Considering the nature of the rest of the comments in this thread, I'm sure this will be completely taboo. There is a strong argument that the three letter agencies let this happen to further the agendas of the monied elite, and the media owned by that same elite class did everything they could to bury the truth. I don't expect this comment to last long here, but it's it no way an absurd assessment of the nature of the event. It's a really sad state of affairs that mentioning straight forward truths about how the monied and powerful control narratives and start wars will get you buried and ostracized.
I think you need to dial down the cynicism a little. There's no way murdering 3K+ people was an "inside job". Even if we accept your cynical premise that the goal was to manufacture consent for a war, it could have been achieved with far less loss of life, or perhaps even none at all. So my vote is firmly on the side of incompetence rather than malice. As Reagan used to say, if those folks were any good, they wouldn't be working for the government. Or something to that effect.
Can you tell me more? Any guesses to how it furthered agendas? It certainly changed stuff like airport security. I could see it being allowed to happen to make people take the war on terror more seriously. It would depend on how much of the current state of things could be predicted to determine reasoning. I'm sure even in the internet age there is plenty of forbidden knowledge.
The "war on terror" has served as justification for:
- permanent mass surveillance of global communications
- total governmental control and visibility into fiat money financial transactions
- endless U.S. participation in or support for military campaigns in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Somalia, Libya, and Syria, and the concomitant trillions spent on military hardware and services
- increasingly lawless privacy intrusions at U.S. border crossings
- a huge cottage industry of corrupt dealings as detailed in the WikiLeaks dumps
It's not even necessary to believe any conspiracy theories to recognize that the events of 9/11 lent direct support to a multitude of imperialist and corporatist agendas.
You make it sound like all this stuff started with "war on terror". The US has been at war (and overthrowing governments) ever since WW2. And I'd be seriously surprised if the government did not have "total visibility" into non-cash financial transactions, phone calls, and internet traffic well before 2001.
Amusingly the parent has the strongest conspiracy setup premise entirely wrong (has nothing to do with monied elites). The only conspiracy theory that makes any sense at all, is that it was allowed to happen as an excuse to get the US deeper into the Middle East, so various regimes could be destroyed.
Alternatively, 9/11 did happen due to pure incompetence, and they were opportunistic about 9/11 and the emotions afterward, using that to go on a war spree to accomplish the Pentagon's agenda.
Four star general Wesley Clark [1] provides the setup (speech on YouTube below). Their post 9/11 plan was to destroy the governments of seven countries in five years, based on a plan that existed all the way back to 1991 as explained to Clark (then a one star general) by Paul Wolfowitz (stating that they only had 5-10 years to clean up old Soviet regimes in the Middle East before the next great superpower - China - comes online to challenge the US position; 10 years post 1991 = 2001; China joins the WTO in 2001). Keep in mind the very considerable stature of the military commander that is saying this openly. He flat out says it was a policy coup, that took over the US Government, and was spearheaded by Cheney, Rumsfeld and Wolfowitz. Clark says they could hardly wait to finish off Iraq so they could move the focus on to Syria, which we later did of course (this speech by Clark is from 2007), demolishing the country.
Although Hitler was monumentally stupid. There are numerous stories of how Germany's war effort was undermined by Hitler and his top men making terrible decisions. For example on the night of 5th June 1944 Hitler gave strict instructions not to be woken. As a result he was not told about d day. And due to existing orders the Panza divisions could not be deployed without his approval.
So what about the Holocaust? Well the Nazis believed that the world's was under attack from Jewish and socialist aggression. They believed that it was a massive and imminent existential threat. And that their actions were defending their country and humanity from evil. From this twisted perspective the Nazis actions were logical. They saw themselves as the good guys. The basis for all this evil are a few insanely stupid beliefs.
You're missing the point of Hanlon's razor. It does allow for malice, but only in cases where incompetence is not an adequate explanation. So there's no contradiction.
You are missing my point as well. Why is malice only a possibility when incompetence is not? It makes no sense. In fact, the malicious would definitely take advantage of situations where they could use incompetence as an alibi.
