Perhaps you don’t believe the Official Story on 9/11, the JFK Assassination, the Oklahoma City bombing, or anything else. Or maybe you do. I won’t try to persuade you either way.
But it is interesting that within the Federal State’s Official Story you see evidence that its own policies led to these disasters.
In 2000, Chalmers Johnson published Blowback. His thesis is that America’s endless foreign interventions and illegal activities overseas lead to unintended consequences.
Terrorism is one form of blowback.
If you assume the Official Story of the attacks of Sept 11, 2001 is true, it is the textbook case of blowback. The 9/11 Commission Report admits that Osama bin Laden, the alleged sponsor of the attacks, was motivated by . . .
- U.S. support of corrupt Middle Eastern dictators
- The stationing of U.S. troops (“infidels”) in Saudi Arabia, the birthplace of Islam
- Sanctions on the Iraqi people after the first Gulf War
- U.S. financial and diplomatic support for Israel in its conflicts with Palestinians
9/11 wasn’t the first case of blowback, and not all forms of blowback directly “boomerang” so dramatically on the American people. But what is interesting is that the most shocking blowback event, next to 9/11, is rarely viewed as blowback at all.
The JFK assassination has many unanswered questions, and I don’t necessarily believe the following scenario, but it does make me think. Gary Brecher suggests this in his American Conservative essay on interventionism:
I don’t want to jump in the black lagoon of “Who Killed JFK?” but Castro is a prime suspect. Oswald was a KGB asset, the theory goes, the Kremlin passed him on to the Cuban intelligence agency, CGI, and after a few hundred failed attempts on his own life, Castro lost his sense of humor and gave the go-ahead. That was Edwards Jay Epstein’s conclusion in Legend: The Secret World of Lee Harvey Oswald, and it’s supported by new German research.
Imagine, however, that the above isn’t true, and that Oswald acted alone as the Official Story says.
What could have motivated him?
As most people know, the Official Story says that Oswald was a communist who had temporarily defected to the Soviet Union. He was later the sole member of the “Fair Play for Cuba” Committee in New Orleans. During these years . . .
- The U.S. maintained a trade embargo on Cuba (and still does)
- The CIA sponsored the failed “Bay of Pigs” invasion to overthrow Castro
- The CIA attempted to assassinate Castro countless times
Is it surprising that a fanatical ideological supporter of Castro’s Cuba would blame the U.S. President for this anti-Castro foreign policy?
The Official Stories of both 9/11 and JFK illustrate the futility of an interventionist U.S. foreign policy. If we didn’t meddle in the Middle East, Osama wouldn’t have had any reason to target U.S. citizens in terror attacks. If the U.S. didn’t relentlessly harass Cuba, Oswald wouldn’t have targeted JFK.
The JFK Assassination was blowback.
And we see “blowback” in domestic policy as well.
You never see an assassination because a law was repealed. You never see a terrorist attack because funding for a government program was cut. But you DO see backlash – blowback – of one kind or another when government meddles in the economy or private lives. And by “meddle,” I mean, “use force against people who haven’t done any harm to others.”
As with 9/11 and JFK, unresolved questions surround the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing. But if the Official Story is correct, that tells us that Timothy McVeigh was motivated to assault the federal government because of the federal government’s wholly unconstitutional and illegal assault on the Brach Davidian compound.
If the Official Stories are correct, then the 9/11 hijackers, Oswald, and McVeigh were deranged. But we must also recognize that the trigger that set off these disturbed people was a perceived injustice. Not only that, it was a REAL injustice:
- In the case of 9/11, the U.S. Government shouldn’t have been involved in the Middle East and shouldn’t have intentionally impoverished the Iraqi people.
- In the case of JFK, the U.S. Government shouldn’t have attacked the head of the sovereign Cuban government.
- In the case of Oklahoma City the U.S. Government shouldn’t have attacked U.S. citizens in Waco two years earlier, who were merely exercising their First and Second Amendment rights to the free exercise of religion and the right to bear arms.
Blowback is a permanent feature of The State. Once the people in charge decide that force is the answer to the problems of the world or the problems of the country, they will, sooner or later, find out that the results are dysfunction, retaliation, or both.
If the Official Stories on 9/11, JFK, and Oklahoma City are even partially correct, they provide all the evidence we need that that federal government should stay out of other countries and out of our own lives.