Are conditions right for 9/11 Truth and Anti-War activists to finally join forces?
By Craig McKee
They seem like they should be natural allies.
But somehow, the Anti-War and 9/11 Truth movements have not really been able to come together to advance their related causes. Both agree that we’re being lied to on a regular basis about wars and foreign policy agendas, but not all in the two movements agree that 9/11 was one of those lies.
And that’s a shame given the number of wars justified by the 9/11 deception.
Given recent world events – particularly the dangerous willingness of the outgoing Biden administration to risk World War 3 by backing the launching of long-range missiles into Russia – one might wonder whether there is a new opportunity for the two movements to find common ground. The timing seems particularly good since there is now greater willingness on the part of political figures like Tucker Carlson, Jimmy Dore, Russell Brand, and Jill Stein to openly question the 9/11 official story.
To figure out why the two movements haven’t worked together more closely, one must look at what happened in the years right after 9/11. Was it simply a lack of communication and understanding? Or was possible cooperation prevented by agents of the deep state?
Anti-War activist and 9/11 truther Phil Restino has been fighting on both fronts since he became an active opponent of the Iraq War in the early to mid 2000s. He particularly remembers being angered by George W. Bush’s flippant comments at the 2005 White House Correspondents’ Dinner about the government’s inability to produce the weapons of mass destruction that it had claimed were in Iraq. (Not only did Bush make a joke about looking for the WMDs under the podium, but politicians and journalists in attendance laughed along with him.)
“Kids were coming home in body bags every day, and they were laughing.” Restino says.
He talks about how he wanted to end the wars taking place after 9/11 even before he realized that 9/11 was a false flag.
“I remember watching the buildings coming down on 9/11 and thinking, ‘This can’t be happening,’” he explains. “But the power of the media and all the propaganda arms is just amazing. So that questioning went away, and the narrative was plugged in.”
But once he did see through the deception, he committed himself to exposing the truth about 9/11 and ending the wars that resulted.
“It was just common sense,” he says. “The wars are based on the 9/11 lie, and these are the 9/11 wars.”
Restino, who spent two years in the Army (although not in combat), approached the group Veterans For Peace about starting a new chapter in Central Florida, where he lives. Joining the chapter was famed veteran, whistleblower, and peace activist Col. Bob Bowman, who had headed up the government’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the 1970s.
Bowman ended up protesting what the Reagan administration did with SDI in the 1980s, which led to him being attacked and ostracized by many of his military colleagues. He went on to become an active member of Veterans For Peace as well as working for 9/11 Truth until his death in 2013.
Restino explains that his idea in 2005 was to approach local Vietnam veterans about joining the new chapter, but that wasn’t as successful as he’d hoped.
“I thought if they had this information about how much of a lie this was, they would not allow what happened to them – being lied into that war – to happen to this generation.”
Unfortunately, he adds, many veterans likened questioning the war to “not supporting the troops who were in harms way.”
Restino points out that in the early years after 9/11, truthers and peace activists did find themselves allied to a greater degree than they were later. He recalls being part of a major Anti-War protest in Washington D.C. in 2005 that was attended by people like George Galloway, Cindy Sheehan, and Cynthia McKinney, a former congresswoman who also became a voice for 9/11 truth.
But as time went on, Restino noticed that the leadership of major peace groups like Veterans For Peace and CODEPINK was cool to the idea of pursuing challenges to the 9/11 story. Meanwhile, rank and file peace activists were being discouraged from questioning 9/11 by being branded as “conspiracy theorists.”
As to why the leaders of the Anti-War Movement were not interested in 9/11 Truth, Restino posits that the movement may well have been co-opted, pointing out that while the FBI’s COINTELPRO program was supposedly discontinued in 1971, efforts to infiltrate activist groups continue to this day.
“Those who pulled off 9/11 to justify the wars that followed had to know there would be some kind of anti-war movement,” Restino says. “To think that these guys didn’t have people in place in the 9/11 Truth and Anti-War movements is naïve at best.”
Other longtime peace activists – who are also active in 9/11 Truth – will suggest that infiltration of the peace movement has played a significant role in keeping the two factions from combining their efforts.
Longtime Canadian journalist Barrie Zwicker, author of the essential book Towers of Deception: The Media Cover-Up of 9/11, says he remembers going to an Anti-War conference in Boston years ago, and he noted that 9/11 was obvious in its omission from the agenda.
“We know that agents of the state have long infiltrated the peace movement – and then the 9/11 Truth Movement, and that these agents' orders would include stymying of mutual reinforcement by the two movements.”
Also, Cheryl Curtiss, who has participated in both movements (she and I are co-facilitators of the monthly 9/11 and Other Deep State Teleconference) says that the Anti-War Movement gained prominence after 9/11, particularly because the Bush administration falsely blamed Saddam Hussein for 9/11, a charge that was used to justify the invasion of Iraq in 2003.
“The peace movement got really huge after 9/11,” she explains. “I mean, at one point there were something like 15 million people around the world protesting at the same time against the war in Iraq.”
Curtiss says that those in the peace movement knew that the justification given for the war was based on lies, but only some were prepared to also question 9/11.
It is obvious now, as it was to many in those first few years of the new millennium, that wars are almost always justified by lies and propaganda. Lies continue to be told about what happened on 9/11, just as they were to justify the invasions of Iraq, Afghanistan, and other countries.
Today, new lies are being added to justify new wars and new mass murder. It is essential that we have the courage to see through the kinds of deceptions that get us into wars if we ever want to break the pattern. The Anti-War and 9/11 Truth movements both understand the damage these lies do.
Imagine how much truth they could uncover if they worked together.
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This article was written for Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth. You can read it on the AE911Truth website here.
Good article Craig.
Cheque is in the mail.
Well written interesting food for thought Craig.