Let's take a step back, shall we?

Several years back I set forth to determine what was so tricky about the Middle East. After all, Europe is staunchly anti-israel but for some reason everyone in the US bends over for AIPAC at the slightest provocation. What's going on? And 40 books in, I still find nuance and fresh insight into why, exactly, Israel and the Middle East are an intractable problem.

it gave me the perspective that if you can draw an immediate conclusion that favors action where the prevailing mood of experts favors inaction, it doesn't mean the experts are wrong... it means you don't understand the problem.

What did you find? You found a memo. A 55-year-old memo revealed in 1998 that, of its 12 pages, spends half a page on spitballing ways to foment outrage via terrorism and four pages talking about how shit could be done by the Air Force to make things look like a MiG attack. The unseriousness of this memo makes the recent AHCA look like the tax code. False pretext for war? I mean, we waltzed into the Cuban Missile Crisis just six months later. the Jupiter missiles in Turkey that prompted it were already in place. The Bay of Pigs invasion wasn't supported by the Air Force in no small part because LeMay wanted to ass out Bissell and the CIA - the guys in favor of carpet bombing are generally not so up on clandestine shit.

But that's the nuance of it. Those are the broad strokes of the background, the environment in which this memo was written. One has to delve deeper than "evil shit has been perpetrated by 'authorities' in the past."

Here's the thing - if you can't ascribe malfeasance to a proper noun, you don't fully understand the situation. Conspiracies exist but they consist of people with names acting in concert, not in a shadowy handful of illuminati out of central casting. You wanna meet the guy who created the Taliban? Here he is. Explaining that will take me a thousand words, but I can do it. And every step along the way, there are good people acting under good intentions and causing short-term victories for truth, justice and the American way and not a one of 'em set out to "perpetrate" "evil shit."

I know it's easier to rage against the machine but the road to hell is paved with good intentions and if you aren't willing to think harder than "government is bad" you will always cower in fear of the misunderstood skullduggery that greets you at every turn.

There's plenty to be outraged about without jumping at shadows.