EOTO #2 Reflection: False Flags

     As I listened to the other groups present their second EOTO projects, the one that I found myself thinking about after the fact was false flags. 

    They explained that false flags are acts that have been committed by one party in a way to place blame on another party in order to push some sort of agenda. 

Operation Northwoods
Memorandum via GWU 

    Revealed almost 40 years after the fact, in the 1960's, the United States military was planning to create a false flag. Under the codename Operation Northwoods, the U.S. military had planned to commit violent acts and orchestrate them to create the public illusion that they were actually carried out by Cuban forces. The hope was that this would drum up enough support for the U.S. to invade Cuba in order to remove their new communist leader, Fidel Castro, from power. Reports show that some of the proposed attacks included hijacking planes, attacking boats of Cuban refugees, and even committing terroristic acts on American soil. After the plan had been approved by the Joint Chiefs of Staff on paper, they were presented to Robert McNamara, the defense secretary under the Kennedy administration. The plans were then rejected and with that, Operation Northwoods was dead. 

    Although I did not know of this example until I did some individual research into false flags, I was aware of the many false flag conspiracies people have regarding the JFK assassination, the Sandy Hook and Majorie Stoneman Douglas school shootings, and even the 9/11 terrorist attack.

    Whenever I would hear people talking about those conspiracies, it truly baffled me how people could think that the U.S. government would ever plan and carry out a plan as devastating as 9/11 in order to justify going to war in the Middle East. With almost 3,000 people dying that day from the attack, I could not fathom that our own government would do such a thing. 

    After learning about Operation Northwoods, although I've realized the government is capable of a lot more than I originally thought, I still do not think any rational argument can be made in favor of the idea that the U.S. government planned and committed the attack on September 11th as a false flag. 

    Maybe I'm being ignorant in doing so, but I truly think it would be terrible to live in a country where you believe your government is willing and able to sacrifice almost 3,000 lives in order to justify going to war, which in turn, would take even more lives. From a strictly moral standpoint, I can't imagine believing that 9/11 is an inside job. If that's then coupled that with all of the proof that has debunked these theories, I think this false flag conspiracy, like most others, has no legitimacy to it whatsoever, and it is astonishing to me that even almost 20 years later, people still believe in it.