A Theologian Asks the Hard Questions About 9/11
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A Theologian Asks the Hard Questions About 9/11
By Douglas Todd
The Vancouver Sun
Dec 11, 2004
David Ray Griffin is one of the most respected philosophers of religion in
North America. He is the author or editor of more than 24 academic books,
including works co-written with the deans of world religions, Huston Smith
and Martin Marty. He has lectured around the world, including at UBC.
Griffin is one of those profiled in the prestigious volume, A Handbook of
Christian Theologians. He's painstakingly probed countless philosophical
challenges, from the question of why there is evil to the relationship
between science and religion, for which he's won numerous awards.
So why did this soft-spoken professor from the high-ranking
Methodist-rooted School of Theology at Claremont, Calif., feel it
necessary to risk his hard-earned reputation as a religion scholar to
write one of the most incredible -- in all senses of the word -- political
books of 2004?
Because no one else in mainstream America seemed prepared to do it...
The result? Griffin's book, The New Pearl Harbour: Disturbing Questions
About the Bush Administration and 9/11 (Interlink Publishing, $22.50) has
already sold an astonishing 80,000 copies.
Griffin's unflinching analysis of the unanswered questions surrounding the
Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks on New York and Washington has made
Amazon.com's bestseller list despite receiving virtually no reviews in
North America's mainstream media. That's unlike in Britain, where he's had
solid coverage, including a three-page spread in London's mass-circulation
Daily Mail.
Personally, when people ask how a group of Muslim extremists could have
pulled off the devastating suicide attacks against the U.S., in spite of
the country's global intelligence network and massive defence arsenal, I
tend to side with the German philosopher, Goethe, who once said: "Why look
for conspiracy when stupidity can explain so much?"
But when Griffin, who's known for his careful approach to philosophical
problems, poses a series of questions suggesting the administration of
George W. Bush had been warned about the terrorist attacks and did
nothing, it's enough to make you shudder. The implications would make the
Watergate scandal look like a Sunday brunch.
In effect, The New Pearl Harbour fleshes out in 214 pages the question
asked in the final moment of Michael Moore's Academy-award-winning
documentary, Fahrenheit 911. That's when the filmmaker wonders aloud: What
exactly was Bush thinking as he sat in front of a bunch of school children
reading a book titled My Pet Goat, knowing two jetliners had been flown
into the World Trade Center?
Griffin's book is titled The New Pearl Harbor for two reasons. One,
because that's what Bush wrote in his diary on the evening of Sept. 11:
"The Pearl Harbor of the 21st century took place today." But also because
members of the Bush administration in 2000 helped author the document,
Project for the New American Century, which opined it would be difficult
to galvanize Americans to support military expansion in Afghanistan, Iraq
and elsewhere unless a "new Pearl Harbor" occurred.
Here are a few of the questions Griffin looks into:
* Why did the Bush administration say it didn't anticipate the Sept. 11
attacks when the CIA and FBI had repeatedly told it al-Qaida was planning
to hijack planes and fly them into U.S. targets, including the World Trade
Center and the Pentagon?
* Why were standard procedures that could have prevented the tragedy not
followed when the four hijacked planes went off course, including
immediately sending up jet fighters to shoot down passenger planes that
fail to obey orders?
* Why has there been no physical evidence a jet plane crashed into the
Pentagon? Independent onlookers say they saw a missile fly into the
building. Video evidence shot by a nearby gas station's security cameras
was confiscated by government officials.
* Why did Bush, despite knowing about first one, then two, World Trade
Center crashes, delay his response to them for up to 30 minutes and
instead continue to read a children's book? Why was he not whisked away by
his security agents, who are trained to believe he's a logical target of
terrorists?
* Who made tens of millions of dollars by betting on the stock market in
the weeks before Sept. 11 that shares in the two airlines that owned the
hijacked planes were about to plummet?
The Bush administration has brushed off all such questions. For his part,
Griffin doesn't argue the Bush administration was actually complicit in
the attacks. Some of the professor's fans have regretted his cautiousness,
because he won't compile a grand theory about why the attacks may have
been allowed to happen. He consistently avoids inflammatory rhetoric.
Griffin, however, has clearly shown the gross inadequacies of the 9/11
Commission, which the Bush administration demanded be restricted to
looking only at how to stop another terrorist assault.
Griffin's supporters, including top Christian theologians, say he achieved
his key goal, which was to provide an overwhelming body of evidence to
show it's necessary to conduct a thorough probe into how the attacks
happened in the first place.
In the past month, Harper's Magazine and the New York Times have
tentatively started to catch up with Griffin's questions. Harper's, for
instance, published a cover feature titled, "Whitewash as public service:
How the 9/11 Commission Report defrauds the nation," by Benjamin DeMott,
which also asks whether it was sheer incompetence or something else that
made the attacks possible.
For his part, Griffin says he's been overwhelmed by the positive responses
he's received to his book, which has sold 50,000 copies in the U.S. almost
solely by word of mouth. In an e-mail interview, Griffin said he's only
received about a dozen denunciations. Many families of those who died in
the World Trade Center attack are among his supporters. Two of his many
high-placed admirers are Canadians; former Liberal defence minister Paul
Hellyer and Michael Chossudovsky of the University of Ottawa.
Griffin continues to believe the religious and philosophical questions
he's devoted his career to answering are important, but, as a Christian,
he feels a more urgent need to take on the geo-political developments that
have elevated the planet onto high alert. Two weeks ago he released a
follow-up book with the same publisher, titled The 9/11 Commission Report:
Omissions and Distortions.
dtodd@png.canwest.com
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posted by Raleigh myers @ 12/12/2004
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