The Implicit Racism of the 9/11 Denial Movement

We have already spoken at length about the anti-Semetic ties of the 9/11 conspiracy community, from Holocaust deniers to Jim Fetzer's love of the American Free Press, but this is a subtler form of racism. One thing I have seen repeated often, is this terminology, or variations of it, as posted earlier today from a British musician:

Are we really supposed to believe that a man in a cave in Afghanistan managed to orchestrate the most unbelievable attack on the United States of all time?

The "scholars" (I cannot use scare quotes big enough for that word in this case) even use this in their press releases, as delivered by Jim Fetzer:

What this means is that the wrong parties have been accused of the monstrous crimes committed on 9/11. The country appears to have been hijacked, not by a group of 19 Islamic fundamentalists under the control of a man hiding in a cave
in Afghanistan, but by a gang of neo-conservatives right here in front of our very eyes, who have used special effects and propaganda to deceive us.

The implication is of course, that these are a bunch of unsophisticated Arabs living in primitive conditions, and there is no way they could have had the intelligence, planning, and coordination to pull off these hijackings. They are just a bunch of Arabs after all.

But one must remember, Osama bin Laden was not "hiding in a cave" before 9/11. Thanks to his Afghan hosts, he had the free run of almost an entire country. He and his supporters were able to set up camps to train thousands of mujahadeen in the use of weapons, explosives, communications, security, and a variety of other skills. This is just one of those camps.















They are hardly living in caves.

And while the average Al Qaeda foot soldier may be neither educated nor sophisticated, that does not mean that their leadership isn't. Osama bin Laden after all, came from one of the richest families in Saudi Arabia, was educated as an engineer, and learned combat skills in the Afghan war against the Soviets. His number 1 assistant Ayman al Zawahiri is an Egyptian born physician. Aside from providing the inspiration for the attack (if even that) and the funding, bin Laden would not even be needed to "coordinate" the attacks. The 19 hijackers could have easily done this autonomously.

Neither were the 19 hijackers picked from the ranks of Arab peasantry. They were all selected because they would be among those Al Qaeda members able to get along in the west. Mohammed Atta was a Egyptian, who had been studying urban planning for years in Germany. All 4 of the pilots had commercial pilots licenses, requiring at least 250 hours of flight time, and most had at least some college education.

Is the thought of these men coming here, brutally taking over flights, destroying our landmarks and murdering our people repulsive? Of course it is. But dismissing them as a bunch of Arabs led by a man in a cave, in order to absolve them of responsibility is equally so.