Kemstone's Journal

Only one thing is certain about 9/11 conspiracy theories: you won’t find the truth on the internet.

Whatever you believe about the events of 9/11, there are countless websites that will back you up and countless websites that will argue against you. For every aspect of the terrorist attacks which brought down the World Trade Center buildings and hit the pentagon, you can find explanations supporting the official story or explanations that suggest a conspiracy. It would be useless for me to waste any time going into detail on this blog post. Here I only wish to look at the big picture and ask: Is it reasonable to believe that 9/11 was an inside job?

First, a little about my own history regarding “9/11 Truth”. I was not one of those people who, on September 11, immediately thought that the government must have been involved. I accepted the official story that Islamic Fundamentalist hijackers had taken over the planes with box-cutters and flown them into buildings. It certainly seemed, and still seems, plausible that such an attack could work. I found it amazing that they were actually able to pull it off, but I didn’t think it was impossible.

But the very first time I heard someone suggest that Dick Cheney and the American power-elite were behind the attack—a couple of guys at a music festival shouting at the crowd—I immediately went up and talked to them because this did not seem at all absurd to me. In fact, I barely had to speak with them for five minutes before I was completely convinced it was true. At that time we were well on our way to war in Iraq, and it was clear that the government was willing to lie in order to win support for this war that they’d seemed hell-bent on starting. If they desperately wanted war, and they obviously did, what could be a more perfect way to gain support for that war than inflicting a massive attack on our home soil and blaming it on Islamic terrorists from the Middle East?

For awhile I accepted the conspiracy theory. What turned me around, ironically, was watching Loose Change for the first time. Having the conspiracy theory spelled out like that in all of its minute details actually made it seem more absurd than when it had just been a vague idea of government involvement. But this film was saying that bombs had been planted in the towers before the attacks, that it wasn’t actually a plane but a missile that hit the pentagon, that the collapse of WTC Building 7 was a controlled demolition, and all kinds of other theories about the attack that made it seem way more complex than it needed to be. I did a little online research, found a few websites that debunk the conspiracy theory, and was satisfied that it wasn’t a conspiracy after all.

That was about five years ago, and since then my basic stance on 9/11 is that there may be some flaws in the official story, some government officials such as Cheney and Rumsfeld might have known the attack was coming, but at the end of the day the perpetrators of the attack were Islamic Fundamentalists organized by Al Quaeda and led by Osama bin Laden.

I had two basic questions which justified this belief: 1- Why would they go through so much trouble planting bombs in the towers, firing missiles, demolishing Building 7 and so on, if their only goal was to justify a war in the Middle East? Specifically, if they wanted a war in Iraq, why not claim at least some of the hijackers were Iraqis? 2- If there really were bombs planted in the buildings beforehand and people throughout the government and intelligence agencies were complicit, why haven’t people come forward? The government sucks at keeping secrets. The Bush administration was enormously incompetent in just about everything it did. The idea that these idiots could pull off such an incredibly successful attack in secret and get away with it just didn’t jive with my political perceptions.

I recently re-watched Loose Change, along with the Alex Jones documentary Terrorstorm, and opened my mind again to the possibility that Americans, not Islamic terrorists, carried out the attacks. Alex Jones does a good job of pointing out just how often in history a country carries out an attack on itself in order to justify military aggression. From Hitler’s burning of the Reichstag to Johnson’s Gulf of Tonkin, such “False Flag” operations have happened repeatedly and usually to great success.

All details aside, just consider the possible motives behind the attack if it was an inside job. We know that Bush wanted to kick some ass in Iraq because his daddy didn’t finish the job. We know that Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, and the rest of the neocons were thirsty for war long before Bush was even elected. Not only would it make their buddies in the military industrial complex very rich, but a permanent war waged against an unstoppable foe (no matter how many terrorists you kill, you can never stop terrorism) would allow the powerful to get a lot more powerful. Not only do you increase your power over your own citizens via initiatives such as the Patriot Act which would never have passed during peaceful times, but you increase your power on a global scale by putting troops on the ground in the most oil-rich area of the planet. Putting them in Afghanistan would be easy. Iraq would be trickier. The real prize is Iran, which is the most difficult. But if you’ve got troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, Iran is surrounded and you can go after it more easily somewhere down the road. You just need to get public support behind you, and the best way to do that is to make everyone afraid, angry, and thirsty for vengeance. You need something to avenge—an assault on your country. And what could be more symbolic of America than those two towers standing in New York City? And while you’re at it why not hit a couple of targets in Washington as well including the pentagon to throw off suspicion of CIA involvement? And when should you do this? Early in the presidency, obviously, so you have plenty of time to carry out your plans for war. Why not right after the summer, when everyone is back from vacation and paying attention to the news again?

You see, it just makes so much sense. It made sense to me when I first heard the idea and it still makes sense now. Anyone who says that no American would ever inflict this damage on their own country is hopelessly naïve. What was really damaged? A few buildings were destroyed and a few thousand lives were lost. But America wasn’t damaged. If anything, it gave America the opportunity to increase its power, and they began to abuse that power immediately after the attacks. Besides, it’s not really “America” anyway but the powerful elites who run the corporations that run America.

What doesn’t make sense is the level of complexity and elaborate planning that had to have gone into the attacks were it really an inside job. Why put bombs in the buildings? Why destroy Building 7? Why fire a missile into the pentagon instead of crashing the plane there? If your only goal is to justify war, why not keep it simple? Previous False Flag operations have been incredibly simple. Johnson justified an escalation in Vietnam due to a False Flag attack on a single boat. Wouldn’t Americans have rallied behind Bush and supported a war if only a single plane had crashed into a single tower? Did they really need to demolish the buildings entirely? And what’s the point of blowing up Building 7? Nobody even knows about Building 7! How many people who supported the war did so because of Building 7? “Man, it pissed me off when they got the first two Trade Center buildings, but I was ready to forgive them until they took out Building 7. That was just one building too far, my friend.”

Okay, to be fair the whole Building 7 thing is the weakest sauce in the whole conspiracy theory. Both Loose Change and Terrorstorm spend way too much time dwelling on the collapse of Building 7, showing clips of news reporters talking about how the building was going to collapse before it actually came down. So I guess those reporters were in on it too! No, I remember watching TV that day and keeping my eyes glued to the screen because they were talking about how everyone expected that building to come down. It had taken massive damage when the other towers collapsed and everyone expected it would come down as well. That doesn’t mean they had foreknowledge of a plan to take it down.

I said I wouldn’t get too deep into detail, but that’s just the biggest example I have of why I’m still skeptical about the conspiracy theories. They raise a hell of a lot of really good questions—like why were no fighter jets scrambled as soon as the government realized what was going on—but they also raise a lot of stupid points that lead you to believe they’re just grasping at anything to justify their theory. It’s easy to believe that they came up with the conspiracy theory first and then just went looking for whatever evidence they could find to back it up.

So for the most part, my first major question—why go through so much trouble—remains largely intact. But in my online research I did come across a few somewhat plausible explanations for demolishing the towers. They weren’t looking to escalate a war that was already happening like Vietnam and the Gulf of Tonkin—they were looking to start a brand new war. And not just a war, but several wars which would stretch across the Middle East and last indefinitely. You’d need a really serious national trauma to justify that, and one plane in one building wouldn’t have been enough. The buildings had to come down to justify the whole “This country will never be the same” idea that the administration propagated as soon as the attacks took place. Okay, I suppose that’s reasonable. There are also a few possible explanations about how the owner of the buildings wanted to avoid asbestos lawsuits or something, but that seemed rather trivial.

As for the fact that none of the hijackers were Iraqi even though they supposedly wanted to use the attacks to justify the invasion of Iraq, I haven’t found an answer. They certainly went through a lot of trouble trying to find a connection between Iraq and 9/11—even waterboarding detainees to try and extract false confessions—but if they manufactured 9/11 you’d think they would have manufactured that connection as well.

And what about my second question—why has nobody come forward? Well, I suppose the most fruitful outcome of my online search was discovering that a number of people actually have come forward but nobody takes them seriously. Some websites offer explanations of how the whole thing could have been pulled off with less than a dozen people actually being completely in-the-know about the operation. And of course lots of people could be keeping quiet due to bribery, blackmail, or intimidation. And we can’t forget that if anyone did knowingly participate in this operation they probably believed in the cause and thought it was the right thing to do. Why blow the whistle on your actions if you feel your actions are justified?

Nevertheless, I can’t be swayed completely. There are real terrorist organizations who really do hate us. They could have come up with this plan and carried it out successfully not because of the administration’s complicity but merely because of its incompetence. Bush might really have though at the beginning of his administration that he was going to be remembered for education and tax cuts, not paying much attention to Al Quaeda until the attacks that changed everything came and took him by complete surprise. I’ve seen no evidence that proves otherwise, as every argument by the conspiracy theorists has a rational counter-argument from the debunkers.

If anyone reading this has more information or additional arguments either way, please share in the comments. I’m not on one side or the other, and I’m perfectly willing to be swayed in either direction. I just highly doubt that I’ll ever be completely convinced. Both explanations for 9/11 seem completely plausible to me, and there is so much bullshit surrounding the events that it hardly seems likely we’ll ever know the truth.

But I am glad that people are asking these questions. It’s nice that people in America can still openly question whether their government murdered thousands of its own citizens to justify a war. I would not put it past the powers-that-be to do something like that, and the fact that they got everything they wanted from the attacks strongly suggests complicity or foreknowledge at the very least. If these are the kind of people who really are in control, it won’t be long before such questions wouldn’t be tolerated, and I’d be locked away just for raising them.

About a year ago I wrote a lengthy piece railing against the arguments often used by proponents of torture to justify the abandonment of basic moral principles for the sake of the perception of added safety. I argued that not only do methods of torture such as waterboarding not work to secure reliable intelligence (people will say anything to stop the torture, whether true or not) but that it’s far more effective to treat prisoners humanely. It’s not just the morally right thing to do—our country was able to be proud of its treatment of prisoners up until the era of the Bush war criminals—but it also gets results.

With news this week that “Underpants Bomber” Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab has been providing actionable intelligence regarding terrorists in Yemen without ever having been tortured at all, I feel quite justified in tossing out a big fat “I told you so” and adding another point to consider with regards to the torture argument.

Ever since the Christmas Day terrorist attack, Republicans have been up in arms that we actually granted legal rights to the attacker, let him try his case in federal court, and didn’t bring in Jack Bauer in to start electrocuting his testicles the moment he got off the plane. How else were we going to get him to give up the location of the next nuclear bomb about to detonate in downtown Los Angeles…oh wait…I’m getting confused between reality and 24. That tends to happen after too much exposure to Republican talking points.

The fact is that Republicans want everyone to think that reality is the show 24, where terrorists are simply one-dimensional caricatures motivated by nothing more than a thirst for American blood. In the show, no terrorist willingly gives up any information without being forcefully coerced, and whenever some government bureaucrat sticks his nose in and insists that a detainee be given a lawyer and protected from harsh interrogation, the terrorist is usually seen smiling or laughing at his captors, amused that the unfolding attack can continue unhindered thanks to America’s weak, liberal sissy-pants legal system. No, in 24, the only way to protect innocent Americans is to torture the shit out of the bad guy until he finally relents and gives up the exact location of the ticking time-bomb. Oddly enough, he never simply lies about the location and sends Jack Bauer to a decoy location while the bomb explodes all the way on the other side of town. Perhaps the terrorists have some moral qualms about lying.

But let’s consider real life for a moment. Put yourself, if you will, in the underpants of the next Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab as he sits on the plane ready to detonate. You really want to kill yourself some Americans, but you’re also naturally a bit nervous. After all, you’ve never died before. It might not be as fun as your terrorist leaders say it is. But you’ve come this far, and you’re not going to turn back now. You’ve seen 24, so you know that if you fail Jack Bauer is going to torture the crap out of you. You’d better make sure you succeed then. Go into the bathroom and do it so that nobody has time to stop you.

But what if there was no 24? What if there was no Guantanamo? What if there had been no Bush administration, and the United States was still known as a beacon of human rights where all prisoners, regardless of race, creed, or national origin were given fair and humane treatment? Then you know that if you fail, it won’t be so bad. They’ll probably lock you up for life but if you cooperate they probably won’t kill you. Maybe you should detonate out here in the cabin amidst all the other passengers so they have a chance to stop you. You can still be proud of yourself for trying, but you get to continue living.

Or to take it one step further—maybe you shouldn’t detonate at all. After all, the United States may be full of infidels but they certainly treat your brethren fairly well when they hold them prisoner. Americans may be rich, arrogant unbelievers but it’s not like they’re bloodthirsty sadists. They don’t strip down your fellow Muslims and pile their naked bodies on top of each other. They don’t piss on your holy texts in front of you while laughing. They don’t hold people in a prison somewhere for an indefinite amount of time without ever giving them a chance to speak in their own defense. And they certainly don’t strap you to a board and pour water up your nose to extract a false confession to support their political case for going to war with another Muslim country. Americans treat prisoners extremely well, almost too well. Considering the fact that you and your terrorist ilk are perfectly willing to murder their children, they sure do go out of their way to make you comfortable and ensure that the justice they bring you will be as fair and impartial as possible. So why are you blowing yourself up again?

You see my point. The proponents of torture are living in a fantasy world in which white is black, black is white, up is down, and down is up. Torturing terrorists = more terrorists and more terrorism. Treating prisoners humanely and granting them basic legal rights = less terrorists and less terrorism. This is such basic common fucking sense that it boggles my mind that so many people have been duped into believing otherwise. Okay, maybe you hate terrorists because they kill innocent people. That’s fine. That’s understandable. If I got my hands on anyone who was responsible for the deaths of innocent children, I’d want to make them suffer too. But as emotionally satisfying as that would be, it would only contribute to a climate in which terrorists have an easier time picking up new recruits because they can paint their enemies as sadistic monsters. By torturing a terrorist, you’re making more terrorists, and any blood they might spill is partially on your hands.

Republicans have never been so blatant about advocating torture as they have been over the underpants bomber. Even during the Bush administration, one still had to be careful when discussing torture. “We don’t torture” was still the default position—we were just arguing over what constituted torture and whether things like stress positions and waterboarding go too far. But now it seems the debate has shifted even further to the crazy right and Republicans are actually saying “We should torture”.

Everyone who called for the torture of Abdulmutallab was handing a big fat gift to Al Quaeda recruiters. “Look at how evil our enemy is,” they can say. “And you’d better make sure you succeed in blowing yourself up, because they’ll torture you if you fail.” The next time a kid joins Al Quaeda and blows up a bus full of schoolchildren because they heard some Republican hack spewing his ignorant garbage about how Muslims ought to be tortured, that blood will be on the hands of that Republican.

But under the Obama administration—and this is one of the many little things he deserves credit for—we’re granting the same rights to terrorists as we would to anyone who commits any other crime. This makes perfect sense. How is it that someone who rapes and murders children deserves a fair trial but an Islamic terrorist doesn’t? We seem to be recognizing that now. So we gave Abdulmutallab his rights, enlisted the co-operation of his family members back in Yemen, showed him that the United States isn’t as evil as Dick Cheney had led him to believe, and as a result he gave us valuable information that may very well save some innocent lives. Let this be a lesson to all future would-be terrorists: we’ve changed. Jack Bauer is no longer on the payroll.

Much has been written this past week about the recent incidents of violence performed by a few right-wing wackos, and many have placed the blame squarely where it belongs: with the mainstream media, particularly Fox News. Normally the commentary of right-wing bloviators wouldn’t be much of an important issue, but it has become so due to the current political climate in which a black democratic president is actively trying to implement a progressive agenda. So although I can’t say much that hasn’t already been said, I might as well add my own little rant to the chorus.

Naturally, those at Fox News who have been gleefully fanning the flames of hatred and paranoia—such as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly—not only believe they bear no responsibility for the violence, but they actually see themselves as the victims in all of this. Fingers are only being pointed at them because others in the media are jealous of their high ratings, and it’s all part of some secret plot hatched by the government and the liberal elites at MSNBC to take down Fox News, the only network honourable enough to report the truth without a radical left-wing bias.

To a certain extent, they’re right. When you get right down to it, the primary responsibility lies purely with the shooters themselves. Glenn Beck didn’t specifically tell Richard Poplawski to fire an AK-47 at a bunch of police officers in Pittsburgh—he only gave him the idea that Obama was trying to take away his guns. A completely false proposition as Obama hasn’t even touched second amendment issues since taking office, but how could Beck have known anyone would start shooting police before running a careful fact-check? Bill O’Reilly didn’t tell Scott Roeder to murder abortion doctor George Tiller—he just repeatedly called the doctor a “baby-killer” with blood on his hands who for $5000 would kill anyone’s baby for any reason, even just for being depressed. A ridiculous charge seeing as how most of Tiller’s clients were women at risk of harm or death, but how could O’Reilly have possibly imagined that anyone would take his words so seriously? And finally, the slew of right-wing radio talk show hosts who continue to deny the Holocaust and insist that the Jews are running a worldwide conspiracy have absolutely nothing to do with James Von Brunn walking into the Holocaust museum in Washington D.C. and opening fire. They obviously never actually wanted any actual Jews to be killed…right?

A few months ago, the conservative news pundits were all up-in-arms over the fact that the director of the Department of Homeland Security, Janet Napolitano, issued a report warning of a rising threat of right-wing extremism. Never mind that the report also warned of the threat of left-wing cyber-terrorism, or that the DHS under Bush was also keeping tabs on right-wing extremist groups—this was all the proof they needed that Obama really is a totalitarian communist fascist Nazi dictator hell-bent on going after anyone who disagrees with him politically.

To be fair, it’s not like anyone suggested that he was building concentration camps or anything…oh wait…Glenn Beck did. He just said he “couldn’t confirm” if it was true, so it’s not like you can blame him if anybody believed it.

Napolitano apologised for the language in the report, thus making it clear that right-wing extremists are not a danger—they are our friends and neighbours who just happen to have a few simple differences with the president in terms of policy. It’s the president’s spending that they hate, not the fact that he’s black. They would have been protesting against Bush if he had spent the country into unprecedented levels of debt…oh wait…he did? And none of them were protesting? Well, I’m sure it still has nothing to do with race.

The point is, there are a lot of right-wing wackos out there who are already going nuts over the idea of a black president, and if you get them angry and paranoid enough, if you keep reinforcing this idea that Barack Obama is a secret Muslim sleeper agent sent by terrorists to destroy American values, take money from successful white people and give it to poor black welfare queens, strengthen affirmative action laws so that businesses may only hire people of colour, redefine marriage as a union between any two physical objects (man and man, man and child, woman and horse, fetus and microwave, etc.), and make late-term abortions mandatory for all women, then maybe, just maybe a few of these nuts will get the idea that they ought to take matters into their own hands and start firing shots in defence of their country.

Of course, no conservative would ever go so far as to make any kind of suggestion that political change should be brought about by any means other than legal, democratic processes. Michele Bachman may have said she wanted people “armed and dangerous” over Obama’s tax plan, but this was just a figure of speech. Sure, Rush Limbaugh may have said something like, “If al-Qaeda wants to demolish the America we know and love, they better hurry, because Obama is beating them to it” but this was merely a substantive critique of the new administration’s foreign policy. And yeah, Glenn Beck may have had an entire special program called the “War Room” in which experts speculated about how an army of survivalists might take up arms against a communist Obama government, but that was all just hypothetical.

In all seriousness, there is plenty to criticise Obama about. He’s letting the Wall Street bankers continue their shenanigans at the expense of taxpayers, compromising our civil liberties by continuing some of the most egregious Bush-era policies with regards to detainees, continuing to enforce the Don’t Ask Don’t Tell policy which he promised to repeal, and letting the health insurance special interests have a seat at the table to negotiate over his already heavily-compromised health-care bill. Perhaps if there were people on the left willing to pick up a gun and open fire on the headquarters of a big Wall Street bank or a health-insurance company, one could justifiably claim that there are crazies out there willing to act on any biased reporting, and Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow are just as much to blame for their impact as O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck.

But the thing is, while Olbermann and Maddow do have a clear leftist slant in their reporting, they actually report. They present the facts and then have a discussion about those facts. O’Reilly, Hannity, Limbaugh, and Beck, on the other hand, first spew out their opinions and then back them up with whatever facts they feel might be relevant, and if there are none they just invent some, like the fact that Obama is coming after your gun and might be building concentration camps for political opponents.

If you challenge any of these wingnuts, the first thing they’ll do is hide behind the First Amendment. If we criticise their speech, they say, we’re attacking their Constitutional rights! And yes, they do have a Constitutional right to spew out whatever hateful, paranoid, factually inaccurate bullshit they want. This is America, and you can’t be locked up for what you say.

But that doesn’t mean you should say it. And that’s all those on the left are saying when they criticise these commentators: You may be allowed to say these things, you may draw a large audience and generate a great deal of profit by saying this stuff, but that doesn’t mean you should fucking say it!

If these people love America even half as much as they pretend to, they might take a moment to pause and consider the genuine real-world impact this kind of speech has on society. Do they really think they’re helping the country by getting one segment of the population completely riled up, angry, afraid, and foaming-at-the-mouth-enraged over fake bullshit issues based on absolutely no substance? Do they see themselves as performing some kind of service? Perhaps they believe they are giving a voice to those disenfranchised Americans whom the black president is shamelessly ignoring on his crusade to advance the agenda of jews, gays, communists, and terrorists? If so, they would have to first believe that Obama really is on such a crusade, but if they’re that dumb they would be the ones listening to that bullshit and not the ones propagating it.

No, they know perfectly well that most of what they say is total horseshit propaganda designed to keep the established power-structure in power. They do it by convincing those most victimised by the establishment that their problems are actually caused by liberals. All they are doing is misdirecting rage.

There are two results of this: The first is that it makes it incredibly difficult for the president, who probably genuinely wants to advance a progressive agenda, to actually accomplish any progressive goals. The second is that a few crazy wingnuts start shooting people. And if the commentators insist they bear absolutely no responsibility for these acts of violence, they are simply wrong. Their speech may be legal, but it’s irresponsible and it’s dangerous. It validates ideas that should not be given any credence, and perpetuates a culture war that drives a society apart at the very moment it should be joining together.

The problems facing this country are too serious for this kind of shit to be tolerated. We should be worried about environmental degradation, climate change, nuclear proliferation, the collapsing economy and so on, but instead we’re all running around like chickens with our heads chopped off over the very idea that dangerous terrorists from Guantanamo might actually be allowed on U.S. soil! Never mind that they’d be held in supermax prisons from which no one—including the terrorists already confined in these places—has ever escaped. The liberals would make sure they get released so that they are free to hang out by school playgrounds and terrorize our children.

The debate in this country used to be between the left and the right. Now it’s between the center-left and the far far faaaaaaaaaaaaar right. The truth does not lie somewhere in between, but often way to the left. Right-wing commentators, and the mainstream media that enables them, shove the debate from the rational end of the spectrum to the batshit crazy, so we’re no longer debating any actual merits of any actual policies, but instead arguing over baseless accusations as though they are one of the legitimate sides of a two-sided argument. There are often several legitimate sides to an argument, but the far-right position is never one of them, and it’s being treated as though it is. This is poison for the national discourse, and as long as our discourse continues to be poisoned by these irresponsible propagandist bloviators appealing to the worst impulses in the worst members of society, the entrenched interests and the army of ignorant gun-toting racists they’ve got backing them up will continue to hold the rest of society hostage.

For awhile now I’ve been meaning to write about my thoughts on Obama now that we’re a few months into his presidency and we now have a much clearer picture of what kind of president he’ll be. Presidents often step back from or abandon many of the promises made or sentiments expressed on the campaign trail, and Obama has been no exception. During the campaign, he called for reform of Wall Street, but his appointment of Tim Geithner to the post of treasury secretary has ensured that no significant change will really occur, and that the boom/bust economic cycle of Ronald Reagan will continue to make the wealthy wealthier and the middle class poorer. During the campaign, he said he would end the Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell policy but hasn’t lifted a finger to make that change even though as commander-in-chief he could easily issue a standing order that the policy is not to be enforced until legislation to overturn it goes through Congress. During the campaign, he called for openness and transparency in government, but he won’t allow the release of more photos from American prisons depicting torture.

And most grievously of all, during the campaign he called for the closing of the prison at Guantanamo Bay and a renewed commitment to the rule of law with regards to the treatment of POWs, but his actions have been nothing more than a P.R. campaign. Guantanamo is a symbol of America’s violation of human rights, and by closing it Obama is certainly winning points around the world, but meanwhile the detention centre at Bagram Airforce Base, which is basically just Gitmo in another time-zone, will remain open. Not only that, but for some of the prisoners still at Guantanamo, those who fall into that odd category of definitely dangerous but unable to be convicted due to lack of evidence (or inadmissible evidence because it was obtained through torture), Obama is willing to keep them detained indefinitely without a trial, lest he let them go and they attack Americans. I understand perfectly well why he doesn’t want to let any dangerous detainees go even if the law demands it—a terrorist attack by a former Gitmo detainee released by Obama is the Republican party’s wettest of wet dreams, and Obama doesn’t want to take that political risk. But by refusing to take the risk, by endorsing a policy of preventive detention, he is not only blatantly violating his oath to defend the Constitution, but he is affirming the worst of the worst of Bush’s sins—of claiming for the President the rights of a despot to hold anyone in prison for any amount of time for any reason, thus rolling the progress of human rights back several centuries. When news of this came out, I was just about ready to give up hope entirely, to abandon my already tepid support of Obama and dismiss him as just another bullshit hypocrite American president, superior to Bush only in terms of style while effectively identical in substance.

Then I watched the speech he gave in Cairo. I wasn’t expecting to be impressed by it. In fact, I expected to be somewhat bored by it as I’ve often been while watching other speeches he’s given on issues such as the economy. But this speech was not only completely riveting from beginning to end (foreign policy is just inherently far more interesting to me than economics anyway), but it was actually downright inspiring. For someone who spends a great deal of time dwelling on the question of whether humanity will ultimately destroy itself or come together in common interest, to witness this moment in history actually gave me some hope that maybe, just maybe, it will be the latter.

Before explaining myself, I want to address the most basic and common objection I’ve been reading online, both from columnists and journalists reporting on the reactions of Muslims around the world, which is that it may have been a nice speech but words ultimately mean nothing without the actions to back it up. Of course, it is completely true that actions are more important than words, but in many cases words do matter, especially when spoken by the most powerful man in the world. Bush’s words certainly mattered when he called the Global War on Terror a “crusade”, describing it as a “clash of civilizations”. That set the tone for 7 years of jihad, of violent Islamic radicals easily recruiting angry young men into their ranks to fight a Holy War against the Evil American empire, led by a man who, in his own words, was on a “crusade” against Islamic civilisation.

But now along comes Barack Hussein Obama with his middle name and his background of life experience within the Muslim world, saying:

No single speech can eradicate years of mistrust, nor can I answer in the time that I have all the complex questions that brought us to this point. But I am convinced that in order to move forward, we must say openly the things we hold in our hearts, and that too often are said only behind closed doors. There must be a sustained effort to listen to each other; to learn from each other; to respect one another; and to seek common ground. As the Holy Koran tells us, “Be conscious of God and speak always the truth.” That is what I will try to do – to speak the truth as best I can, humbled by the task before us, and firm in my belief that the interests we share as human beings are far more powerful than the forces that drive us apart.

Obama understands that this is only a speech, and that he can’t expect the Muslim world to just forget and forgive America’s transgressions just because the president quotes the Koran a few times. That’s why I don’t think it’s fair to criticise the speech because it was only words—of course it was only words: it was a speech. The goal was nothing more than to set a new tone, to open up a dialogue between the current administration and the Muslim world, and to demonstrate to Muslims around the world that just as Islam is not the stereotype of a violent fanatical religious cult bent of the destruction of all things good and decent, nor is the United States the stereotype of an evil empire bent on world dominance and the elimination of all local cultures and traditions. Those who fault Obama for merely talking about improving the relationship between East and West are missing the whole point—in order to improve the relationship you have to start by talking.

And as the speech demonstrated, Obama is willing to talk. He raised every major issue, every “source of tension” between America and the Islamic world, when most American presidents wouldn’t go near them—at least not until near the end of their second term. Obama took the biggest risk of his presidency so far by addressing these points: by announcing his positions openly in front of the world as opposed to keeping them behind closed doors, he opens himself up to be measured by history in terms of how well he lives up to the promises he made and the sentiments he expressed. Just as Americans are measuring him in terms of how his actions as president measure up to his words on the campaign trail, the world will ultimately measure him in terms of how his actions in the Middle East measure up to the aspirations he expressed in this speech.

I will now comment on each issue he raised, starting with the most obvious obstacle standing in the way of peace—violent extremism:

America is not – and never will be – at war with Islam. We will, however, relentlessly confront violent extremists who pose a grave threat to our security. Because we reject the same thing that people of all faiths reject: the killing of innocent men, women, and children. And it is my first duty as President to protect the American people.

This is essentially Obama’s explanation for America’s current actions in the Middle East, and it’s one that most reasonable Muslims can probably accept. Personally, I don’t believe that our presence in Afghanistan is making us safer, but I don’t have all the facts so I don’t know. And while I believe that the first duty of the President is to protect the Constitution (it was Bush who expressed the notion that the president’s primary responsibility was the safety of the American people), this at least serves as a legitimate, consensus-seeking explanation for our actions, as opposed to Bush’s “You’re either with us or against us” rhetoric.

Obama also drew a distinction between Afghanistan as a war of necessity and Iraq as a war of choice. And again, while I believe that Afghanistan was also a war of choice, this is something I’m glad to hear our president say to the Muslim world. He also repeated his commitment to remove all U.S. troops from Iraq by 2012, thus inviting himself to be held accountable by the Muslim world and by history if he fails to live up to this pledge.

Secondly, Obama turned to the issue of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, first ensuring he maintain the support of the Jewish community by invoking the Holocaust and imploring Muslims to stop blindly hating Jews, but then bravely expressing the other point of view:

It is also undeniable that the Palestinian people – Muslims and Christians – have suffered in pursuit of a homeland. For more than sixty years they have endured the pain of dislocation. Many wait in refugee camps in the West Bank, Gaza, and neighboring lands for a life of peace and security that they have never been able to lead. They endure the daily humiliations – large and small – that come with occupation. So let there be no doubt: the situation for the Palestinian people is intolerable. America will not turn our backs on the legitimate Palestinian aspiration for dignity, opportunity, and a state of their own.

As someone far more sympathetic to the Palestinians than the Israelis, I was extremely happy to hear the American president speak like this, and not to shy away from the word “occupation” when describing Israel’s actions. But it’s not the words themselves that fill me with hope, it’s the simple fact that he’s saying them now, at the beginning of his presidency, while most would wait until nearing the end of their second term to go near this problem, lest they invite historical judgment based on their success or failure in brining peace to middle east. Because the odds are so overwhelmingly tilted towards failure, the president has demonstrated extreme testicular fortitude by jumping right in at the beginning of his presidency, basically saying to the world, “I take responsibility for this—if peace between Israel and Palestine fails during my presidency, I will own that failure.”

Obama spoke directly to the perpetrators of violence on both ends, and delivered my favourite line of the speech when he said:

It is a sign of neither courage nor power to shoot rockets at sleeping children, or to blow up old women on a bus. That is not how moral authority is claimed; that is how it is surrendered.

It is one of the most simple, most obvious, and yet most often ignored truths in history—violence against innocents is never justified. No matter how noble your cause, if you seek to advance it through means like firing rockets indiscriminately, kidnapping people and chopping off their heads, throwing acid on the faces of little schoolgirls, or let’s say, holding people in prison indefinitely without the opportunity to stand trial, you have sacrificed your moral authority and your side no longer has any more of a right to prevail than your enemies. More than anything else he said, this part of Obama’s message must be taken to heart by everyone involved in these conflicts, including Obama himself.

Obama continued by addressing nuclear weapons, explaining why it would be dangerous for the region and the entire world if Iran acquired such a weapon and thus began an arms race in this volatile region, and confronted head-on the charge of hypocrisy that immediately follows from such a claim. He renewed America’s commitment to elimination all nuclear weapons including its own, thus further inviting history to judge him based on how well he lives up to this pledge.

One of the most eloquent passages came during his discussion of democracy. After acknowledging the controversy over America’s imposing of democracy in Iraq by clearly stating that no system of government can or should be imposed on a nation by any other, he said:

That does not lessen my commitment, however, to governments that reflect the will of the people. Each nation gives life to this principle in its own way, grounded in the traditions of its own people. America does not presume to know what is best for everyone, just as we would not presume to pick the outcome of a peaceful election. But I do have an unyielding belief that all people yearn for certain things: the ability to speak your mind and have a say in how you are governed; confidence in the rule of law and the equal administration of justice; government that is transparent and doesn’t steal from the people; the freedom to live as you choose. Those are not just American ideas, they are human rights, and that is why we will support them everywhere.

This is spoken with humility and respect, and is exactly the kind of thing I would want my president to say on behalf of myself and all of the American people. He does not insist that American-style democracy should be adopted by everyone, but only expresses the conviction that we all share the belief that people ought to have a say in the way they are governed, and should be free as possible to speak their mind and to live as they choose. Again, Obama would do well to listen to his own words when it comes to issues such as gay marriage or Don’t Ask/Don’t Tell, as even in America there are groups of people who still don’t have the freedom to live as they choose.

The fifth issue Obama addresses is religious freedom, saying little more than that everyone ought to be free to believe as they choose. Of course I agree, but I don’t think Obama goes far enough in condemning religious intolerance. Indeed, he was much more generous to the Islamic faith in general than I would be—there are just as many Koranic verses condoning violence and intolerance as there are supporting peace and understanding—but I’m not dumb enough to expect or to hope that the American president get into any kind of theological debate. Had Obama said anything that might have been perceived as the least bit critical of Islam as a religious faith, his entire goal in reaching out to the Muslim world have been undermined. It’s a shame that this is the case, and it underscores how difficult it will be to work with nations and governments still adhering to such a stringent belief system, but Obama said only as much as he could say on the subject.

Obama also took a lot of criticism by not going far enough in talking about his sixth point—women’s rights. He merely pointed out that our daughters have just as much to contribute to society as our sons, and that countries where woman are well-educated are far more prosperous than those where they are oppressed. Of course it would have been a lot more satisfying had he strongly condemned this oppression, but Obama knows that when it comes to women’s rights issues, he must tread very carefully or he will alienate an entire segment of the Muslim population that would perceive his denouncement of their patriarchal beliefs as an attack on their religion and culture. So as much as I may despise the way women are treated in these cultures, I must accept the need for the president not to press this point too hard too early on.

Obama’s final point had to do with globalisation, and I believe he once again sent exactly the right message:

I know that for many, the face of globalization is contradictory. The Internet and television can bring knowledge and information, but also offensive sexuality and mindless violence. Trade can bring new wealth and opportunities, but also huge disruptions and changing communities. In all nations – including my own – this change can bring fear. Fear that because of modernity we will lose of control over our economic choices, our politics, and most importantly our identities – those things we most cherish about our communities, our families, our traditions, and our faith.

This is exactly the fear we all have about globalisation, and an issue I will no doubt witness firsthand as I travel the world during these changing times. How much uniqueness of culture will be retained from country to country? Will travelling the world feel less and less like seeing different and exotic lands and more and more like seeing only different departments of the same worldwide multinational corporate empire? It’s already the case that you can’t go anywhere that doesn’t have a McDonald’s, and that saddens me, but it would be nice to believe Obama’s assertion that “There need not be contradiction between development and tradition.” We’re still at the relative beginning of this period of worldwide coming-together, and its ultimate effects on local cultures and traditions remains to be seen.

In closing his speech, Obama returns to the loftly, high-minded rhetoric he is so famous for, the kind of rhetoric that gave me hope in his presidency in the first place. Returning to the question of whether there is any chance for the long-term survival of humanity, I remember Bush’s warning about the “axis of evil” and how it seemed to me at the time that catastrophic destruction was inevitable. Now I sit and watch the American president standing in front of the world and using rhetoric that I thought was only used by high-minded idealists such as myself, imploring the world to think about itself in from a much broader point-of-view, for humans to think of themselves as part of a collective much greater than all of us individually:

All of us share this world for but a brief moment in time. The question is whether we spend that time focused on what pushes us apart, or whether we commit ourselves to an effort – a sustained effort – to find common ground, to focus on the future we seek for our children, and to respect the dignity of all human beings.

It is easier to start wars than to end them. It is easier to blame others than to look inward; to see what is different about someone than to find the things we share. But we should choose the right path, not just the easy path. There is also one rule that lies at the heart of every religion – that we do unto others as we would have them do unto us. This truth transcends nations and peoples – a belief that isn’t new; that isn’t black or white or brown; that isn’t Christian, or Muslim or Jew. It’s a belief that pulsed in the cradle of civilization, and that still beats in the heart of billions. It’s a faith in other people, and it’s what brought me here today.

As a child I imagined a president who would unite the world in peace. The prologue to my book describes such a man, but even in my book I only imagined he would appear on the world stage after some kind of disastrous third world war and many centuries of chaos. But to see Obama standing there and using these words, I could not help but think that perhaps there is a chance for us to avoid that catastrophe and start coming together in peace right now, at this moment in history.

The essence of Obama’s message to the rest of the world is simply this: Grow up. Abandon your juvenile beliefs and your petty grudges. Think about the long-term consequences of your actions. Understand that you are responsible for the people lower than you in the social or political power structure, and operate with their interests in mind instead of just your own. Most importantly, consider the world you are leaving behind for your children, and how if you are unwilling to put the past behind you and extend an open hand to those that have offended you in the past, you are dooming your children to repeat the cycle of violence that you are perpetuating.

Finally, I will end with a reflection on Obama’s pronouncement that the heart of every religion, the Golden Rule, is essentially a “faith in other people”. He did not say “faith in a higher power” and this I believe is probably the most significant philosophical proposition in his speech. I’ve read no commentary about that particular line so it’s safe to say that its significance was missed by the media, and I believe more attention should be paid to it.

Faith in a higher power entails a lack of responsibility on our part to do any of the things Obama calls on us to do. If Allah demands the destruction of Israel, that’s the end of the story. If God intends to ends the world in fire and brimstone and save Christians alone, it’s pointless to even try to extend an olive branch. Faith in a higher power leads to a concern only for those in your circle, whether it’s your family, your local community, your nation, or your religion. When you place your faith in a higher power, your central purpose in life is to do whatever you believe is necessary to gain the favour of that higher power, often at the expense of those you belief are in disfavour. Faith in a higher power is anathema to the success of humanity.

Faith in other people, on the other hand, is the exact opposite. A faith in other people entails an unspoken agreement among all human beings to take responsibility for the welfare of all others. Whether or not God exists, it is up to us to determine the course of our own destiny. We must do what we can within our own sphere of influence to make the world a more just and peaceful place, and have faith that others are doing the same thing within their own spheres. Faith in other people is essential to the success of humanity. Without it, we’re only sitting back and waiting for civilisation to destroy itself. If we don’t believe we have the ability to overcome the challenges we face, that we don’t have the capacity to tear down the walls that divide us and embrace our common interests, then we never will.

So it remains to be seen whether Obama’s words will have a real effect on the attitudes of the rest of the world towards the United States and towards humanity in general. I am not so starry-eyed and naïve that I believe there is any strong likelihood of success, of any realisation of Obama’s vision of “a world where extremists no longer threaten our people, and American troops have come home; a world where Israelis and Palestinians are each secure in a state of their own, and nuclear energy is used for peaceful purposes; a world where governments serve their citizens, and the rights of all God’s children are respected” but I do appreciate that the most powerful man in the world is expressing such a vision. No other candidate in the 2008 race would have been so bold.

As I often say, we are standing at the most crucial hinge moment in human history, a time period from which we will either spiral into complete economic, environmental, and violent disaster, or rise to meet the challenges we face and reshape humanity under the principles of freedom, sustainability, and peace. Because those who actually hold power tend to have little interest in these principles, I believe our chances are slim. However, because the masses of people throughout the world do tend to believe in these principles, and because people like Barack Obama are out there promoting them, I no longer believe we are inevitably doomed. As much as I despise some of the choices he has made since entering office, I think that in the long-term when we look back at the Obama administration and consider the speech he gave this week in Cairo, we may just see that he was in fact the right man with the right message at the right time.