I know many dopers view on conspiracies but I promise you…this isn’t going to be one. Neither am I a conspiracy theorist.
For me, the only plausible terrorist attack scenarios are those where someone in a high branch of government allows a terror group to carry out an attack on citizens. I can’t imagine them ever planning something like 9/11; not because a government would never kill it’s own citizens but how they would be certain of getting away with it. However is it outside the realm of possibility that some knew hijackers were training for suicide missions and may have lowered defenses?
So my question is, do you believe that a Western country allow terrorists to strike in order to make vast social, economic, and security changes provided it could get away with it?
I simply cannot disagree with this statement enough. There’s no logic behind it. Maybe specifically hijacking planes won’t work again (higher probability they get shot down), but that’s hardly the only way for terrorists to work. Boston marathon being a recent example. Car bombs, suicide bombers, bombs in buildings (Oklahoma City or World Trade Towers in '93). And those are just bombs - there are other ways.
If a government had known about a major terror attack in recent history and allowed it to happen, we would certainly learn about it from reputable sources.
Even the guys from SEAL Team Six, a group of bad-asses trained in maximum secrecy, can’t keep their big mouths shut about the Bin Laden operation. The idea that everyone inside government who may have known about terrorist plots (like 9/11 or whatever) keeping their mouths shut after the attacks is as unbelievable as the idea that space lizards actually run our government.
Short answer: No, never as a way to get social change that they want. Nor do I think it would be likely that they could keep it a secret for very long.
Longer answer: Maybe, but to protect the identities of agents or informants. If stopping a terrorist attack meant compromising an undercover agent or a valuable informant, a decision might be made to allow the attack in the hope that the agent/informant can help stop more attacks in the future. Something like 9/11 is too big for me to think it would ever be permitted to happen if it could be stopped, but if a vital undercover agent was one step away from catching bin Laden and you had to permit a routine suicide vest bombing to protect his cover, you’d probably allow it.
No. Even if you set aside morality issues, agencies have a vested interest in stopping crimes before they happen. The more effective they are, the easier it is for them to get funding from congress.
This is the same reason NASA would never keep secret alien space ships, or proof of extra terrestrial life. If they were to ever be able to prove these things, they would essentially guarantee themselves unlimited funding in perpetuity.
I believe the government did allow some bad stuff to happen in WWII to avoid letting Japan and Germany know we had their codes. (based on memory of books read long ago, so forgive me if I have it wrong)
I think that western countries allow terrorist strikes, because the only way to completely prevent them would be to institute a totalitarian police state. (Knowingly allow though, no)
Hardly the same. The government calculated that more people would die if the enemy knew we had broken their secrets, so they let some smaller number of American soldiers die in “surprise” attacks to avoid spilling the beans. Not equivalent to letting the enemy kill innocent civilians on American soil, just for some political gain.
Well, I think the Reichstag fire was set up by the Nazi government (to allow them to consolidate power), and I also have a hard time accepting that the brief military coup in Turkey this year was everything the government claimed it to be.
It’s a pretty good bet most of the ill-named PATRIOT Act had been written years before 2001 and was sitting on a shelf on 9/11. That does NOT mean the government (or rogue elements within the government) created an excuse to enact it. By acts of either deliberate commission or deliberate omission.
It simply means the US has a thorough planning department. Not one that I agree with in all respects. But they did have a plan for handling domestic security on a more wartime footing. When that became necessary they pulled it off the shelf and shoveled it over to Congress for a vote.
The idea expressed in the OP is well into CT nutter territory.
There are a lot of reasons to reject the conspiracy theory of 9-11, but “The government would never do that” is not one of them.
How profitable have these past 15 years of imaginary terrorist-terror been to the defense contractors? Never underestimate the power of money as a catalyst.
Governments have been known to allow terrorist attacks to occur for other reasons - for instance, despite have advance intelligence of a terrorist operation, the authorities decide not to act so as to protect their source. Such things happen quite a bit in dirty wars, and governments facing a terrorist campaign frequently engage in dirty wars.
It’s also possible that governments allow terrorist actions in other states to go ahead, with the hope that the governments of those states will then be more prepared to co-operate with them in the conflict with the terrorists.
Several highly influential advisors to the president have connections to defense contractors. Sacrifice a few civilians in a staged terrorist attack, using willing martyrs. Spend the next 15 years throwing a trillion or so at defense contractors. Destroy the headquarters of the main rivals of your spending beneficiaries. Leave an unguarded pallet of $100 bills on the tarmac in the middle east, which conveniently disappears. Eliminate somebody’s political rival in the middle east. Tell prospective voters that you defended their freedom. Everybody goes home happy.
The Government of the United States of America has members who have background in Defense Industries!
Also: Almost all elected officials at the Federal level are rich!
These two factoids can support all kinds of Conspiracy Theories.
And don’t forget Eisenhower’s warning about the rise of a “Military-Industrial Complex”.
You don’t have to kill people to scare them into supporting “More guns for the Army”.
If there was an industry who wanted to scare people, a big bust of “Enough (name of stuff) to Kill 10,000 people” found in the possession of, or being delivered to, somebody with a name which sounds like (name of current adversary group).
The biggest false stunt - the sinking of the Maine - was not a government job - it was a Hearst stunt to sell newspapers.
And it certainly sold papers.
Now, the Hearst Newspapers have been replaced by CNN, Fox, Breitbart.
If there isn’t any story to sell, make one up!
The shape-changing lizard thing is a bit too far out there, sorry.
But please get back to us with your next suggestion!
One would presume that FBI agents, or perhaps similar counterparts in other agencies, would be the ones to discover whatever terrorist plot there may be against the United States. So these agents, firmly in the middle class professional sector of the country, report up to these plutocrats who are now running the government in your opinion, that something is afoot.
And these plutocrats twist their handlebar mustaches while dollar signs ring up in their eyeballs and say, “Agent Jones, drop that case and go focus on oppressing liberals for a while!” Then these moneybags types go out and buy tons of stock in Lockheed or whatever.
In your view of things, what keeps these FBI agents silent for years or even decades after they discovered the plots but were told to keep quiet? Were they bought off? Threatened? Did they just forget that they could have stopped mass murders but a political appointee told them not to?