Will Israel Pull Off an ‘October Surprise’ During the Next Month?
There is some speculation in Washington about a so-called October Surprise being engineered by either party or their supporters to change the outcome of the upcoming election. The original October Surprise took place in 1980, when Ronald Reagan’s campaign manager William Casey conspired with several senior CIA officers in Europe to convince the Iranian government to delay the release of the American Embassy hostages until after the November election against Jimmy Carter. Casey believed that any earlier release of the hostages would give a boost to the Carter campaign, demonstrating that the Democratic Party’s policy of how to deal with Iran was working. The Iranian government was approached secretly using CIA resources and complied with the request, believing that it would result in a less hostile relationship with the new administration. In the event, Reagan defeated Carter and some believed that the continuation of the hostage crisis had made the administration look feckless and hurt the incumbent just enough to change the outcome of the election. Since that time “October Surprise” has become shorthand for playing a political dirty trick shortly before the election to directly impact negatively on a candidate’s credibility or ability to respond to problems.
Another recent version of the Surprise is to spread lies about a candidate’s personal history or regarding his or her acceptance of support from enemies like Russia or China, such as the Clinton campaign attempted to do in 2016. And as a variation on that since the United States became enamored of wars and rumors of war, it involves acceptance of getting engaged in a couple of little wars to demonstrate national resolve and willingness to directly confront America’s enemies to compare one candidate with the other. This also involves considerable creativity and the exercising of one’s imagination as America’s national security has not actually been threatened or challenged by anyone since the Cuban missile crisis of 1963, though the current contretemps with Russia over Ukraine does indeed threaten going nuclear.
Certainly, it is not beyond one’s understanding of just how America’s two top political parties have become so cynical and desperate to win at any cost that wholesale distortion of reality might be considered fair game. Or if it is a foreign player interested in the outcome of the election, staging some kind of provocation or even a false flag operation that would result in a dramatic foreign policy development that could influence voters is possible. If this interference takes place shortly before an actual election with little chance that there will be any way to rebut what is being claimed, it might be referred to as an October Surprise.
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