Not really. The Gulf of Tonkin Incident wasn’t so much a false flag incident as an overreaction to a real incident. Most of the conspiracy theorists that make the claim haven’t read about it, and think that the US simply made up the incident.
North Vietnam claimed a 12 mile (19 km) limit on its territorial waters. The U.S. did not recognize this limit. While 12 miles is standard now, at the time the 3 mile limit was normal.
On August 2 1964 the USS Maddox was on an intelligence collection mission well within the 12 mile limit. Vietnamese boats approached, the Maddox fired warning shots when they got too close for comfort. And everyone started shooting.
After the skirmish, President Johnson ordered the Maddox and Turner Joy to stage daylight runs into North Vietnamese waters, testing the twelve-mile limit and North Vietnamese resolve. These runs into North Vietnamese territorial waters coincided with South Vietnamese coastal raids and were interpreted as coordinated operations by North Vietnam.
Overnight on August 4th, in rough weather and heavy seas, the U.S. destroyers received radar, sonar, and radio signals that they believed signaled another attack by the North Vietnamese navy. For some two hours the ships fired on radar targets and maneuvered vigorously amid electronic and visual reports of enemies. The same night Captain Herrick of the Maddox sent a cable stating that there may actually have been no Vietnamese craft in the area
However, US Defense Secretary Robert McNamara failed to inform President Johnson that Captain Herrick had changed his mind about the alleged North Vietnamese attack.
President Johnson went on TV that day and characterized the August 4th incident as an unprovoked attack in international waters.
And so there was a very real naval skirmish. North Vietnam officially acknowledged the engagements of August 2nd 1964. The August 4th attack probably wasn’t real, but Johnson had every reason to believe at the time that it was. Once he knew better, it was too late. Not a conspiracy, not a cover-up, not a false flag, but certainly a premature overreaction.
Ir-fricking-relevant to her statement. The point is that a disturbingly large number of gun owners have organized in the past for this purpose, and a disturbingly large number of gun owners today would enjoy doing so.
What are you referring to? Gun owners or militaries? I don’t think actually a large number of gun owners would be supportive of anything like that at all. But I don’t know what you mean by a large number - is that 1% 5%? 10%? I bet it wouldn’t be a similar percent of non-gun owners would be behind it as well.
Let’s see – we’re living in a society whose major state institutions – the government, the large corporations, other important institutions – are managed secretively by small groups of powerful people, commit innumerable crimes, and lie about everything. In other words, you’re living in a profoundly conspiratorial social order – and you’re worried about a few nutjobs who can’t grasp or think about the pervasiveness of the system, and instead choose to believe in third-rate theories like the planting of explosives in the World Trade Center and act rudely and tediously about it. May I ask why you don’t pick on someone your own size?
Is it simplifying, or really massively over-complicating? There is really one, easy, sure-fire way to figure out more or less anything that happens in our world, and what “conspiratorial” forces may be behind them:
FOLLOW
THE
MONEY
Most of the world’s “conspiracies” are really nothing more than that simple. A lot of dealing is done by small groups, but again, we know EXACTLY who they are: the 1% of the 1%! The billionaires! There are several thousand individuals and families globally that hold a MASSIVE sway over the planet. Is that even debatable?
So my favorite conspiracy theory, is that conspiracy theories THEMSELVES are one of the most-utilized counterintelligence and mind-control/brainwashing tools “the powers that be” have and use. The fantastic book The Mirage Men covers this better than pretty much any other thing I’ve read on the subject (there’s a documentary now, too… need to watch it!)
Just because you haven’t seen that view expressed in conspiracy theory, does not mean it doesn’t exist. In fact any conspiracy theorist worth their salt would make this exact argument, by virtue of the fact that well-known powerful forces (NRA, Republicans, Tea-Party nuts, etc.) absolutely ARE using their influence essentially to arm the American population to the best of their ability.
And then the intelligent conspiracy theorist would say that the desired effect is the deliberate weakening of civil society and government, allowing a power vacuum to arise that is filled with the ever-present corporate fascist oligarchs.
Frankly, most halfway intelligent folks I know take the above for granted. But technically, it is a conspiracy theory. I’d just argue it’s really obvious and in plain sight.
hmm… well, it’s certainly part of the current republican platform. not to mention, during 2014 ice deported more than 350,000 people. heck, the “justice” system currently has 2.3 million people in jail and prison – 58% of whom are people of color. all of which is about protecting and expanding the power of white, right-wing interests.
what gets me about conspiracy lovers is that they are looking for some shadow organization – when in fact it’s all right out in the open. there’s no need to worry about some secretive coup, they are already in control.
EDIT: Sorry Brainspore, I kind of missed the second part of your statement. So I revise this to say:
There is however evidence of powerful people using false flag attacks for various purposes pursuant to their own agendas. I HIGHLY encourage you to watch this episode of PBS’ award-winning Frontline program:
There is strong evidence that Putin, one of the sketchiest dudes on the planet, who also may well be the RICHEST person on the planet, who also happens to have a BIG RED BUTTON THAT ENDS THE WORLD, has done just this.
Oh and yeah, Putin is basically the ultimate Bond villain. So to someone else in the thread who compared bad conspiracy theories to dramatized James Bond BS, I’d say – you know, sometimes the world really just IS that fucking weird, even if those conspiracy nuts happen to be wrong about many details.
Frankly, I think what’s going on is “less than highly intelligent” people are picking up on totally LEGITIMATE and OBVIOUS themes of the day, but either due to delusion or mental illness or just plain being dumb, they obsess about stupid conspiracy theories, and can’t quite grasp the “obvious” conspiracies right in front of them every day of their lives.
Isn’t that the ultimate conspiracy? That it’s so insidious, people take its systems for granted?
But again, the world sometimes IS just plain weird, and the ultra-elite DO have a “summer camp” at Bohemian Grove, and DO have very very secretive meetings associated with Bilderberg and DOZENS UPON DOZENS of other shadowy, secretive groups, negotiating behind closed doors, to their own benefit.
Uh, TRANS PACIFIC PARTNERSHIP, anyone?
As you said, it is out in the open, but it also IS weird!
Unfortunately the real conspiracies are rarely the personal and significance granting fantasies that most people believe them to be. Yes X event may have been the preferred outcome of Y situation (contrary to what Z governing body maintains), but it’s rarely because someone is personally trying to control or screw over a particular individual. The motivations can usually be traced to much simpler and much much more base motivations like pure greed. Follow the money they say…
The conspiracy theorists discussed above have been adding harassment and torment to the lives of people who have already suffered near-unimaginable loss. One can denounce those “third-rate theorists” as the hurtful trollies they are without losing sight of the bigger problems in our society.
We have too much accent on the guns and too little on the knowledge of and defense against the less-lethal means. There’s next to nothing happening in those circles regarding to electronic warfare and SIGINT/ELINT, and only something about communication gear. Precious little about radar and multispectral imaging and the corresponding detection and defense systems, too.
My only child was murdered. I’ve not read the entire article because, frankly, it’s too painful to deal with some of these issues for me. With that caveat I’d like to point out something I’ve found to be very true:
People prefer to believe that they have more agency in their lives than they actually have.
When people are killed or hurt by the bad actions of others it can be scary, leaving the public to wonder: “what if that happens to me or somebody I care about?”
Rather than confront the reality that the control we have over our lives is limited, sometimes those people re-frame or re-cast those bad actions:
When the public says “why was she walking alone?” what they are thinking is “this bad thing wouldn’t happen to my sister because she knows better than to walk alone.”
When the public says “what was he doing there at night?” they are convincing themselves that “this bad thing wouldn’t happen to me because I would never be there at night.”
Although it’s understandable why people do this, it has repercussions:
it absolutely re-victimizes victims and survivors;
it minimizes the acts of the bad actors;
it detracts from the pertinent issues; and
it affects public discourse (which, in part, drives public policy which then drives funding, etc.).
Of course this is not the only reason that conspiracy theorists do what they do - but is a behavior which should be acknowledged; hopefully it will encourage thoughtful consideration of the impact that these statements have on victims and on public policy.
Nice to meetcha!
