On June 12, the fifth anniversary of the mass shooting at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida, President Joe Biden announced that he would soon be signing legislation “designating Pulse Nightclub as a national memorial” because it is “hallowed ground.” He kept his promise, putting his John Hancock on the bill 13 days later.
As the nation’s politician-in-chief, Biden wasn’t just interested in honoring the memories of the 49 victims of Omar Mateen. Yes, the Pulse massacre was, as Biden put it, “at the time, the deadliest mass shooting by a single gunman” in U.S. history. But, as the president’s words suggest, there have been other, even deadlier mass shootings since then, yet their sites are not, apparently, considered “hallowed ground.”
Biden was, of course, seeking to score points with, in his words, “the LGBTQ+ community.” Although his announcement was primarily used to stump for stricter gun-control laws — another political motive — he also strongly hinted that Mateen had committed his horrific crime out of anti-LGBT animus.
While Biden was careful not to say that in so many words, other politicians were not. Journalist Glenn Greenwald — who, by the way, is openly homosexual — reported:
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) falsely described the massacre as an “unspeakable act of hate toward the LGBTQ+ community.” Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) went even further, claiming “the LGBTQ+ community was targeted and killed — all because they dared to live their lives.” Her fellow Illinois Democrat, Sen. Dick Durbin, claimed forty-nine lives were lost due to “anti-LGBTQ hate” (he forgot the +).
The truth, however, is that Mateen — like the Times Square would-be bomber, the Boston Marathon bombers, the 9/11 attackers, and many other terrorists — was motivated not by “homophobia” but by outrage at U.S. foreign policy.
Nothing in Mateen’s electronic trail suggested that he cared about homosexuality one way or the other. He chose the Pulse as his target not because it was a gay club but because it was the first location that came up on his phone when he Googled “Orlando nightclubs” the night of the attack. (He’d considered attacking Disney properties but decided they were too secure.) According to Greenwald, “Witnesses said that when he entered [Pulse], he asked security guards: ‘where are the women?’”
As Greenwald recounted, Mateen’s actions before and during the massacre left absolutely no doubt about his motive:
On June 12, 2016, Mateen spent just over three hours in PULSE from the time he began slaughtering innocent people at roughly 2:00 a.m. until he was killed by a SWAT team at roughly 5:00 a.m. During that time, he repeatedly spoke to his captives about his motive, did the same with the police with whom he was negotiating, and discussed his cause with local media which he had called from inside the club. Mateen was remarkably consistent in what he said about his motivation. Over and over, he emphasized that his attack at PULSE was in retaliation for U.S. bombing campaigns in Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan….
In the hours he spent surrounded by the gay people he was murdering, he never once uttered a homophobic syllable, instead always emphasizing his geo-political motive. Not a single survivor reported him saying anything derogatory about LGBTs or even anything that suggested he knew he was in a gay club. All said he spoke extensively about his vengeance on behalf of ISIS against U.S. bombing of innocent Muslims.
Mateen’s postings on Facebook leading up to his attack all reflected the same motive. They were filled with rage about and vows of retaliation against U.S. bombing. Not a single post contained any references to LGBTs let alone anger or violence toward them. “You kill innocent women and children by doing U.S. airstrikes,” Mateen wrote on Facebook in one of his last posts before attacking PULSE, adding: “Now taste the Islamic state vengeance.”
Despite — or perhaps because of — this overwhelming evidence, politicians, then and now, preferred to treat the shooting as an anti-LGBT crime rather than a response to U.S. foreign policy. The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) even went to the trouble of redacting Mateen’s pro-ISIS remarks from the transcript of the 911 call it initially released.
Then again, the FBI was up to its neck in the whole disaster. As James Bovard wrote in a USA Today column:
Prior to his attack, Omar Mateen was practically walking around Florida wearing a sandwich board proclaiming, “FUTURE MASS KILLER.” He had boasted of his connections to terrorists, threatened to have Al Qaeda kill a co-worker’s family, and talked of wanting to be a martyr — when he was not vocally vilifying African-Americans and minorities. Numerous individuals and organizations — including his mosque — warned authorities that he could be a threat to public safety. When FBI officials investigated him in 2013, he repeatedly lied to them. But the FBI swayed the local sheriff’s department to drop its investigation because a “confidential informant” assured FBI agents that Omar Mateen was not a terrorist and would not “go postal or anything like that.” That “confidential informant” may have been Mateen’s father.
Mateen’s old man, Afghan immigrant Seddique Mateen, had been on the FBI’s payroll for 11 years, all while financing terrorist attacks in foreign countries and producing what Bovard described as “a pro-Taliban, anti-American Dari language television program,” actions that did not escape the FBI’s notice. However, he was apparently useful to the powers-that-were — two months after the Pulse attack, he even turned out to endorse Hillary Clinton for president because of her gun-control stance — so the agency turned a blind eye to his dubious activities. In fact, the only reason Seddique Mateen’s status as an FBI informant even came to light is that the feds, seeking a scalp to pacify vocal elements of the LGBT community, prosecuted Omar Mateen’s widow for her alleged involvement in his attack, and prosecutors copped to the connection.
Thus, by engaging in unconstitutional, murderous foreign interventions, Washington first created the conditions that inspired Omar Mateen to launch a terrorist attack. Then, by embracing a terrorist sympathizer and ignoring clear indications that his son was about to commit mayhem, the government abetted his crime.
Biden is correct that the Pulse massacre should be memorialized. But it should not be remembered as an episode of anti-LGBT hatred or a reason to crack down on gun ownership. No, the Pulse should stand as a monument to the venality and incompetence of the national-security state.
