False flag
A false flag is a political or military action carried out with the intention of blaming an opponent for it. Nations have often done this by staging a real or simulated attack on their own side and saying the enemy did it, as a pretext for going to war. The term was first used in the 16th Century to describe how pirates flew the flag of a friendly nation to deceive merchant ships into allowing them to draw near. False flag attacks have a long and ignoble history.[1][2][3][4][5]
Known false flag attempts
The Sinking of the USS Maine
The USS Maine was a United States Naval vessel which was deliberately sunk as it sat docked in Havana Harbor on February 15th, 1898. Its destruction was used as the catalyst for the US to enter into war with Spain, a move which enjoyed little popularity at a time when isolationism, aka, minding one's own business, was the norm. The Maine was deliberately blown up using the ship's powder charge for its own guns. Of the 355 crewmen aboard at the time, 261 men either died in the initial explosion or drowned in the immediate sinking. The Spanish, who had their own interests in Cuba at the time, were blamed straight away for the ship's sinking.
William Randolph Hearst, who wielded his massive media empire as a political weapon, wasted no time in mobilizing his propaganda machine to press the baseless narrative that the Spanish had deliberately sank the Maine to push for war with the US, and that the US must oblige at once. Several other media outlets of the time followed suit with endless coverage, editorials, and sensationalist posturing to manufacture public outrage, and American support for a pointless foreign war. The raison d'etre for such a war was put forth in the simpleton altruistic argument of, "Cuban independence", which simply meant "liberating" Cuba from the clutches of Spain so that the US could take the lucrative island nation for itself.
Not surprisingly, only two months after the sinking of the Maine, and after a non stop media barrage of anti Spanish sentiment, the US entered into a costly and unnecessary war with Spain on April 28th, 1898.
Operation Northwoods
Operation Northwoods is a known false flag attempt in which the US Department of Defense in 1962 concocted a scheme to try to enter into war with Cuba. At the height of the cold war, the US government came up with the idea to fabricate attacks on its own military, attack and kill Cuban immigrants, blow up buildings, and destroy the boats of Cuban migrants attempting to cross the Straights of Florida to escape Castro's communist regime. All of these actions were to be blamed on Cuba as an impetus to draw the US into an unpopular war with the island nation, which at that point in time had not signed onto the Warsaw pact. The US government was hungry to start a war with Cuba before any attachments to the Soviet Union had been made.
Operation Northwoods emphasized hitting civilian soft targets as a way to enrage the American people and drum up support for a war against Cuba. These actions where suggested all throughout Florida, and even as far reaching as Washington DC. The plan was concocted by the Joint Chiefs of Staff, including its chairman at the time, Lyman Lemnitzer, whose last name belongs to exactly the tribe that you think it does. The proposal was ultimately rejected by then President John F. Kennedy, whose basis for rejection was rumored to be the fact that history would hold him in poor regard should knowledge of his involvement in a known false flag upon his own people ever be leaked to the public.
Operation Mongoose, an adjunct to Operation Northwoods
Operation Mongoose was another 1962 false flag project peddled by the US Department of Defense under the auspices of harassing Cuba into a response so that the US could retaliate and make the case for military involvement against the island nation. Aligning in proposed actions, Operation Mongoose also advocated various self inflicted attacks on US soil and citizens under the guise of holding Cuba responsible. As if all that wasn't quite enough, there was still more evil in the works with Operation Dirty Trick, a false flag of the same vein orchestrated to down the 1962 Mercury space craft at the height of the space race and blame it on Cuban interference.
Various other tangled webs were also suggested in which a proxy state was urged to take action against Cuba and seeming draw the US in from out of nowhere.
Operation Northwoods introduces us to one Robert Strange McNamara, whose name definitely fits his penchant for evil. His debut as Secretary of Defense under John F. Kennedy saw him immediately embroiled in Operation Northwoods and the Cuban "crisis", but this demon's illustrious career of nation wrecking was far from over, as we see him make many more appearances in pointless and unnecessary conflicts for the benefit of neo liberalism all over Asia, always at the ready to suggest the most abusive and destructive tactics possible.
References
- ↑ O'Conner, Patricia; Kellerman, Stewart (11 May 2018). "The True History of False Flags". Grammarphobia.com.
- ↑ "How the term 'false flag' migrated to the right". Columbia Journalism Review.
- ↑ "False flags: What are they and when have they been used?". BBC News. 18 February 2022. Politakis, George P. (2018).
- ↑ "Modern Aspects of the Laws of Naval Warfare and Maritime Neutrality". Taylor & Francis. pp. 281–. ISBN 978-1-136-88577-8.Faye Kert (30 September 2015).
- ↑ "Privateering: Patriots and Profits in the War of 1812" JHU Press. pp. 62–. ISBN 978-1-4214-1747-9.