9/11 and the business of war

False flag attacks hoodwinking protest movement

- CHRIS REA, HENRY WIDDAS

IMAGINE 3,000 people being slaughtered in a diabolical plot and never receiving justice.

Now imagine the same thing and add three or perhaps four zeros to that number and place those slaughtered in the Middle East.

Anti-war mobilisation could do much to turn off the engines of death - but instead, it focuses its spotlight on the puppets rather than the puppet masters.

And it acts reactively, focusing on the now, rather than looking at the root cause of why, for centuries, man kills man on a grand scale.

At the moment, Israel's assault on Gaza and the West Bank has prompted mass mobilisations reminiscent of the opposition to the assault on Iraq in 2003.

But while pro-Palestinian activism operates at an impressive level in between the most egregious outbreaks of Israeli violence, it is not, strictly speaking, an anti-war movement.

Mainstream anti-war campaigning rarely offers a sustained critique of the highlevel economic powers that organise conflicts, and which operate above national governments and international organisations.

All anti-war activists - historically found on the left - need to understand that honest politics would never allow for war. There have to be underhand techniques involved to obtain a casus belli - the reason one state must wage war against another.

Probably the most common technique is the false flag attack. Such attacks are carried out by one party with the intent of blaming the other, thereby giving a reason for war. Arguably, 9/11 is the most significant false flag attack to have occurred in living memory, but October 7 has the same hallmarks.

Although mainstream anti-war activists would not deny economic factors are important motives in armed conflicts, they do not take that line of thinking far enough.