On HuffPost Live just now, I noticed two sidebar headlines. The first said, "Two explosions at Boston Marathon finish line." The second, just below it, said, "George Bush is comfortable with Iraq war legacy."
It might pay to note that there are, in the world we know, no coincidences. But it may not be a case of the editors choosing to juxtapose these two thoughts; the quantum field of the universe has a tendency to connect things along its own lines, just as water seeks its own level.
No matter how you want to view it, it is unlikely these two statements were a coincidence.* At some level, they were meant to be, shall we say, suggestive.
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| This Coincidence Rangefinder is the only real coincidence of which I am aware...and the name alone suggests....well, figure it out. (Wiki Commons) |
Here's some more food for thought:
There were so-called terror attacks before the World Trade Center attacks, if attacks they were. Controlled demolition is so much more scientifically plausible. So what made those 'attacks' different?
The prior so-called terror attacks did some damage. But those prior attacks, such as the bomb at the Atlanta Olympics and the first World Trade Center bombing in the basement, did not cause a galvanizing of American attitudes. They were not significant enough, not murderous enough.
But the World Trade Center event was. It was horrific. But it was less horrific than it might have been had it been carried out an hour later. New Yorkers go to work in offices between 9 and 9:30, not between 8 and 9 like the rest of the world. I thought, at the time, that it was lucky that the terrorists were unfamiliar with New York work habits so that only 3,000 were killed, instead of the 50,000 that would have been killed had the attacks occurred an hour later.
And then, as the years passed, I thought otherwise. I thought that whoever actually had masterminded the event knew perfectly well how many people, in round numbers, were likely to be in those buildings at that hour. My husband, just a while ago, said, "So why didn't they do it a 2 in the morning, then? There would have been hardly anyone there."
Why indeed, I wondered. But actually, if one sees the WTC destruction as part of a larger picture, it is fairly simple; at 2 in the morning, there would have been, as with the trial-run terror events, too little damage to galvanize Americans against an identified enemy. Al Qaeda, for example, leading (circuitously, but surely, since Americans had by then been whipped into an anti-Arab frenzy) Iraq. Which had nothing to do with 9/11, nothing to do with Bin Laden, no WMDs...just a man who hated a member of the Bush family, had in many ways bested him, and put his face in mosaics on a hotel floor. (In case you don't know, one of the biggest insults in the Arab world is showing someone the bottom of your shoe; Bush Sr., by proxy, got to see the bottom of every Iraqi shoe that entered that hotel.)
No, for the mastermind of an event such as the Twin Towers fly-ins and subsequent demolition, just prior to the workday was the perfect time. Had the falling towers killed most of the 50,000 people who inhabited them at prime working hours, it would have overwhelmed even New York's ability to cope, even with abundant aid from neighboring states and the federal government. It would have risked major contagion. It would have created emotional wounds so large, people would not have been galvanized, but rather sent into a state of shock so deep that they would not be able to be whipped into a frenzy of fear and hatred. They would have been numb. For a long time. So, indeed, whoever masterminded it did a sterling job. Unfortunately.
The only thing I'm wondering now is who masterminded the Boston Marathon murders--for that's what they are--and why. Why go to the insulting lengths of ensuring that joyful runners lose their limbs, a cruel twist in the bombing that appears to have been part and parcel of the intent, in addition to destroying an American icon, the race itself. What's in it and for whom?
***
When trying to solve any mystery, follow the money. After 9/11, the money trail led directly to the pockets of defense contractors and their wholly owned politicians. Granted, it took more than a year for that cash to start flowing--Bush had to uselessly destroy Afghanistan first and create an even more entrenched hatred for America. But flow it did, I understand to the tune of something like $39 billion to Cheney's Halliburton alone.
Bush could never have gotten his unethical, useless, expensive, murderous wars going without the impetus of the World Trade Center attacks. The previous attacks were too small, too lacking in true horror and drama, and touched too few people. No national icons were destroyed. An already jaded population had looked up for a moment, then had yawned and had gone back to sleep.
The Boston Marathon is a national icon. It allows all comers to participate; it is among the most egalitarian sporting events in the world. Immediately, the right wing whackjobs claimed it was God's price for recognizing gay marriage. (How the hell they put these things together is really scary; their god would kill athletes, abled and disabled, in recompense for recognizing marriage between that same god's creatures? Holy cow. Disbelief is the least of a sane person's reaction to that.)
But again: why the Boston Marathon? What's in it for the mastermind of the disaster? I realize this appears to say I think Bush masterminded the World Trade Center attacks. Let me put it this way: He may have been a shill--he's stupid enough--but it sure wasn't some half-dead zealot in an Afghan cave and a dozen ignorant peasants who masterminded it. (Red herrings abound.) Nor did Bin Laden have anything to gain. He may have been half-dead, but he wasn't half stupid. He had to know a cowboy like Bush would rain bombs down upon anyone between him and the frog he currently wanted to kill** for fun and profit. Bin Laden, it seems to me, was a bit more cagey than that.
We have yet to find out who is behind the horrible loss of life and limb at the Boston Marathon Bombing. (I refuse to shorten it for convenience to Boston Marathon; the Boston Marathon is good, the BOMBING needs to bear the emotional weight of this.) But I am certain beyond doubt that attempts will be made to galvanize the American people against someone, to ensure their continued fear of anything that moves, to convince them that constructing yet the next deadly transfer of the world's money to the pockets of evil trolls that is forthcoming is acceptable.
I would be happy to be proved wrong.
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* Two quotes on coincidence:
“Coincidence is God's way of remaining anonymous.”
― Albert Einstein, The World as I See It
“The concept of randomness and coincidence will be obsolete when people can finally define a formulation of patterned interaction between all things within the universe.”
― Toba Beta, Betelgeuse Incident
** My favorite peek into Bush's character is the apparently true story of him putting firecrackers in the mouths of live frogs and lighting the fuse, then tossing the frogs out over a pond to watch them explode. I'm going to throw up. Every time I think about that as a boyhood activity of a US president, it turns my stomach.
