyers don’t start making more noise we could have some serious problems.