I have been reviewing some sites supporting the theory that 9/11 was some sort of "false flag attack" intended to justify US military action in the middle east. I have addressed these theories again and again, but recently I have realized there is one particular aspect I have not addressed, the fact that such schemes are even less likely to succeed in a democratic government.

Now, the immediate response to this is the the US government has been involved in overthrowing foreign governments, spying on citizens and so on, so how can I say it is impossible. But that question answers itself. the fact that we know about COINTELPRO, that we are aware of action in Chile, Iran and Guatemala, that we had the Church commission, all that shows just how difficult carrying out true secret actions in a democracy can be. And those are actions which were directed either against a foreign nation or people seen as security threats. If the action were directed against a popular or innocent internal target, they would likely be revealed even more quickly.

If you think back throughout history, most "false flag" attacks have two features, they were carried out by authoritarian states and they were part of the official, if sometimes unspoken, policy of those nations. For example, Germany staged "Polish" attacks in order to justify action in 1939, and had similar plans for Czechoslovakia had Munich not made them superfluous. But both such plans were in accord with German policy, and, more importantly, were carried out by a totalitarian government with the ability to both silence those who had second thoughts and without either an opposition party or critical press.

In the US, such an action would just not be possible.

Let us imagine the US wants to attack Mexico. In order to carry this out, they plan a small "incursion" by Mexican troops. The military obtains Mexican uniforms, inserts troops across the border in those uniforms, and stages the attack. Even in such a minor operation, many hundreds of people will be involved at some level. Not just the soldiers involved on either side, but also the planners, those who obtained the uniforms, the pilots who inserted the false troops, the ground crews who serviced and launched the planes, the people who filed the flight plans, the officers who authorized the fuel, the accountants who review that authorization, and so on and so on. The chain of people involved such a "simple" fake attack is just staggering. Many may not know the details, but hundreds and hundreds of people have access to some bit of information which could reveal something was amiss. And for the "false flag" attack to remain secret, every one of them would have to be willing to remain silent. Which seems unlikely.

And when we get to a bigger attack, such as many of the absurd schemes for taking down the twin towers. Whether it was placing tons of thermite over several weekends, or flying automated planes while disembarking real passengers in Ohio, the schemes proposed for the WTC and Pentagon attacks would involve hundreds of active participants, and would leave fingerprints which could be uncovered by literally thousands of people*.

And, what if one individual were to have a change of heart? Or someone outside of the conspiracy find evidence of what took place? well, he has the media. Even with the current media being so enamored of the president, I can't imagine a reporter would pass up a bombshell story such as the military attacking our own nation. Even if his political inclinations made him want to avoid reporting it, such a huge story would be both too tempting and too risky. Passing would not only prevent him from making a huge splash, but opens up the possibility of a rival getting a scoop. So, even in the most administration friendly environment, the press is a market for any revelations.

Second, even if the press were unwilling to cover these revelations, there is always the opposition party. And that is one of the big reasons a democracy makes such "false flag" attacks difficult. Even if the government could keep the operation largely secret, and could pacify the press, they cannot silence the opposition party, which is always looking for a scandal to help them gain advantage. And so there is always an outlet for any documented evidence showing the government is involved in misdeeds.

In fact, even if there were no whistle blower, in the unlikely event everyone involved kept silent and those with evidence did not notice the irregularities, the fact remains that the press (most of the time) and the opposition (all of the time) are constantly looking for something the government is doing wrong. They may not have total access, but so long as one member of the opposition remains in congress, he will have enough access to eventually dig out that evidence that the whistle blowers missed. Think of all the scandals that have come to light in the last century from only the most paltry evidence. Is it even conceivable that something as massive as an attack staged by the government on the US would not be noticed?

Which brings us to the final stumbling block for a false flag attack in a democracy. Unlike those sci fi movies where the intelligence agencies reveal to the president hat aliens are real or that they have been developing a doomsday weapon, the real president, and real congress, have real oversight over the military and intelligence agencies. if nothing else, the need to account for their expenses pretty much lays open their activities. So, if there were such a false-flag attack, and if the opposition party somehow failed to discover it while the other party held the White House, despite their members in congress, it would certainly come to light when the White House changed hands. And at that point, isn't it quite likely it would be used to impeach the outgoing president? If for no other reason than to tarnish his party and ensure the president's party would pick up seats in congress?

Unless a president could be sure no one involved would reveal anything AND no one who had any evidence of the event would notice something was amiss AND no one would investigate from either the press or the opposition AND the opposition in congress would remain in the dark AND all evidence would be utterly destroyed before the other party took back the White House, he would be a fool to stage such a false flag attack. And, having worked in government, I can attest that, at least in terms of removing all records, that is simply impossible. If nothing else, the government excels at generating and retaining paperwork. It is unthinkable that anything could happen without being documented, and, even more importantly, once documented, such records are almost impossible to expunge. I don't know about anyone else, but I would never bet my life on the ability to remove all records of some event from a government agency.

Of course, there are those who would dismiss my theory, arguing that the parties are not really in opposition and there is some super-party which rules over all. However, can anyone take that seriously? Does anyone short of a true paranoid believe all the conflict and venom we see on the political stage is nothing but acting to keep us duped? I suppose it is possible, buy the evidence supporting the political conflict being real is so extensive that to support such a theory, we would have to postulate that nearly every person on earth is in on the conspiracy and I am alone in being the object of this deception. But at that point we have departed from a metaphorical paranoia and entered the real of clinical diagnosis, and I am not willing to go there.

But I suppose you must decide for yourself. Is there some secret cabal stage managing all of the political struggle just to keep you in the dark? Is everything you see, and everything that confirms its reality, just more deception? Is the whole world just a lie designed to keep you in the dark? Because if it is not, then I cannot see how a lesser conspiracy, one limited to mere mortals with more realistic limitations, could possibly pull off a "false flag" attack in a democracy and remain undiscovered for any length of time.

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* Some "truthers" will claims these clues have been uncovered, and I am just dismissing them, but that is not true. What I mean by "evidence" is the endless stream of documentary evidence, or first hand testimony, that would be available if the military or intelligence agencies had been involved in any of these elaborate schemes. Instead of any trace of such evidence we have records of single mistakes in radio broadcasts and trivial traces of various elements in a confused mess of rubble at ground zero, if that. More often we get peculiar interpretations of very innocent incidents. Yet that si what passes for "proof" among the truthers.

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POSTSCRIPT

To go off on a slight tangent, I think one of the most damning condemnations of the Truthers is the same argument I made against those arguing about forged birth certificates ("Not A Smoking Gun"), and the same argument I used to level against the Kennedy conspiracy theorists. When something happens, the evidence points to the truth. There may be a few false starts, but by and large it eventually leads to a single conclusion. Eg. John of Procida was behind the conspiracy that brought off the Sicilian Vespers. And even after centuries, we can unravel that conspiracy. And, more importantly, we don't have dozens of competing "theories" about it.

On the other hand, the "Truthers" have a dozen or two theories of what happened. Missiles, thermite, explosives, robot planes, maybe even giant metal eating termites, they have proposed endless conflicting theories, often with the same person proposing more than one. Similarly, the JFK theorists have propose a dozen different scenarios along with a hundred possible guilty parties. And that is a sure sign of a "conspiracy theory" as opposed to historical investigation of a real conspiracy. Real conspiracies are uncovered, investigated and revealed. "Conspiracies" created by conspiracy theorists tend to start with a conclusion ("The WTC was an inside job", "someone else killed Kennedy", "Obama is not a citizen/ineligible to serve as president") and they then develop theories to fit that conclusion, looking for evidence as they go.

And that is definitely a characteristic of 9/11 Truthers.They are certain it was an inside job, but they can't figure out how, or who, or why. Or, to be more accurate, they have a hundred answers to each question. All of which strikes me as more damning evidence than even the best formal refutation of their arguments.

POSTSCRIPT II

My writing on conspiracy theories can be found in the following:

Sinister PNAC? Hardly!
Food For Thought
Bill Clinton Murdered Leon Trotsky!
Idiots or Geniuses?
Dismissing Conspiracy Theories
Our New Paranoia
259 Lies?
Isn't History Enough?
The Appeal of Conspiracy Theories
A Shortcoming of Conspiracy Theories
Amusingly Left Wing
Absurdities on Oil
Your Fellow Man
Revival of an Old Absurdity
A Question for Those Who Believe "Bush Lied"
Tips for Conspiracy Theory Buffs #1
Rewriting History Concerning World War II
Those Darn Jews
Those Darn Jews Part 2
One Last Time
Conspiracy Theorists' False Logic
Conspiracy Theory Enters the Mainstream
Can They Both Lose?
All In How You Say It
Conspiracy Theories
Sorry, But Jews Aren't the Problem
Not A Smoking Gun
Mumia, the DaVinci Code, Full Body Scans, and Loose Change - How Conspiracy Theories Arise
The Zionist Conspiracy and Israel Lobby
Life is Strange

What I wrote specifically about the Obama birth certificate controversy and related matters:

An Interesting Question
A Small Update on the Birth Certificate Controversy
Birth Certificate Controversy Revisited
One More Post on the Birth Certificate Controversy
Really, The Last One on This Topic
Wrong is Wrong
A Few Comments on the Berg Ruling
A New Take on an Old Topic
A Brief Follow Up
Slate Imitates Me, But I Really Don't Mind
Not A Smoking Gun

Finally, should anyone want to start a comment "We are not a democracy..." I would ask that they first read "No more!" and "Misunderstanding Democracy".