Today, the third anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the American TV networks are immersed in retrospectives of those terrible events. The images and anguish of those days are being replayed again and again. Yet the question "why did they do it?" is no longer being asked. The accepted answer, "because they hate us", "because they hate what we stand for", "because they hate us for our freedom", is now so rooted that in the mass consciousness that it no longer even needs to be repeated.

In fact, for all of the non-stop, round-the-clock, total immersion coverage of the September 11 attacks the real reason for the attacks, as far as I know, has never been stated on the TV media. No analyst on the corporate media outlets has ever stated the reason for these attacks, which is not a difficult one to understand, but has been hidden behind a smoke-screen of jingoism and nonsense because if it were openly acknowledged it would have to be discussed. Therefore substitute reasons and lies have been provided.

Here then, is the reason for Al Qaeda's attacks on the US:

The attacks of 9/11 were a message from muslim extremists to America and to the American people. They had a very particular and defined political intent. That intent was a rejection of American hegemony and American imperialism. The attacks targeted three symbolic pillars of American power.

1. The first attack was intended against the American government. It's target was either the Congress or the White House. That plane didn't make it.

2. The second attack was against the American military/industrial complex. It's target was the Pentagon.

3. The third attack was against American corporatism and globalism. It's target was the World Trade Center in New York City, which was hit by two planes and completely destroyed.

In the propaganda world of television news the meaning of the attacks has been obscured and lost. The first attack didn't happen so it isn't mentioned. The strike against the Pentagon was unmistakable in it's intent so it has been minimized to obscurity. The attack on the Twin Towers, though, has been raised to national myth as a horrific attack against the American people and all that they hold dear.

Actually the 9/11 attacks were not an attack on the American people. If Al Qaeda had wanted to attack the American people they would have chosen different targets and different methods. The attacks were against politicians, generals, and CEOs. Specifically the attack on the World Trade Center was an attack on American corporations.

Of course that meaning is completely unacceptable. It cannot be allowed. It is unthinkable. Therefore corporate media has morphed the meaning of the WTC destruction out of all recognition. We now remember the attack on corporations as one of the darkest days in American history. Corporations have us stand in silence, in remembrance of the attack against them. Americans will never forget or forgive the attack on corporatism.

So it has to be said: Al Qaeda failed in their aim. They wanted to send a message and the message was deleted. If you asked one hundred Americans today what the attacks of 9/11 meant I doubt even one person could give the real answer, so complete is Al Qaeda's failure. For all the talking heads on TV asking "why?" not once has the question been seriously answered except with lies, all of which are believed.

I am not writing this to defend terrorism (which I hate). I have little interest in globalism or mid-east politics. I am just pointing out that propaganda and deception are everywhere. I see it every time I turn on my television. With the presidential elections the level of propaganda has reached new heights. Anyone who watches TV without realizing that everything on it, from the filtered news, the careful omission of substance, and the choice of entertainment programs (and the commercials commercials commercials) is false is seriously deluded. TV's constant message is that we are happy Americans, living in a golden rich sunny land, shopping with abandon, and all the world likes us except for some irrational baddies who can be killed in colorful pyrotechnic explosions.

Yeah.

Somebody pass me the Prozac.

very good and insightfull post, espacially where you describe those 3 pillars of the attack.

superb, last dollar. post more.

Yeah,I think I need a new brain.Pass the Prozac while I'm waiting

You frenchies! When are you going to stop hating America?

I'm an American and when I turn on my TV I expect to see myself exactly as I am -- a fighter for truth and justice and the American way.

Okay. I admit it. There are a couple of bad actors out there -- Bull Connor and Lester Maddox and Lt. Calley and the Abu Ghraib MP's -- but jeesh, if we were perfect, we wouldn't need Jesus.

So, all I can say to you postmodern cynics is get with the metanarrative.

Thanks for all the comments.
I've put together a few more paragraphs of my ranting. Hopefully they are coherent.

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I agree that the main audience for Al Qaeda's 9/11 attack was the world's Muslim community, not Americans. By hitting US targets on US soil Al Qaeda has forever popped the myth of American invulnerability. You don't have to be a superpower to attack a superpower.

Now, three years after the attacks, the US still channels its efforts into its continuing distraction: Homeland Security. Yet for all of the panic to plug the "security gaps" with the Patriot Act and other "tools", the new anti-terrorism measures aren't thwarting further attacks. The nasty little secret that can't be admitted in public is that Al Qaeda isn't even trying to attack targets in the US anymore. They've switched the front lines to Afghanistan and Iraq. As always, our politicians are trying to refight the last war, but the enemy has moved on.

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This is where Al Queda was in 2001:
They all but controlled their own country (Afghanistan).
They had active training bases there.
They were well funded.
They had hit US overseas military targets and consulates with impunity.
They had agents embedded in the US and other countries.

They had everything in place, it was time to make the grand gesture and throw down the gauntlet. It was time to electrify Muslims worldwide with the thought of throwing off Western imperialism through Jihad.

It had worked before. Although Ronald Reagan is given credit by many US historians for ending the cold war and "defeating communism" a better case can be made that it was the Muhajadeen who set in motion the fall of the Soviet Union and it was just Reagan who was President at the time it actually came to pass. It was the Muhajadeen who chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan and ended the myth of Red Army invincibility. The USSR's spending on that war sowed the seeds of their collapse which was as much economic as it was political. Popular revolt came when the Russian people saw their government had exhausted and squandered every bit of the country's wealth and respect through it's own incompetence.

Now comes the America's turn. Under Bush, the US has been drawn into two wars that threaten to bankrupt the biggest economy in the world. Since Bush came to office the government's brief budget surplus has turned into the biggest deficits ever. Yet the American people are blissfully unaware of the danger, lulled by fake statistics and campaign slogans promising that even larger deficits are the path to prosperity. It might seem extreme to project such an outcome, after all three years have gone by and no frightening cracks have appeared yet, but in the world of finance deficits don't matter until the day they do and then it's too late.

This is then the trap that Al Qaeda has laid for us. They have seen our thirst and our looming economic danger, so they have baited the trap with oil and poked us in the eye.

Now the enraged Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld administration has bet that they can go into these Muslim countries in the name of "fighting terrorism" and take the bait while leaving the trap unsprung. It is a dangerous gamble. Each day the cost in lives increases the political danger. Each day the wanton spending increases the economic danger. If the US can tame these countries and put friendly governments in place before the political and economic clocks run out then we will have won. We will have secured oil for decades into the future. (In the age of Peak Oil, access to oil will depend on economic/political relationships since there will be no excess available on the open market.) If the US fails then it will have squandered another trillion dollars for nothing and will face economic collapse and political upheaval. US hegemony will end and the American Century will be over. The stakes are that high. At the edge of the economic precipice, these optional wars aren't something that you can shrug off. We're playing for all of the chips here.

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If you want to see the battlegrounds of the future just look at a map of the oil and gas fields around the Caspian Sea. They are some of the largest in the world. Who will get this energy wealth? Whoever does they will have to extract it through pipelines. Will the pipelines go north to Moscow? Or West to the Black Sea ports? Or South through Afghanistan and Pakistan to the Gulf of Arabia? Or East to China? The wars of the future will decide.

Last Dollar, With the triangulation of super powers in the Caspian Sea region, it's probably assured that Russia and the US will eventually work out some cooperative deal to keep China out of the loop (or the loop out of China) I think they're starting to talk about this already. Putin is going to put enormous pressure on the US to shut the f up about Russia further "reforming" their market. He's a pragmatist. It was the Russian KGB through ties with CIA that helped the wall collapse and Communism to cave. These guys have a working relationship that goes back decades. China and the US have no such ongoing historic network.

China is a much bigger threat to both US or Russia than either one of them is to each other. When it's all said and done, we will see how like Russia the US becomes and vice versa. Communism and democracy sacrificed to oligarchic fascism.

Al Queda and Bushco had identical desires, which was to create a new order out of chaos, each hoping for opposite outcomes, but they needed each other to accomplish the chaos part. Who was "playing" who here? I doubt they were cooperating in a traditional sense, but each side may have been a useful idiot for the manipulations of the other side, maybe going so far as to turn a blind eye to direct intervention.

The purpose of this post though, is to draw attention to the ensuing fallout and the lists of potential terrorists that have been compiled.---Like Cat Stevens? What the? Man, this is just silly. Who's next, Arlo Guthrie? I mean, remember the song, "You can get ANYTHING you want, at Alice's Restaurant." Could be the rallying lyric for terrorists anxious to purchase air to surface missiles, grenades, suitcase nukes. Anthing you want...hmmm