Who was responsible for 9/11

Damn. I can understand the israel thing from ME countries, but the numbers on US gov are just bad. I guess we've really ruined our international credibility for quite a few nations with 8 years of bushy. I like how the chinese don't give a damn though hehe.

I'm a little annoyed at how long it took me to realize DK was "don't know" and not Denmark. (Hey, I'm a web guy; .dk is Denmark. Cut me some slack.)

Well, I thought of Denmark and "don't know" at the same time.

It's interesting that so few people in the Palestinian Territories blamed Israel.

Pough...

Me too! I read this on my reader and moseyed on over to the blog to post the exact same thing. I was like, what the hell...?

So, it's a tie between the RoP and Denmark? Just kidding...

...sometimes rotten in....

Where are the U.S.'s numbers? I bet if you replaced "Israel" with "Iraq," they'd look a lot like Egypt's.

I mean there are probably as many Americans who think Iraq was behind 9/11 as there are Egyptians who think Israel was. Obviously more Americans than Egyptians know that it was AQ.

Too bad they don't list numbers for the US as well. It would be interesting to see how many in the US would say, "Iraq", or "Sadam". I wonder if some of the respondents for "US Govt" were thinking that it was "US Govt" policies that "forced" Al Qaeda to "respond" with attacks, rather than a true "US Govt" plot to start a war with Islam.

Oh come on, it has nothing to do with "bushy". There were plenty of Europeans who were blaming Americans or who were just happy about 9/11 the day it happened and back then Bush had done nothing in foreign policy and had had no chance of accumulating nearly the same amount of leftish anti-American hatred as Clinton had. Fuck, when *Al Gore* came to lecture about GW a while ago, he STILL drew the usual crowd of left-wing students to demand that the "fascist" thug be jailed for "war crimes".

There's absolutely nothing the US government could do to convince the European activist left that whoever's POTUS isn't the next Hitler. It's all resentment and envy of the US itself, nothing to do with the US gov.

Obviously, Boeing is responsible -- for failing to keep their airliners out of the hands of criminals.

Jaak, there are of course extremist leftists in europe who are insane. I doubt they are 23% of all germans though. Especially on the day 9/11 happened, I doubt there were more then a few germans who seriously thought that it must've been the american government or were happy about it. And considering how much we heard about the rejoicing in the ME, I doubt the media would've cut western europe some slack.

It's the same as saying nothing will convince absolute religious fanatics in this country that europeans aren't decadent spawn of evil. But that's still hardly a majority view from americans, despite freedom fries.

There's a difference at least to my mind between not liking the US, and being such a conspiracy theorist that you believe the US orchestrated the whole thing (for one thing, no way could our government be that competent ;)).

Although Scott makes a good point on that and maybe they meant what he said instead of a conspiracy.

I'm surprised that so many Mexicans feel the US Govt did it - I wonder what the Canadians think?

But what I'm more interested in is, does anyone think that the plane that went down in the field - Flight 93 - was forced down by the valiant actions of some passengers - or was actually brought down by the US Air Force? I thought the latter, as soon as I heard this, as there was plenty time for the USAF to scramble and get a jet in the air...

I'm a bit embarrassed that so many of my countrymen (UK) hold such absurd views.

I don't think I've met anyone who thought it was a good thing. However, in the immediate aftermath I found that a lot of Americans couldn't tell the difference between people who were gleeful about the awful events, and those who merely felt that they were a result of American policies, (which is not the same as saying the attack was justified). At the time, I guess that was understandable: some of the people I was talking with weren't terribly sensitive. However, it doesn't seem to have changed much over the years. It's quite saddening to see US citizens slagging off Europe.

Kenyans are the most likely to believe AQ was behind the attacks. This offers Obama a chance to brandish his fp credentials...

Kenyans are the most likely to believe AQ was behind the attacks. This offers Obama a chance to brandish his fp credentials...

nairobi bombings pre-9/11. prolly primed them to believe....

All that stuff would seem to strengthen the notion that no matter how dumb on the whole Americans are, and they can be pretty dumb no doubt, on the whole, Euros and others are even dumber. Some Americans think that Euros especially are kinda smart and sophisticated, which is evidence of their American provincialism given that such a notion won't survive contact with actual Euros.

Which is why the US has the highest GDP, one might surmise.

Turkey is less anti-Israel, more anti-US. Outside the Middle East, almost nobody blames Israel.

DK is a sort of non-partisan index of cynicism / realism.

Kenya and Nigeria have the least cynical view, however, but somehow I don't think this means much. Otherwise, France and Germany are the most likely to blame al Qaeda.

This chart is a pretty good example of the way that the data don't interpret themselves. Even granted that every nation's attitudes were accurately measured, there are so many variables that you can't get much value out of the results.

All that stuff would seem to strengthen the notion that no matter how dumb on the whole Americans are, and they can be pretty dumb no doubt, on the whole, Euros and others are even dumber.

Considering that the American numbers weren't ever reported, the dumb one is you.

The first national poll on alternative 9/11 conspiracy theories, conducted by Scripps Howard News Service in the summer of 2006, found that 36 percent of Americans believed that Bush administration officials either helped the terrorists or consciously took no action to stop them. Sixteen percent embraced the most extreme theory: that explosives, not airliners, brought down the towers.

Link

As I said, suggestive as it is, this study seems to be a good one to not put much weight in or interpret very hard.

What's going on in Africa? I doubt you'd get such certainty in the US.

Amola--

What's going on in Africa?

America is vastly more important to the rest of the world than the entirety of Africa. That's not a statement of moral worth, but of who much decision is America on international issues matter to everyone else, as opposed to any decisions at all made in Africa.

I read "don't know" as "I don't give a shit"/"who cares?".

9/11 was, and is, understandably important to Americans, and more broadly Westerners.

I doubt it has the same significance for say the Chinese, who may view it as Just Another Date In History.

I suspect that Chinese have a tendency to avoid comment of controversial issues. Except for those trying to rise within the CP (who have to guess right), having political opinions tends to do people more harm than good. I'm pretty sure all Chinese know what the official Chinese line is on 9/11; the government is using 9/11 as a pretext to crack down on Uighur nationalists.

Let me try to explain maybe what these 15% of the people are thinking when they say the US govt is responsible. They are not fools and are believing the US knifed itself in the heart for a grand purpose -finding a new enemy to keep the people at home on their tip-toes and constantly afraid (which has been proven only makes them better consumers, cause consumerism is a fear reliever, everybody knows that) and triggering the all too fuzzy war on terror that has no end possible since defined so broadly, how convenient.
Barely 3000 people 'sacrificed' in towers that could contain 50'000 people! to secure that much oil and that much power over Russia, China and the Middle East. Any nasty strategist would have signed for this scheme. Maybe a nasty thing to do but that's how nasty the humans are treating each others these days. And various governments around the world have done way nastier things.
Wake up.

So the US govt. 'creates' Al Quaeda and uses Pakistan Secret Services intelligence to do things it can't 'officially' do itself. It's like that since the beginning of time. You hire somebody to do the job undercover. You use them.
You then pay for it and offer logistics (Do you still think it's a guy in a cave in Afghanistan that did all this grand operation!? -Wow people are watching too many movies.
The whole operation is operated from the CIA offices just next to the towers as a 'fake' exercice to keep the army from intervening and once done on the same day, call for the demolition of the adjacent buildings of the tower (building 7) where conveniently the CIA offices where located. (As well as the FBIs and Guiliani's, by the way!) (How a fire could call for a complete demolition of an entire building with sooo many important offices!? and put down on the SAME day when everybody knows it takes at least 3 weeks to rig a building to come down nicely like that - how bizarre.)

Anyhow, so then who's fault is this ? AlQuaeda or the US Govt ? Nobody cares. It's not the point. Basically it's the same. Al.Q was created by a small branch of the US gov. and it's serving the interest of the entire country, triggering unilateral wars to protect a vast reserve of oil in the MiddleEast before China gets to it, securing a strategic place in Afghanistan to keep the puppies and the heroin flowing to secure a good revenue and have a prime real estate in an unknown place called Afghanistan conveniently in-between China ,Russia and Pakistan! How bizarre !
Keep studying your geography people. Decisions will start to make sense.

People representing the masses believe it all and spend their afternoons shouting at others that they are just JEALOUS of the US ! So naive. Nobody is jealous. Some are just more aware than others.
But it's also known that the bigger the lie the less the people will doubt it. It's just TOO big.

You know about the simple plan of injuring yourself and blaming it on the neighbor right (Hitler's Reichstag on fire - Sarajevo's murder of Franz Ferdinand started WWI and so on...), or the thing more subtle that you just let it happen to suit your interests and turn upside down the public opinion (Pearl Harbor - 9/11 and so on). Keep studying your history books, it's covered with such operations.

So stop being naive and watching too much the mass stream media. They are brainwashing machine. They are offering ONE point of view, the simplest more convenient one. Not to shock anybody. Your task is to stay critical and form your OWN opinions. At least that's what you're taught at school.

Start reading www.globalresearch.ca or many, many other sources on the internet and compile it all to form your own opinion.

That will only make you a better citizen if you stay aware. Don't be fooled and stay optimistic nonetheless. If we don't swallow everything it will just make it harder for them to use the citizen's money for the war machine in the convenient name of democracy !

Peace.

Aha, and one popped up.

Here paka, I would believe that, except uh:

1) Russia and China are only getting stronger, and all of our stupid wars as a result of 9/11 have only weakened the US.

2) If our government was competent enough to pull off such a grand conspiracy and keep it hidden, it wouldn't be our government.

I'm frankly shocked that fully 1/4 of Germans think the US was responsible. I wonder if that was partially because they are talking about direct/indirect issues. I know lots of people who think the US was indirectly responsible due to actions in Afghanistan in the 80's and then the policy in the mid-east. More so than Al Queda since these people feel Al Queda is ultimately a social phenomena created due to US policy. I disagree although there is a kernel of truth in it I suppose. Yet from the poll I'm not sure we can distinguish folks with this view from conspiracy thinkers who think the whole thing was done with preset explosives triggered by FEMA.

Razib, I thought of the Nairobi bombings, too. But how does that explain Nigeria? Prolly they just interviewed the elites in Nigeria & Kenya, while interviewing all the rest in the rest of the world????

How many Americans think the IRA were brave freedom fighters, etc, etc.? Apparently the actress Rose McGowan for one....

it may be that ignorant prejudice in Kenya and Nigeria happened to coincide with educated American opinion.

More likely it's because Nigerians aren't so "educated". There's no place more full of America-hatred than a European university. The working class isn't anti-American, to the contrary, it consumes massive amounts of American movies and TV and because of that America now represents the "masses" and their poor taste to the "educated". Strong anti-Americanism is usually a part of the contempt-for-the-masses superiority/inferiority complex held by those with graduate degrees that turned out to be useless on the market, leaving them with no other source of self-worth except their superiorily refined superiority.

Nigeria likely doesn't have much of a creative class, so it hasn't refined resentment as far Germany has.

It likely reflects general attitudes toward the U.S. Note this Pew Global Survey of America's image abroad. Based on the 10 countries in both surveys, I calculate a .67 correlation of positive U.S. image with belief Al Qaeda was behind 9/11 and a -.75 correlation with belief that the USG was behind it.

Keep digging, Jaakkeli.

These data are all over the map and for that reason hard to interpret, as I said. But you had a point you were just dying to make.

You might even have read the data and noted that the difference between France and Nigeria is that more of the French answered "don't know". France scores 2% higher in conspiracy theory answers all put together, and no one in France blames Israel.

I hope that your admiration for the wise but simple Kenyan and Nigerian masses is still around the next time these two countries are brought up around here.

Maybe the Turkish immigrants in Germany are partly responsible for the popularity of the "US Govt" responses? Note how popular the answer was in Turkey itself.

This doesn't explain France, but their (and Britain's) Muslim immigrants come mostly from different sources. And if it's the "creative class" blaming the US govt, why aren't they visible in France or the UK?

John, damn, am I that obvious?! I need to get my own flog.

windy, UK & France are much closer to the US than the rest of Europe is. They're far less anti-American by almost all measures. The UK for obvious reasons; France because it is the closest equivalent of the US, an ideological republic founded on the Enlightenment that views America as kin (the French are just annoyed that Americans aren't returning the special amity anymore).

(The common American belief that France is some sort of a hotbed of anti-Americanism is probably the most ridiculously inaccurate stereotype in the world.)

I know lots of people who think the US was indirectly responsible due to actions in Afghanistan in the 80's and then the policy in the mid-east.

Like some of the most serious members of the US intelligence community dealing with this issue.

More so than Al Queda [sic] since these people feel Al Queda is ultimately a social phenomena created due to US policy

There is hardly a serious US based foreign policy expert that doesn't think the growth, fundraiser, membership and sympathy for Al Qaeda isn't related to one degree or another to US policy.

windy, UK & France are much closer to the US than the rest of Europe is. They're far less anti-American by almost all measures. The UK for obvious reasons; France because it is the closest equivalent of the US, an ideological republic founded on the Enlightenment that views America as kin (the French are just annoyed that Americans aren't returning the special amity anymore).

I don't dispute that, but relative to your "European creative class" argument, this looks like special pleading.

African here.

African people have been documented to actually "like" America. Did you read the stories on Bush's visits to Africa?