Why do people dismiss 9/11 conspiracy theories so easily?

I don't see what's too out there about LIHOP. I'm unsure if that's what actually happened but it seems like something they would do.

Especially when there are the same suspicions about Pearl Harbor.

I'm going to go out on a limb and offer that no President, administration, or whatever in the history of our country has deliberately allowed our people to be attacked to create a justification for war.

There may have been a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes, with people ignoring clues, knowing that an attack would probably be coming but not exactly where, hoping for a pretext, and so forth. But at no point did someone walk into the Oval Office and say, "Mr. President, terrorists are going to hijack planes on September 11 and fly them into the Pentagon and World Trade Center," with Bush responding, "Good, it'll get us that war we want."

edited 20th Nov '13 7:36:09 AM by Fighteer

I think that one of the key points of LIHOP is whether POTUS knew anything.

Frankly, I wouldn't put it past Cheney to engage in LIHOP. But I don't think that Bush would; for all his flaws, he wasn't a monster.

As with Pearl Harbour and 9/11, the same was about the Spanish American War and the loss of the USS Maine.

edited 20th Nov '13 7:58:02 AM by Greenmantle

Apparently it's less believable that we were genuinely attacked as a nation than that we conspired to get ourselves attacked as a pretext for war.

I remember coming across someone saying how his reaction to when 9/11 happened was, "Well, I guess the Americans now have an excuse to go to war," or something like that.

Like, really, there's cynical, and there's that.

That's because many Americans consider it more believable that the United States Government is the source of all evil, than that evil exists outside the U.S. Conspiracy theories generally go hand in hand with anarchist revolutionaries, with the recurring theme being, "The government is evil and does deliberately evil things, and if it were destroyed, then we would enter a utopian state where nothing bad would ever happen again."

edited 20th Nov '13 9:28:44 AM by TobiasDrake

Which may have been the intent. Let's not underestimate the wiles of our enemies. Luring us into going to war with an entire nation could well have been exactly what they wanted, because it supports their narrative that we're evil tyrants and they're freedom fighters.

I think the mentality may go as thus: America is awesome and perfect (Eagleland Type I) but our government is the oppressive devil. Nobody in the world who isn't already evil could possibly hate us because we're so awesome, and if they do it's because of our government, which they should hate, because it's evil, except when Republicans are in charge.

So our misguided, evil enemies attack us not because there's anything wrong with America, but because they hate our freedom and are in cahoots with our government to take it away.

You know, I've lost track of it somewhere in that spiel. I have wondered why the religious extremists in our country don't ally with the religious extremists in other countries; it would seem like the natural progression. Thank the powers that be that they hate each other even more than they hate our government.

edited 20th Nov '13 9:35:46 AM by Fighteer

Your last paragraph summed up the human species.

It's been suggested.

I read through that article, somewhat in disbelief. Apparently that fellow suggests that bin Laden was sending secret coded messages to Americans offering to spare them if they voted Democrat. I don't know how that relates to his idea that liberals are the Devil incarnate, unless it's a form of equivalence: bin Laden is evil, liberals are evil, therefore bin Laden and liberals are buddies.

edited 20th Nov '13 11:19:58 AM by Fighteer

In fairness, even National Review Online thought he was batshit nuts.

Rational Wiki has the lowdown on this thoroughly unpleasant character.

edited 20th Nov '13 11:35:51 AM by Achaemenid

@ Fighteer:

I'm quite sure a lot of them hate the Republicans as well. Apart from Ron Paul, of course.