If they planned it... WHY!?, page 1

If 9/11 was a self-inflicted wound, I think the reasons are relatively simple to understand. I'd go so far as to say that, if the only way to convince the West to support its drive into the Middle East was to carry out such an attack, then those responsible would probably view their own actions as necessary, even honourable.

Look through a microscope at a sample and your field of view is limited - you just can't see the big picture. Approach world affairs in the same way and it's impossible to see the bigger picture.

I think the fundamental motivation is oil. But as a stand-alone explanation, it does as much if not more to turn people off the idea that 9/11 might have been an 'inside job' as it does to open them to the possibility.

Ultimately, it's about retaining a competitive advantage. Oil is simply an ends to the means.

During World War II, the US shifted from isolationism to interventionism, having spotted the opportunity to take advantage of a weakened Europe. Many argue that they proactively sought entry to the war and that Pearl Harbor was engineered by Roosevelt for this purpose. If you're familiar with the McCollum Memo, you'll know that there's more than a hint of validity to this claim.

Through a series of agreements culminating in the Bretton Woods Agreement, the US broke down the trade barriers that had seen it largely excluded from European markets. It used this opportunity to finance decimated European countries as a means of creating new markets, which were served by transforming and sweating the assests of the US's wartime industiral complex.

Pretty soon, the dollar was established as the de facto global currency. But their involvement in Vietnam, coupled with the emergence of Japan and Germany as industrial competitors put strain on the dollar, which at the time was linked to gold. Dollar holding nations began to exchange their dollars for gold, diminishing the US's gold reserves and placing irresistable pressure on the currency. By the early 70's, the US had little choice but to abandon the gold standard and allow the dollar's value to be determined by the market.

The US sought another way of encouraging the world to take dollars again - and this time to keep them. They achieved this through an agreement with Saudi Arabia. From that point on, all global oil transactions were dollar denominated, forcing pretty much all energy users to acquire dollars. Thus the petrodollar and the system of petrodollar recycling were born. This enabled the US to run massive trade deficits with everyone else struggling to achieve a trade surplus. (As an aside, this is one of the reasons why Saddam's switch to Euro-denominated oil transactions was quickly reversed, and why Iran's threat to open up its own Bourse was met with some consternation in the US.)

The US economy had grown enormously since the end of the war. But oil was the collateral. Stock values were and are effectively underwritten by the availability of oil, since without it, US industry would collapse.

But today, the US's traditional energy suppliers are believed to have experienced Peak Oil. If this is true, then from now on, oil production rates in those countries will fall and prices will rise.

The Middle East, however, will not hit Peak Oil until around 2011, at which point we will have passed the 'crossover event', with the Middle East producing more oil than the rest of the world combined.

Rewind to the early 1990's, when these sorts of issues were being discussed by policy-makers. What to do about it?

Clearly the US faced a threat from competing parties, including Russia and the rapidly industrialising Asian states of China and India. Given their geographical proximity to the future site of the world's key areas of oil production, and given Iran's anti-Americanism (which had the potential to harm the US since Iran controls many of the key tarnsit routes out of the Caspian region), it's easy to understand why the US would want to establish control in the Middle East and surrounding areas.

I don't see how they could possibly have done it without first demonstrating that their key security threat came from Middle Eastern terrorism.

The alternative, and the reason why the architects of the plot would feel a sense of vindication, is that without oil, the US basically comes unstuck, and in all likelihood, drags the rest of the world with it.

As for 'who' and 'how', well history may well hold the answers there too, but this thread was about the'why', so I'll stop rambling.

ETA sp

[edit on 15-10-2007 by coughymachine]