9/11 and Al Qaeda: The price of victory ... Is Al Qaeda finished? As the 10th anniversary of 9/11 nears, it would certainly be welcome news that the organization that carried out those attacks has been defeated. On Sunday, The Times reported that Al Qaeda's reputed second in command, Atiyah Abdul Rahman, had been killed in Pakistan, probably in a strike by a U.S. drone: A few weeks after [Osama] bin Laden was killed in Pakistan during a raid by U.S. Navy SEALs, some analysts suggested that Rahman, a Libyan, had emerged as Al Qaeda's leader. That didn't turn out to be the case – the leadership spot went to Egyptian Ayman Zawahiri – but it underscored how central a role Rahman has played. And what's the big picture? As the story says: Rahman's death is likely to lend credence to a view in some U.S. policymaking circles that Al Qaeda's defeat is within reach. – LA Times

Dominant Social Theme: Get 'em, and make sure they're dead. Then things will be all right again.

Free-Market Analysis: This blog opinion from the "Times Opinion Staff" offers nothing much new in this retrospective on 9/11. As the tale of 9/11 continues to "age out" such articles shall become more common. They partake of what was once called the "banality of evil" – as their starting point is the deliberate falsehood of the 9/11 myth itself.

This banality of evil is intensely dangerous. Inevitably, the lack of truth gives rise to subtle oppression, and then eventually to obvious genocide. Those leaders that have taken their countries down such a road cannot sleep well at night. They think of nothing but murder and retribution.

Small, furtive murders become large and obvious ones over time. It is inevitable. It is human nature. Those who might have stopped it grow afraid. Those who are supposed to report on it, grow too frightened to do so.

Those who might challenge the broadening evil are two few and increasingly fragmented. Often they are imprisoned or even killed. Over time, such killings are taken for granted. An entire security apparatus is erected to eradicate a certain class of people – truth-tellers above all.

It is soon seen as inevitable and even unworthy of comment. What might have been exceedingly shocking to previous generations abides resignedly in the present. "That's how the world works," people mutter to themselves and their close friends. People's primary goal within this context is to stay out of trouble – to survive without getting caught.

What to compare this LA Times article to, then? One example that comes to mind is John Wayne Gacy, Jr., the serial killer also known as the Killer Clown who killed 33 teenage boys and young men between 1972 and 1978. He would regularly dress as Pogo the clown before finding his victims and luring them to their deaths.

Gacy was a banal man. Even his paintings, created on death row, are banal. This article, too, is banal, in terms of its wholehearted acceptance of the 9/11 myth. "Terrorists" commanded by Osama bin Laden and orchestrated from a cave in Afghanistan (that has never been found) attacked and brought down two of the most important buildings ever constructed in the West. Kerosene is said not to burn hotly enough to melt steel, and yet both buildings collapsed within hours.

The LA Times article is content to use the 9/11 myth as a jumping off point to discuss the reality of the modern terrorist evolution. But even a cursory examination brings up contradictions. The 9/11 Commission – many members at any rate, including the chief attorney – has become far less convinced over time of the narrative to which they signed their names. One has even written a book claiming the commission was lied to serially by military intelligence (FBI, CIA, etc.), the Pentagon and the Bush administration.

The BBC broadcast a report of the fall of a third structure, Building 7, a half-hour before it actually occurred; to this day the BBC has no explanation but has only reported that all the in-house video of the report has been inadvertently destroyed. The leaseholder of the Twin Towers seems to have spoken about "pulling" Building 7 before it actually came down. Building 7 apparently subsided into its own footprint for no apparent reason.

One could go on for perhaps another 1,000 anomalies (there are lists on the 'Net). There is no reason to. That terrible day needs to be revisited by a Commission with the power necessary to investigate what actually DID happen. What is SAID to have happened obviously did not; or whatever did happen differs substantially from the official narrative.

By treating evident untruths as reality, the article (excerpted above) reminds us of how much America has lost – and Europe, too. The painfully gathered freedoms of the past millennia are gradually being destroyed as a result of the security arrangements deemed necessary as a result of 9/11. Here's some more from the article:

A decade after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, federal and state governments are spending about $75 billion a year on domestic security, setting up sophisticated radio networks, upgrading emergency medical response equipment, installing surveillance cameras and bombproof walls, and outfitting airport screeners to detect an ever-evolving list of mobile explosives.

Which has some questioning whether that is money well spent: "The number of people worldwide who are killed by Muslim-type terrorists, Al Qaeda wannabes, is maybe a few hundred outside of war zones. It's basically the same number of people who die drowning in the bathtub each year," said John Mueller, an Ohio State University professor who has written extensively about the balance between threat and expenditures in fighting terrorism ...

On the other hand, just from an economic standpoint, the effort has been a plus: Homeland Security spending has been a pump-primer for local governments starved by the recession, and has dramatically improved emergency response networks across the country. An entire industry has sprung up to sell an array of products, including high-tech motion sensors and fully outfitted emergency operations trailers. The market is expected to grow to $31 billion by 2014.

No reason to grow upset, the article counsels. Without the mounting oppression of Homeland Security, the US would be even worse off than it is. Of course, this a rehearsal of the "broken window" fallacy. The idea is that destruction reaps economic benefits. In fact, the economic wealth effect is not enhanced by reducing freedoms or by allowing the military-industrial complex to make death-dealing devices that no one needs or wants.

People do not benefit by losing their freedoms. Societies are not made healthier via oppression. When the elites choose to lie about something so fundamental as 9/11, the larger society becomes immediately at risk as well. A twisted narrative will take root to justify, institutionally, whatever it is that actually happened.

The fundamental lie feeds upon itself. Those in charge will grow so nervous and disturbed that they shall take counteractive measures of the most violent sort. What is predictable, in the end, is a state Gulag system dedicated to incarcerating and perhaps murdering anyone who might question the dishonest narrative.

We have already reported on such a system that has been constructed in the Middle East. There is no doubt that sooner or later, under some pretext, it will be imported into the West as well, especially to America which is already far-gone from a domestic freedoms standpoint.

Sooner or later, we would guess, one shall need a passport to travel freely within America's shores and certain types of government clearance shall be needed merely to pass freely from place to place or even to hold a job. This does not seem to concern the LA Times blogger, however. He sees positive connotations:

There are the permanent changes in the way Americans now live ... Like the military-industrial complex that became a permanent and powerful part of the American landscape during the Cold War, the vast network of Homeland Security spyware, concrete barricades and high-tech identity screening is here to stay. The Department of Homeland Security, a collection of agencies ranging from border control to airport security sewn quickly together after Sept. 11, is the third-largest Cabinet department and – with almost no lawmaker willing to render the U.S. less prepared for a terrorist attack – one of those least to fall victim to budget cuts.

The blogger concludes on a patriotic note. "But when I think of the cost, what I see are the faces of our soldiers. Go here, to The Times' obituaries for California's war dead and read their stories. If we're safer today – and if Al Qaeda is crippled – we have these young men and women to thank."

We, too, do not question the patriotism of those who have given their lives in the fight against terror. It is a terribly sad thing. But we do question whether these youngsters were misled by the powers-that-be. We do wonder if they gave their lives for a cause – and a narrative – that does not truly exist.

Examine the history of al Qaeda; it seems initially at any rate a creation of the CIA – which was seeking homegrown Islamic fighters to counteract the invasion of the USSR into Afghanistan. Even the invention of Osama bin Laden is questionable, with many in the alternative media making the case that he too was a CIA operative.

Freedom is the first victim of institutional untruths. It is not up to critics of the 9/11 myth to explain what actually did happen. But whatever happened has not yet been fully explained. And the result has been a sizable and ongoing erosion of freedom in the West and especially in the US.

Now, as 9/11 ages into a full decade, we shall no doubt be bombarded by mainstream media stories that use the official narrative as a jumping off point. These articles shall be profoundly dangerous because of their matter-of-fact assumption that the official narrative is the correct one, when it is not.

Written as is this LA Times article, such articles shall adopt a tone of oracular omnipotence. They shall assume that the directed history of the recent past represents an actual reality when it does no such thing. They shall treat 9/11 as a crux event, turning America into something it never was. But they shall be wrong about the transformation – which was never inevitable nor perhaps even warranted.

Conclusion: When we come upon such narratives, as we no doubt shall more and more often in the coming year, we will be reminded over and over of the banality of evil – nurtured amidst clichés, plausible deniability and ultimately the blood of thousands and millions of innocent victims. What is not corrected can evolve in terrible ways. 9/11 has never been forcefully revised within a mainstream context. And the danger grows.

If the sun be risen on him, there shall be blood shed for him; for he should make full restitution; if he have nothing, then he shall be sold for his theft. – American King James Version

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