Climbing the Escalation Ladder (A “False Flag” in the Works?)

By Wayne Allensworth

President Donald Trump continues his erratic shifts from offers of talks to dire threats directed toward Iran. The Iranians have rejected talks. It appears that Tehran intends to bleed Israel and erode US resources — and already thin U.S. public support for Trump and his war — as long as possible before talking. As noted by Professor Robert Pape of the University of Chicago, the U.S. and Israelis are steadily climbing the war escalation ladder as failures accumulate. Two U.S. Marines Expeditionary Forces have deployed to the region, and the U.S. Army’s 82nd Airborne Division might follow, perhaps as part of a plan to seize Kharg Island and Iranian oil facilities on the coast near the Strait of Hormuz. Europeans had refused to join military operations to keep the strait open. Iran persists, refusing any pause in the hostilities that would allow Israel and the US to take a breather, resupply, and attack again.

Meanwhile, Tucker Carlson has wondered whether the Israelis and/or Americans will stage a “false flag” incident to justify a ground invasion, just as the bogus Gulf of Tonkin incident was used to escalate the war in Vietnam. U.S. leaders dating back to the Spanish-American War — begun by the likely false claim that Spain blew up the Maine in Havana Harbor to justify that imperialist war (“Remember the Maine!”) — are hardly strangers to lying to stir up public support of what used to be called “foreign wars.” Sunk by a German U-boat in May 1915, the Lusitania was transporting munitions, despite Washington’s claims of neutrality. The “Good War” itself was based on provocation and manipulation. And it appears a significant portion of the American public has forgotten the mountain of lies used to push us into war with Iraq, or the false optimism of the Pentagon regarding the lengthy war in Afghanistan. As far as a clear false flag operation, we needn’t go back any further than the explosion — blamed on Russia — that severely damaged the Nord Steam Pipeline, an effort to gin up more support for backing Ukraine in the Russo-Ukrainian War, itself largely provoked by the West.

But Carlson was probably referring to an attack on American soil or Americans abroad, that would be used as a pretext for further escalation. Carlson himself isn’t exactly a 9/11 truther. But he has asked some serious questions about what happened that day. Would U.S. officials, including officials in the intelligence agencies and the US military, seriously contemplate killing innocent people, including Americans, to justify war? The answer, I’m afraid, is “yes.”

In March 1962, following the disastrous Bay of Pigs attempt to invade Cuba, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Lyman Lemnitzer, proposed “Operation Northwoods” to President John F. Kennedy’s Defense Secretary, Robert McNamara. The document described a series of false-flag attacks designed to justify a U.S. invasion of Cuba. Operation Northwoods would involve staging attacks in Guantanamo Bay (riots near the U.S. base there; blowing up munitions at the base; sabotaging a ship in the bay); sinking a Navy ship to create a “Remember the Maine” incident; casualty lists in U.S. media “would cause a helpful wave of national indignation”); Cuban terrorist attacks on US soil; plane and ship hijackings; shooting down a civilian aircraft, a drone aircraft that would broadcast a false Mayday call; sinking a boat of Cuban refugees headed for Florida (“real or simulated”); and framing Cubans living in the U.S. for terrorist bombings. In what President Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex” — the speech itself a warning to incoming President Kennedy and the American people— Cold Warriors were planning war with Cuba.

McNamara later said, “We had military officers proposing things that were completely insane,” and that Lemnitzer had “lost touch with reality.” Yet despite proposing terrorism and murder to justify military action, neither Lemnitzer nor any of the other joint chiefs who signed off on “Operation Northwoods” were called to account. There was no investigation. They suffered no consequences for their demented plans. You can read excerpts of the declassified “Operation Northwoods” memo here.

Kennedy rejected the plan and in December 1962, following the Cuban Missile Crisis, removed Lemnitzer as joint chiefs’ chairman. The military had pressured Kennedy to attack Cuba during the missile crisis and he wisely refused, instead making a secret agreement with the Soviets toremove US missiles in Turkey in exchange for their withdrawing their missiles from Cuba. Kennedy apparently wished for a détente with the Soviets and might have desired to pull the U.S. out of Vietnam. 

What followed is, as they say, history. Kennedy was assassinated on November 22, 1963. Questions about that assassination connected to Kennedy’s clashes with hawks in the CIA and the Pentagon have long fueled claims that the emergent “Deep State” was behind the murder. What’s more, Kennedy was at odds with the Israeli lobby and their supporters in the Deep State, particularly regarding Israeli acquisition of nuclear weapons. I have not, to date, anyway, read any convincing evidence that Kennedy’s death was the result of a Deep State conspiracy, yet the impact of his death may have been exactly like that of a coup, assuming Kennedy would have adopted a more dovish foreign policy had he lived. The disastrous war in Vietnam escalated and it seems that Washington has been slaying dragons abroad and tightening the noose of the surveillance state domestically ever since. The Iran war will simply give the Deep State, which Trump pledged to dismantle, a vitalizing boost. We lose our freedom and diminish our security in pursuit of “global democracy” and perpetual war for perpetual peace. Following Kennedy’s death, the U.S. plunged headlong into the pursuit of global empire, a path that did not reach a dead end following the collapse of the Soviet Union, but instead continued on as the Deep State made globalism its policy. Eisenhower, who himself played a key role in the construction of the Deep State and the military-industrial complex, sensed that Washington was creating a monster that would present a dire threat to our freedom. He was right.

So, would the Israelis and the American Deep State contemplate using a false flag operation to justify climbing the next steps up the escalation ladder? I’m afraid the answer is, again, “yes.” 

Chronicles contributor Wayne Allensworth is the author of  The Russian Question: Nationalism, Modernization, and Post-Communist Russia, and a novel, Field of Blood. For thirty-two years, he worked as an analyst and Russia area expert in the US intelligence community.

Please consider supporting American Remnant: A green “Donate Today” button has been added at the end of each article (see below) appearing on the website. If you value what AR is doing, please consider supporting the website financially. $5, $10, or any amount that you can afford. Regular donations would especially be appreciated. Thank you!