Prescript:
Four FFF ebooks are now available in audio format:
The Kennedy Autopsy by Jacob Hornberger (currently #11 on Amazon’s list of best-selling books on 20th-century U.S. history)
Regime Change: The Kennedy Assassination by Jacob Hornberger (currently #308)
JFK’s War with the National Security Establishment: Why Kennedy Was Assassinated by Douglas Horne (currently #172)
The CIA, Terrorism, and the Cold War: The Evil of the National Security State by Jacob Hornberger (currently #30 in Kindle short reads on Politics and Social sciences).
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By now Americans should realize that the federal government cannot keep them safe from a terrorist attack. Despite all the emergency, totalitarian, police-state measures U.S. officials have taken since 9/11, there are all those people in Orlando who are dead or injured. Same with Boston, San Bernardino, and Ft. Hood.
The USA PATRIOT Act. The telecom felony scandal. The NDAA. The power to assassinate Americans. The power to torture Americans. The power to incarcerate Americans without trial or due process of law. The NSA’s massive secret surveillance schemes. The quest to kill all the terrorists in the world before they can come and get us.
All these “emergency” powers are characteristic of totalitarian, police-state regimes, including communist ones. They have all been adopted by the U.S. national-security state, with the aim of keeping Americans safe from the terrorists. What good were they to the victims in Orlando and elsewhere? No good at all.
Can the government protect every nightclub in America? Every bar? Library? Shopping mall? Retail store? Office building? Bus station? Street festival? Sunday church service?
Ridiculous! All that a would-be killer has to do is go quietly to any crowded venue in America — most likely a state-mandated gun-free zone — with a so-called assault rifle and a semi-automatic pistol and kill dozens of people before the police succeed in taking him out or taking him into custody.
Given this reality — what is it that American statists now demand? They demand what they have demanded ever since the 9/11 attacks — that the U.S. national-security state adopt even more totalitarian, police-state measures. In their quest to keep us safe, it doesn’t matter to them how much freedom has to be destroyed.
That’s what the push for gun control is all about. The statists say that if they can just make assault rifles illegal, the American people can finally be kept safe from the terrorists.
What could be more ridiculous? If murderers don’t give a hoot about laws against murder, why would they care about obeying some stupid gun-control law? Pardon me for pointing out the obvious, but the Orlando shooter was violating gun-control laws when he carried his guns into that nightclub.
All that gun control will do is what it did in Orlando — prevent people from defending themselves. Just think: There were some 300 people facing one shooter in that Orlando nightclub, and not one of those 300 fired back. Why? The most likely reason is that it’s illegal under Florida law to take a concealed weapon into a place that sells liquor. Few people want to take the risk of a misdemeanor or felony conviction for unlawful possession of a firearm. So, not surprisingly, those 300 people were in compliance with the law but the shooter wasn’t.
Some statists are suggesting that the FBI was guilty of gross negligence in the case of the Orlando shooter. They knew he was suspicious. They had investigated him. They had interviewed him. They had subjected him to a sting operation, unsuccessfully. They knew he had had contacts with terrorist groups in the Middle East. They knew he was a bit whacko. The shooter had “terrorist” written all over him.
So, why didn’t they arrest him, incarcerate him, torture him, and assassinate him? That’s a good question because under post-9/11 U.S. terrorism law, they certainly had the authority to do all those things to the shooter, by simply labeling him a “terrorist.” Maybe they want to create the appearance that America hasn’t become a full-fledged totalitarian, police-state country.
But ask yourself: If you heard of a country whose government was picking up suspected criminals, incarcerating them indefinitely without trial, torturing them, or assassinating them, and arbitrarily seizing people’s guns, wouldn’t you think of Stalin, Pol Pot, Mao, Hitler, or Pinochet?
Of course, a question naturally arises: “Jacob, what then can we do to be kept safe from the terrorists?”
There are three answers to that question:
One, rely on self-defense to take care of yourself. That means getting a concealed carry permit, learn how to shoot a gun, and carry a concealed weapon with you. In this regard, take a look at this excellent article in today’s New York Times, entitled “The L.G.B.T. Case for Guns” by Nicki Stallard.
Two, avoid state mandated gun-free zones as much as possible, whether you have a concealed carry permit or not. There is a movie theater very near my house that has a policy against guns in the theater. Even though the theater is only a few blocks from my house, I avoid it and travel much further to another theater that permits concealed carry. That’s because I feel much safer in the latter, knowing that if a killer comes in the theater, there is a good chance that some people in the audience will be firing back at him. I feel totally unsafe in the first theater, especially since it’s gun-free zones that mass killers usually target. Notice that a mass murderer has never targeted a gun show notwithstanding the fact that there are hundreds or thousands of people attending them.
Three, support the end of the U.S. national-security state’s interventions in the Middle East and Afghanistan and its decades-long policy of killing people in that part of the world. Forget about stopping ISIS, al-Qaeda, Assad, the Taliban, or anyone else over there. Just stop the killing and bring the troops home from their 25-year campaign of death and destruction that they were ordered to wage. Limit the U.S. government to defense. After all, it is called the “Department of Defense,” right? It’s not called the “Department of Empire, Intervention, Killing, Torture, Assassination, and Regime Change.”
Ending the interventions and the putting a stop to the U.S. national-security state’s death machine would bring an end to anti-American terrorism, which would means no more “war on terrorism,” which would mean no more justification for the emergency, totalitarian, police-state measures that have fundamentally altered America’s governmental structure and society.
It’s this second point that is most troubling for lots of Americans. They will do anything to avoid confronting the fact that it is U.S. interventionism in the Middle East that has given rise to the anger and rage that has ultimately manifested itself in anti-American terrorism. They just don’t want to believe that and will do everything they can to look for other motives for anti-American terrorism. That’s why they continue to support the national-security’s state’s interventionism, all the while hoping and even praying that anti-American terrorism won’t come with it.
But that’s just not reality, just as it’s not realistic to hope and pray that thunder doesn’t accompany lightning. As we have been pointing out here at FFF since even before 9/11, with interventionism in the Middle East and Afghanistan comes anti-American terrorism. Americans should just get used to it. As long as the interventions continue, a certain number of Americans will continue to die as a result of terrorist blowback. We said this here at FFF prior to the 9/11 attacks and after those attacks. So did the noted analyst Chalmers Johnson in his now-famous pre-9/11 book Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire. We’ve also said it after every single terrorist attack since 9/11 and so did Johnson until he passed away a few years ago.
That’s why I’m never surprised when a new terrorist attack takes place here in the United States. In fact, the only thing that surprises me is that so many Americans still get surprised. I can understand getting horrified. But I don’t understand getting surprised given that the U.S. national security state is continuing to kill people in the Middle East and Afghanistan on an ongoing basis. I’d be surprised if another anti-American terrorist attack didn’t occur.
Obviously, the last thing the national-security establishment wants is for Americans to focus on the U.S. national-security state’s “war on terrorism” in the Middle East and Afghanistan as the root cause of anti-American terrorist blowback. They might cause people to question the perpetual and ever-increasing amount of tax revenues that continue to flood into the coffers of the national-security state.
So, Americans have a choice:
(1) Continue the interventions and continue to suffer anti-American terrorist blowback here in the United States, along with the correlative destruction of their rights and freedoms in the quest to keep them safe from the anti-American terrorist blowback the interventions produce; or
(2) Stop the interventions, thereby eliminating anti-American terrorist blowback, which would then mean the restoration of a normal, peaceful, harmonious, prosperous, and free society to our land.
What is so difficult about that choice?
