There is a lot of information still coming in about the Orlando shooting that took the lives of at least 50 people in a nightclub.  I purposely did not post about this subject right away.  I find that with incidences like these, there is a lot misinformation at the beginning.

There is probably still a lot of misinformation, but at least some things are a little clearer.  Still, there are a lot of bizarre twists to this story.

This story involves a lot of hotly debated political topics all in one realm.  We immediately heard talk about gun control, hate crimes, terrorism, and Islam, just to name the big things.

We first need a little perspective on this.  The U.S. is a country of about 330 million people.  The only reason this is a story is because those 50 deaths happened in one place at one time.  This isn’t to minimize the event.  It is certainly tragic for those involved and those who lost loved ones.

For perspective, there are tragedies every day in the U.S.  In every hour of the day, there are 50 deaths due to some kind of an illness or accident.

Also, why does there always have to be a solution to a problem that has already happened?  There are crazy people out there.  Luckily, even most crazy people don’t take things this far.  We don’t live in a perfect world.  And we also live in a somewhat free society.  Things will always happen.  They happen in authoritarian societies as well.

If there is a solution, it lies in our overall culture.  I don’t think it is possible to address this situation and to minimize the likelihood of these events happening in the future unless we take a really broad view.

Before getting to that, I would just like to point out some of the bizarre aspects of this story.  There have been reports that there may have been a second shooter.  If this is the case, why don’t we hear more about this?

Another bizarre thing is that the shooter was eventually killed when a SWAT team raided the club.  This was supposedly about four hours after his initial rampage.  How is this even possible?  He had already killed a huge number of people.  What was the SWAT team waiting for?  And were there severely injured people who could have possibly been saved if the police/ SWAT team had entered hours earlier?

Another strange, yet not-so-strange, thing is that these killers are always somehow connected to the FBI or CIA.  You could say this goes back to Lee Harvey Oswald with the CIA.  There were connections between the alleged bombers of the Boston Marathon and the CIA.  Was this Orlando shooter given this whole idea by FBI agents?

This event also shows the total uselessness of the FBI, CIA, NSA, and everything else government related.  It may or may not show their incompetence, but certainly the uselessness and maybe evilness.  The FBI received complaints about this guy being a danger.  The NSA is supposed to track everyone’s communications.  So why wasn’t this guy stopped?

This story is also bizarre in the fact that it is becoming apparent that this guy was gay or bisexual, or at least had gay tendencies.  Maybe he had a horrible conflict in his head between his sexual preference and his religion, but we really don’t know for sure.

The last important point – and this gets to the title of this post – is what this guy was saying.  Supposedly a witness heard him yelling about Afghanistan (what he considered his homeland) being bombed during the shooting.

In this Fox News article, it is told how the shooter was making posts on Facebook after his shooting (and before the SWAT team entered).

One of his Facebook posts read: “You kill innocent women and children by doing us airstrikes…now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”

In other words, this act of terrorism is another case of blowback.  If there is a solution to this problem, it is rather obvious at this point.  The U.S. government should withdraw all troops from foreign lands, particularly in the Middle East.  It also must stop drone bombing or doing any harm to foreigners.

This isn’t blaming the victims.  It isn’t excusing the actions of the killer.  It isn’t suggesting that we should turn our back on crime or terrorism.

It is suggesting that the U.S. government needs to stop killing innocent people overseas.  It is immoral.  It is wrong.  And it also comes back to our shores in the form of blowback.

In most cases, they don’t hate us for our freedoms.  They don’t hate us because we have pretty women in bikinis.  They hate us because our government is murdering innocent people overseas and occupying the lands.  It really is that simple.

Unfortunately, this lesson seems to be lost on most people.  The left calls for more gun control.  The right calls for tougher measures against immigration, or to ban Muslims.  Yet there is little discussion of the obvious, which is to simply adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy.  As Harry Browne said, “When will we learn?“