Another random mass murder, this time at a community college in Oregon. Officials are scratching their heads trying to figure out motive but so far meeting with no success. All that we know is that the killer was off-kilter mentally.
In light of this new mass murder, permit me to restate my theory on why America is besieged by random mass murders: It’s because the continuous mass killings of people over there at the hands of the U.S. national-security state is triggering something in the minds of people who have mental problems here in the United States that is causing them to engage in random murders against people over here.
I stated this theory last month in my article entitled “The Cure for Widespread Murder in American Society.” Let me reemphasize that this is just a theory. I am not a psychologist or a criminologist. I cannot prove the validity of the theory. It’s just a theory.
However, last Sunday’s New York Times carried a front-page article that provided a bit of statistical data in support of my theory.
For decades now, the U.S. national-security state — i.e., the military establishment and the CIA — have been killing people on a regular basis in the Middle East and Afghanistan. The killings, which number in the hundreds of thousands, started with the Persian Gulf War, continued with the sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children, continued with the invasions and decade-long occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and then continued with the ongoing bombings and assassinations in Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, and elsewhere. Despite more than 20 continuous years of killings, the killings continue to this day. Moreover, there is no end in sight. We are told that the killings might have to be perpetual. We might also add the killings of people at the hands of U.S.-supported Middle East dictatorships, such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia.
Now, I say, hundreds of thousands of people killed but actually we don’t know the exact numbers because early on the position of the Pentagon and the CIA was to not keep count of the people they were killing. It just didn’t matter. Since U.S. forces were purportedly bringing a paradise to the people of those countries through regime change, or killing people to keep us safe from the “terrorists” here at home, or looking for WMDS, or whatever, any number of people killed was considered worth it. The official mindset was best reflected in the words of U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright. When asked whether the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions imposed on Iraq were worth it, she responded that while the choice was a difficult one, yes, the deaths of those children were certainly “worth it.”
The assumption has always been that since all that massive killing was occurring “over there,” it would not have any adverse effect on the American people here at home. Americans could go about their daily lives, go to work, go on vacation, watch television, go to the movies, and attend sporting events, all the while praising the troops for protecting “national security” and defending our rights and freedoms by killing all those people over there before they could come over here to kill us.
And who are we to question officials in the Pentagon and the CIA? Aren’t they the experts when it comes to “national security”? Don’t they have access to information that we don’t have? If they say people over there have to be killed, who are we to question that?
Just after the mass murder in Oregon that killed 9 people, the U.S. national security state dropped bombs on a hospital in Afghanistan, which killed 22 people. U.S. officials said that they didn’t really mean to hit the hospital but instead meant to drop their bombs on nearby “terrorists.” But two things are for sure: One, the family members of those dead people in Afghanistan are hurting as bad as the family members of the victims in Oregon. Two, if the U.S. national-security state wasn’t dropping bombs in Afghanistan, those 22 people would still be alive today.
It’s no different in Iraq. Consider, for example, the grieving words of Zareena Grewal, who wrote yesterday in the New York Times about the pain of losing family members in Iraq a couple of weeks ago to U.S. bombs. But hey, that’s the price of stopping ISIS from coming to get us, right? That’s all we need to know.
Like I say, the notion has always been that as long as all those deaths at the hands of the U.S. military and CIA occur over there, that would have no adverse effect on Americans over here, except of course, for the enormous fiscal problems arising from out-of-control federal spending.
But then we do have all these random mass murders over here that no one can explain. Statists ascribe them to the absence of gun control but there is at least big flaw in their reasoning: Switzerland, where everyone owns guns and where there are no random mass murders. Certainly Switzerland has people who are a bit off-kilter mentally. Every society does.
Now what about that New York Times article last Sunday? It reviewed and analyzed a study of the history of random mass murders in the United States that a criminologist with the Minnesota Department of Corrections conducted on mass murders from 1900 to 2013.
The Times writes, “There were few before the 1960s.” The first big one in modern times occurred in 1966, when Charles Whitman killed 16 people with a high-powered rifle he fired from a tower at the University of Texas.
Hmm. Maybe it’s just a coincidence, but 1966 just happened to be the middle of the Vietnam War, when the U.S. national security state, in an undeclared war, was killing as many “communists” as it could in Vietnam — or “gooks” as they called them back then. The idea was that they needed to kill all those communists over there because otherwise they would come to the United States and get us, much like all those “terrorists” in the Middle East and Afghanistan will supposedly come to get us if the national-security state doesn’t kill them first.
Like today, in 1966 Americans were expected to support the troops because they were killing people over there to keep us safe here at home. Of course, at the risk of belaboring the obvious, after U.S. forces were defeated in Vietnam after killing all those people, not one single Vietnamese communist ever came to get us.
Now, think of all the mass murders that have occurred here in the United States since 1966 and especially since the Persian Gulf intervention in 1991.
Coincidence? I don’t think so. I think that when you have the national-security state constantly killing large numbers of people over there, that is inevitably going to seep into the conscious, conscience, and consciousness of the people here at home, including those who are a bit off-kilter mentally.
Like I say, I can’t prove my theory? Nonetheless, I do find it interesting that the mass murderer in Oregon, Chris Harper Mercer, volunteered for “service” in the U.S. Army but was rejected. Maybe he wanted to “serve his country” by going over there and killing large numbers of people. I also find it interesting that Harper Mercer constantly wore army-type garb in civilian life and refused to explain to anyone why he did that.
If my theory is right, stopping the U.S. national-security state’s death machine over there will stop the random mass murders here at home. But even if my theory is wrong, isn’t it high time to stop the U.S. national-security state from killing any more people over there? Hasn’t it killed too many people already?