Aftermath of 9/11: Is President Bush A Terrorist?

Debunking the conspiracy myth

BRYAN PEELER

Imagine a group of researchers gather at a university to discuss whether or not the Holocaust happened. They question whether the amount of energy needed to fuel the gas chambers could possibly have been available to a country fighting a war. They claim that the figure of 6 million dead is an exaggeration and instead that hundreds of thousands of Jews moved to other countries such as the United States and Britain. Some even argue that claims about what the Nazis did were all fabricated in order to win support for a Jewish state in Palestine. Presumably the majority of staff and students would be apoplectic with rage.

Yet on August 20 just these sorts of questions were the order of the day as author Barrie Zwicker and Canadian Action Party leader Constance Fogal were at the University of Winnipeg promoting Zwicker’s new book, Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11. This book and companion website is the follow up to the video The Great Conspiracy: The 9/11 New Special You Never Saw. Zwicker, a former media critic for Vision TV, bills himself as “an independent documentary producer, author and social and political activist,” according to the website stoplying.ca/towers.

What are some of the things that Zwicker, Fogal and their followers believe? Among others is that the 9/11 attacks were not carried out by Mohammed Atta but by the U.S. government.

In the book Zwicker argues, based on photos and comments he has collected from Donald Rumsfeld and other witnesses, that the attack on the Pentagon was really either a camouflaged missile or military plane. He also says suspicious stock market activity, specifically the sale of large amounts of United Airline stock in the days leading up to the 9/11 attacks is also proof that the attacks were orchestrated by the Bush administration.

In order to satisfy themselves regarding the more technical aspects of 9/11 revisionism, I encourage readers to consult the book Debunking 9/11

Myths: Why Conspiracy Theories can’t Stand Up to the Facts, edited by David Dunbar and Brad Reagan. But Zwicker and Fogal do not end there — how could they? They also claim that the Bush administration was behind the bombings in Madrid and London. In a recent interview with Straight.com

published August 17, Zwicker said it’s all “a gigantic terror fraud . . . It is a war against Islam . . . It is a war against millions of people who happen to share the same faith.”

This is perhaps the most telling statement because it once again demonstrates how Zwicker, Fogal and movements such as stoplying. ca and many others on the Left continue to propagate this false belief. There is no war against Islam. Nor are these terrorists interested in striking a blow against global capitalism for the world’s masses. Though there is no war against Islam, there certainly is war within Islam. And this is a war in which the West must choose a side. We must choose a side because the attacks of 9/11 were meant to scare the West into not aiding those who would spread the word of peace and tolerance that Islam contains.

The proper way to accomplish this is not through a “War on Terror,” though. How would you ever know when such a war was over? Terror, unlike Nazi Germany, is not something that can surrender, not something that can sign a peace treaty. What there ought to be is a war against those who would return Islam to the seventh century, namely al-Qaida. Recall that these are people who would prevent women from going to school and would kill homosexuals. Al-Qaida does not believe in universal human rights.

So why is it socially acceptable, if not required, to question whether the events of 9/11 occurred despite being watched by millions of us on our TV screens? It seems to be nothing more than sheer hatred of George W. Bush. Fine, you do not have to like him. But your hatred ought not confine millions of people to life under a theocracy.

Bryan Peeler is an instructor in the department of philosophy