9/11: 'the new Pearl Harbor' By William R. Woodward - December 07, 2008 6:00 AM
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Editor's note: The author is a UNH professor who sparked a controversy in September 2006 when he was quoted in a newspaper story as saying "government elites orchestrated 9/11" while summarizing literature on the subject. The university defended his academic freedom and he chose to let the firestorm subside. Now, he breaks the silence with his first opinion piece on the topic.

By William R. Woodward

On Dec. 7, 1941, our country was attacked by Japan. What do our children know of the economic and political reasons for this tragic event?

Robert Stinnet's book "Day of Deceit. The Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor" reveals that Franklin Roosevelt not only let the attack on Pearl Harbor happen, but provoked it over a period of 14 months. At the time, the public was only 17 percent in favor of intervention against Germany. Roosevelt secretly had an eight-point plan drawn up to lure Japan into an act of war. The fleet was left exposed, and Japan's oil supplies were cut off. Roosevelt even conspired to prevent the available intelligence from reaching the admiral in charge. In historical hindsight, it turns out to have been a PsyOp, a psychological operation to turn the public into support of a World War against the Axis powers Germany, Japan, and Italy. Two days after Pearl Harbor, the U.S. Congress declared war.

This book flies in the face of a complacent ideology that the U.S. leaders occupy the moral high ground. In fact, false flag operations, have repeatedly used staged attacks to justify our invasions. This occurred with Operation Northwoods in 1962 (not executed by Kennedy), and the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964.

Theologian David Ray Griffin has suggested that we view Sept. 11, 2001, as "the new Pearl Harbor." The Sept. 11, 2001, false flag attack preceded our entry into a pre-emptive war with two nations and led to a vast shift in public opinion, from isolationism to war fever, and to restrictions in civil liberties (The New Pearl Harbor, 2004; The New Pearl Harbor Revisited, 2008).

And like the first Pearl Harbor, the new one has been exposed as a hoax of monumental proportions. Read any of the dozen scholarly books that you find by searching "new Pearl Harbor" at Amazon books online.

Supposedly, 19 Arabs boarded the planes and steered them toward targets, defying NORAD and the best defended air corridor in the world. The official story is promulgated by a compliant press owned by just five corporations (including General Electric, a major producer of war equipment).

Amazingly, standard operating procedures were not followed by NORAD on 9/11. Fighter planes were directed out to sea. War games over Canada paralyzed the air defense system on that very day. The collapses resembled controlled demolitions. Firefighters reported multiple synchronized explosions. Molten metal remained for weeks afterward. No kerosene fire has ever melted steel. A steel-cutting explosive called thermate was found. Videotapes of the airplane that hit the Pentagon were confiscated and not reported. Flight 93 was apparently shot down and its debris covers miles. The executive director of the 9/11 Commission Report, Phillip Zelikow, is a Bush crony. The CIA trains terrorists around the world and is linked to Osama bin Laden. Bets just prior to 9/11/01 that the stock price of United and American Airlines would drop ("put options") show insider knowledge.

To top it off, in 2000 the neocon "Project for a New American Century" called for "a new Pearl Harbor."

Fear animates those on all sides of this issue. According to a Zogby poll in 2006, 46 percent of the public does not believe the official story. The mainstream and many of the alternative media have censored themselves from raising this topic.

As a historian of psychology, a Quaker, and a returned Peace Corps volunteer, I tremble at the possibility of evil in my government and its major military-industrial lobbies. The major media have cooperated by keeping the carnage of our two recent wars of aggression off the television and the front page. Naturally, they have also squelched 9/11 truth, though it continually bubbles to the surface through Internet and movies.

The Italian movie "Zero: Europe for an Independent 9/11 Investigation" is the most recent of many documentaries. The film "9/11 Press for Truth" depicts the massive resistance of the administration to the survivors' requests for an investigation.

In "Christian Faith and the Truth about 9/11," David Ray Griffin suggests the choice facing us — based on two interpretations of Genesis.

In the received translations, God created the earth from nothing, meaning that he created both good and evil and is responsible for both. On this view, we can relax into complacency — as many have done.

But in another Biblical translation, God created the earth from chaos, meaning that He fashioned evil into good. In a process theology whereby we face similar struggles between the demonic and the divine in our everyday life, our choice is simple and stark.

We can choose complacency in the belief that someone else will handle the evils of declining natural resources and war, poverty and white-collar crime.

Or we can recognize the divine-within-us as a struggle against the demonic and join others in building a just world.

Opportunities include visiting 911truth.org and patriotsquestion911.com, or joining the Seacoast 9/11 Questions Group. Many want to persuade legislators to implement an impartial investigation of 9/11.

Contrasting ideologies compete for our minds and hearts. The DVD "Obsession" was tucked into your newspapers recently. It depicts the "threat of radical Islam to Western Civilization." Most of the world sees reality the other way around: the threat of imperial U.S., U.K., and Israel to Eastern Civilization. Take your pick. Your children will judge you on your civil courage, as my generation in Germany judged its parents. (I was born in 1944.)

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