Did Bush Plan 9-11 ?

WTC

I notice that there’s been a lot of debate about whether Bush consciously planned the destruction of the World Trade Center, or whether he was too stupid and incompetent and just allowed it to happen. I have my own opinion about what happened, but it is not my purpose here to get into a long debate or argument about who is right and who is wrong.

First, because I don’t consider myself an authority on the subject, and there are probably people reading this who know a lot more about all the details and facts involved than I do.

Secondly, I don’t see how in the greater scheme of things it is that important an issue, which may sound strange to some, but I don’t believe that God looks at those hundreds of thousands of innocent Iraqis that Bush has consciously conspired to murder in Iraq, and yet still thinks that the real issue is whether or not he conspired to murder 3,000 people in the World Trade Center. They may seem more important to us because they were mostly Americans, but I don’t believe that American lives are more important than Iraqis or Afghans, and I don’t believe God does either.

Thirdly, I don’t believe it matters whether he actually planned the destruction of the World Trade Center or not - he is still morally responsible. Which again may sound strange to some, but I’ll tell you exactly why I believe that.

In our society intentionality is very important when judging culpability. In other words, if somebody kills another person, the degree to which they consciously deliberated and planned the act determines whether they are found guilty of first or second degree murder or some lesser charge of voluntary or involuntary manslaughter. But there are other factors besides internationality that can, and often do play a role, even though our criminal justice system is not really set up to take these other factors fully into account.

For instance, Plato in his dialogs puts forward the idea that someone who kills by accident but shows no remorse afterwards for what they have done – for instance by not apologizing to the family or weeping or sincerely wishing they had it to do over again – that this is just as bad as intentionally killing someone because their lack of remorse demonstrates that they were capable of intentionally killing that person even though it was in fact an accident.

By way of example, say that someone had already been arrested once for drunk driving (like Bush). Nevertheless he gets into a car after three or four drinks one afternoon and accidentally kills a little girl riding home from school on her bike. Not only that but he flees the scene because he is more worried about getting caught driving drunk than about the little girl’s life. When he is caught he shows absolutely no remorse for his reckless and irresponsible driving or for having killed the little girl. In his mind he is blameless and it was all just an accident, and the only thing he is really concerned about is possibly losing his license or spending time in jail.

Now this man certainly didn’t plan to kill the little girl. There was absolutely no intention on his part to do that girl or anyone else any harm. Yet his negligence, his irresponsible behavior and his complete lack of remorse for what he had done would probably make him just as guilty in most people’s eyes as someone who had intentionally planned and plotted the little girl’s murder. Though he did not intentionally plan to kill the little girl, he is someone who can kill without feeling any remorse. He kills by accident, but only because he doesn’t really care about other people and he chooses not to take responsibility for his actions or his drinking.

It would have been one thing if Bush had apologized to the nation after 9-11 and shown some genuine concern for the lives lost, and demonstrated remorse over the fact that he neglected all the warnings and stayed on vacation for a month when he should have been responding to the threat. But that never happened. First, he continued reading “My Pet Goat” when a more timely response might have saved lives, and then he fled to Nebraska. Like the irresponsible drunk fleeing scene of the crime, his one and only concern was first for his own life, and afterwards it was only to cover up his culpability. He stonewalled any investigation for years, and rather than comforting the families of the survivors or showing any remorse about ignoring the warning that “Bin Laden is Determined To Attack America”, he’s fought them every step of the way and made their suffering that much greater. Even now, the cover-up continues in what is basically the worse case of criminal negligence in American history. Not only has Bush taken no responsibility for his role in the lives that were lost, he has actually used those lives as mere props for political advantage. The drunk may not have cared anything about the little girl he accidentally ran over, but Bush would have stood on her bleeding body and made a speech if he thought it would help him politically.

It is ironic to me, and it demonstrates the defects inherent in our criminal justice system, that on the one hand we have a man named Zacarias Moussaoui who is on trial for conspiracy and facing the death penalty basically because he failed to warn the government about 9-11. Moussaoui never intentionally or even accidentally killed anyone, and yet the case against him was greatly strengthened yesterday when he demonstrated no remorse for the lives that were lost by proudly announcing his own role in a different plot to bomb the White House. On the other hand, we have the man in the White House who completely ignored all the warnings he got, he took no responsibility and showed no remorse and afterwards conspired to cover up all the facts, and yet his approval rating is still at 33% and he is not standing trial for a capital offense. One man is facing the death penalty for giving no warnings and showing no remorse about the killing of others, while the other seems immune from prosecution even after taking no warnings seriously and showing no remorse afterwards. Even if Moussaoui had warned the government Bush probably wouldn’t have done anything about it and they would be just as dead. So who is more guilty of a crime?

It doesn’t matter to me whether Bush planned 9-11 or just allowed it to happen, since his actions afterwards have already proven him to be just as evil and morally culpable. There is no real difference between a man who consciously plans to murder 3,000 people for political gain, and the man who cares so little about their lives in the first place that his negligence leads to their deaths, and then afterwards he uses their coffins in campaign commercials. Even if Bush didn’t intentionally kill them the first time around for political gain, every time he uses 9-11 to divide this country for political gain he is intentionally killing them over and over again. That’s why worrying too much about Bush’s intentions four and a half years ago only tends to divide the opposition and blinds us to the reality of what is going on right now. It minimizes his crimes rather than adding to them. Not that those 3,000 lives weren’t important – but look at all the lives he’s killed since then, and nobody is seriously claiming these were all accidents or that Bush isn’t directly responsible.

Whether Bush actually planned the destruction of the World Trade Center, or whether he had so little remorse or concern for human lives that he could have intentionally killed them if it was in his interest and he thought he could get away with it – it really makes no difference. Either way Bush is the same dirt bag. It is even arguable that someone who unintentionally kills people because they don’t care about human lives or they harbor some unconscious hostility towards others, that this person is actually more dangerous and more likely to kill again than someone who intentionally murders. A coldly irresponsible drunk driver left unchecked is probably more of a loose cannon and more likely to kill again than someone who intentionally plans to murder their spouse in order to collect their life insurance. By the same token, Bush’s failure to secure our ports and his desire to sell them to an Arab dictatorship, his failure to adequately fund first-responders, his staffing of important agencies like FEMA with political cronies and the war in Iraq itself – all of these things seem to show Bush to be more of a reckless and irresponsible lying danger to American lives than someone clever enough to plan and execute the destruction of the World Trade Center. Why? Because that person probably would have also been smart enough to secure our nation and stay out of Iraq. I don’t want to give Bush more credit than he deserves or underestimate the evil and harm he is still capable of doing..

That’s why I tend to judge Bush more by what we all know he has done in the four and a half years since 9-11, rather than concentrating on what he might have been doing in the eight months prior to 9-11. To make 9-11 the issue is to fall into Bush’s trap. It seems more of a distraction, and more about our continuing national obsession over 9-11. Even though the intentional murderer may seem on the suface to be much more evil, the person who can kill without any remorse is really just as evil and more likely to kill again and go on killing until they are stopped. Though I know a lot of people want everyone to know exactly how evil Bush really is – believe me, I already know, and the people of Iraq know, and most of the relatives of those killed on 9-11 know as well. We don’t need more proof.

Paul wrote: “Let us therefore, as many as be perfect, be thus minded: and if in any thing ye be otherwise minded, God shall reveal even this unto you. Nevertheless, whereto we have already attained, let us walk by the same rule, let us mind the same thing.” I think we can all agree – or at least most of us do - that Bush is an evil man who does evil things because he cares more about money and power than human lives. I think that most of us would also say that in one way or another he was responsible for the deaths that occurred on 9-11. I believe that most of us would like nothing better than to see him facing the same sort of criminal charges as Zacarias Moussaoui. So let’s not bicker too much over the particulars of those charges. The devil laid a trap for America on 9-11, but there is more than one way of falling into it. One way is by allowing 9-11 to divide us.