Benjamin, Amy. "9/11 as False Flag: Why International Law Must Dare to Care". African Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol.25, No.3 (2017): 371-392.

Benjamin, Amy. "9/11 as False Flag: Why International Law Must Dare to Care". African Journal of International and Comparative Law, Vol.25, No.3 (2017): 371-392.

• The 9/11 attacks have been used to justify 16 years of international warfare, including the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan and its subsequent occupation, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, drone strikes across the world on terrorist targets, and current military action against Islamic terrorists in Syria, Iraq, and Libya (371-372).
• Within the context of international law, the current multifaceted War on Terror is justified on the basis of self-defense, specifically the right of the United States to self-defense against Al-Qaeda and its government backers in Afghanistan. Most current military operations are legally dependent on this rationale of self-defense (373).
• If 9/11 turned out to be an inside job, rather than an instance of foreign aggression, then all of the military campaigns of the last 16 years and their continuing legacies would prove to be illegitimate and illegal (373).
• The international community's response to the US declaration of war on Afghanistan five days after the 9/11 attacks demonstrated a full and uncritical belief in the American account of events. Both the UN and NATO, despite having obligations to thoroughly investigate incidents, immediately approved American actions. This is despite a growing corpus of literature challenging the government account of the 9/11 attacks (373-376).
• The domestic movements in America calling for a full investigation of the 9/11 attacks and a response to their counter-claims have been of limited affect in determining government policy. Instead, those international political bodies like the UN must fulfill their obligations to fully question and judge the American account (376, 386, 388).
• Some would argue that the fact that the 9/11 attacks happened over a decade ago would disqualify them from scrunity, however, the right of the UN to review previous decisions on self-defense can come after the use of force has already occured. This means that the UN always has the right and perogitive to investigation instances of self-defense (386-387).
• Africa has a sordid and recent history with false flag operations. During the 1980s, the Apartheid government had security officers attacks police stations and government buildings, as well as plant bombs against civilian targets, in order to blame and discredit the African National Congress (377-378).
• The Algerian government during the 1990s had some of its operatives kill civilians, often in particularly brutal ways, and mutilate corpses and blame these attacks on Islamists. This created an even greater fear of the Islamist movement and strengthened government control (378).
• Flase flag operations have also been used as justification for international war in modern history. The first episode of the Second World War began in 1931 when the Japanese army blew up a railway near Mukden, blamed Chinese nationalists, and used that as an excuse to invade Manchuria (379-380).
• Nazi Germany also used a false flag operation to justify its invasion of Poland in 1939, instructing Gestapo officers to dress in Polish uniforms and stage several false attacks on German border posts at Beuthen, Hindenburg, and Gleiwitz. This was used as a legal pretext for the invasion of Poland (381-382).
• The author also claims that the Nazi government used these same tactics domestically, particularly in the 1933 case of setting fire to the Reichstag, blaming Communist insurgents, and then using that justification to declare the end of German democracy (382). Historians have now proved that council communists actually were responsible for burning down the Reichstag, just like the Nazis claimed. Nobody would put the author's theory beyond the Nazis, but in this specific case they actually were telling the truth.
• False flag operations are also not absent in American history, although most remained theoretical plans. During the Kennedy administration, the US military planned Operation Northwoods, a plan to have US agents carry out mass shootings and bombings in several major cities, hijack planes, and attack the naval group in Guantanamo Bay to order to blame the violence on Fidel Castro and securing public support for an invasion of Cuba (383-384).
• The US government, as well as other NATO nations, were also involved in Operation Gladio. The covert operation intended to organize and supply fascist and far-right extremists throughout Western Europe for use as insurgents if the Soviet Union attempted to invade Western Europe. During the 1960s, the terrorist actions of some members of the organization were covered up and blamed on Communists to discredit the left-wing in Europe (385).
• The US government also supplied false information and suppressed truth prior to the Vietnam War, where the Nixon administration lied about the Gulf of Tonkin incident, and the Iraq War, where the Bush administration lied about Saddam Hussein's nuclear weapons program, to justify military action (385).
• The examples of other false flag operations demonstrate that both the United States and many other countries have used false flag operations or deliberately lied to justify both domestic repression and international war. It would not be totally unthinkable that the US government would conduct a false flag operation to justify war (385).
• Some people might argue that the UN has no real power and thus its investigation of the 9/11 attacks would be meaningless because it cannot do anything about US actions. That may be true, but the UN still possesses normative strength that could make US and global actions against terrorism much more politically difficult (390).
• Failure to operate under the legal and normative regime of the UN is possible for powerful states -- as demonstrated by the 2003 Invasion of Iraq as well as NATO's 1999 intervention in Kosovo -- but it brings serious costs to domestic and international legitimacy (390).