Lee Harvey Oswald's Motivation?

THIS IS A PIECE I WROTE BACK IN 2008, DURING THE GOOD OLD DAYS OF MYSPACE POPULARITY (hence the reference at the beginning to responding on a Myspace group) 

I just clicked on one of the groups I am a member of on Myspace, even though I never go on them anymore, and someone wrote a little something about how the accused Presidential assassin, Lee Harvey Oswald, was just a deadbeat loner looking for his day of glory and got it by killing the President. I hear that claim a lot and it’s the most boasted claim against Oswald in the case of motive on his part. And the reason for that is because there are no other real legitimate motives you can put on him so the loner looking for his 15 minutes of fame has carried the day pretty much by default.

Let’s look at some of the proposed motives against Oswald:
1. HE ATTEMPTED TO KILL GENERAL EDWIN WALKER, A POLITICAL FIGURE, WHICH MEANS HE ALREADY HAD A TASTE FOR POLITICAL ASSASSINATION, WHICH IS WHAT DROVE HIM TO KILLING PRESIDENT KENNEDY: First off, the proof that Oswald took a shot at Gen. Walker, as in the cases of President Kennedy and murdered Dallas Police Officer J.D. Tippit, is incredibly sketchy and shaken. A young witness who lived next door to Walker heard the shots, ran outside and saw a few men get into two different cars in an alleyway and take off like bats out of hell. The bullet recovered was deemed incompatible with the Mannlicher-Carcano rifle that Oswald only supposedly owned in the first place, and the shot, which was a much easier one than one from the 6th floor of the Book Depository down onto the President in Dallas, struck the frame of the window. Such was likely the reason the bullet did not strike the General, and would only further prove Oswald’s shakiness with a weapon. And more significant than just the evidence in this case is the simple fact that almost all attempted or successful political assassins are fanatics in one way or another. They’re wild Liberals taking shots at staunch Conservatives or the other way around. General Walker was almost the exact opposite from President Kennedy, one was a Democrat and one was a Republican. If Oswald took at shot at Walker it would have likely been because he was a genuine leftist sypathizer which would make him anything but an enemy of the President’s.
2. HE WAS A COMMUNIST SYMPATHIZER WHO SUPPORTED FIDEL CASTRO’S MOVEMENT IN CUBA, AND HE KILLED PRESIDENT KENNEDY TO PREVENT HIS INTERFERING WITH THAT MOVEMENT: All right, everything that was known about President Kennedy, at least as was leaked to common Americans, of which those who maintain Oswald’s guilt would suggest he was, shows signs that he wanted to avoid any unnecessary hostility with Cuba, which is not to say he wasn’t against what was happening over there. Again, I’m presenting this from the way a common American citizen would have seen things happening. So I’m not saying that President Kennedy was sitting on his ass and just letting Cuba do as they pleased. But after the Bay of Pigs there was the Cuban Missile Crisis, in which the President refused to use military force on Cuba when they broke through the quarantine. The main organization involved with trying to overthrow Castro and turn Cuba around was the CIA, which Kennedy had threatened to dismantle. I mean, there were even people calling the President a Communist because they thought he was going to easy on Castro and the Communist movement in Cuba. Even a majority of Oswald’s friends claimed he was an admirer of the President. So, when looked upon, this motive doesn’t really hold water, especially with the many pieces of evidence that suggest Oswald worked for the US Government and/or military intelligence, and that his posing as a left-wing Communist sympathizer was all an act.

When all is said and done, all there was left to attribute to Oswald was that he was a lone nut who wanted his moment in the spotlight and got his chance when the President came to Dallas, Texas for a visit. And even the Warren Commission, who did their best to establish a clear motive for Oswald would publish in their report that they couldn’t find any one motive in particular that could be properly and completely attributed to Oswald. That’s a nice way of saying they just couldn’t find a legitimate motive, and perhaps that’s the truth. Perhaps there is no real sensible reason why Oswald would have wanted to kill President Kennedy.
This theory on motive is flat on it’s face anyway. First of all, there’s this concept that Oswald was just some loser loner nut. Well, there is nothing in Oswald’s demeanor that suggests in any way that he looked at himself like a loser. In fact he was quite well educated even though he never finished high school. He spoke very clearly and coherently and often even had a aura of cockiness to himself, like he thought he was better than other people or like what anyone else thought about him made no difference in his mind. This is certainly not the attitude of someone with a lot to prove. When his fellow Marines stuck it to him for being such a mediocre shot with a rifle did he go out there and practice like mad to win over their approval and have his moment of attention, no he remained a mediocre shot and all of his fellow Marines there said he didn’t seem to really care one way or another. There is evidence in every direction that he was connected to Army Intelligence (possibly to Naval Intelligence), the CIA and the FBI. These organizations certainly don’t just take in any loser, loner moron they come across. And yes, it is true that Oswald appears to have had difficulty in holding down jobs and furthermore rarely worked anywhere that was particularly impressive. However, many of the places he worked in, especially after returning from the Soviet Union in 1962, appear to have been directly connected to his intelligence connections. For instance, he worked at a Jaggars-Chiles-Stoval, a company that worked very closely with the US Army and a place that required a high security clearance. This seemed hardly to be the type of place that would hire someone like Oswald who had just returned from the Soviet Union (America’s greatest nemesis at that time) after “defecting” there in 1959. And then there was the job he obtained at the Reilly Coffee Company in New Orleans while he was working with several right wing figures there (even though he posed as a leftist). This company was a highly right-leaning establishment… and yet they hired this looney left-wing loser? Sounds fishy to me too.
And this brings me back around to the comment that started the whole thing. The comment I read on the group postings said that Oswald was just looking for his moment of glory. It’s amazing to me that people can still adhere to this as a legitimate motive when it takes only a few seconds of logic to break it down. We have seen many crazed nuts in history try and take out high ranking figures just for the glory. When they’re captured or taken down they struggle, they scream, they ran and rave, anything to get the attention on them. Anything to put them in the history books. Anything so that they will know that when people look back in history they will know that he/she was the person that changed the world that day. That’s what this “killing for the glory” idea is all about. And yet let’s look at Oswald’s final days. He presumably shoots President Kennedy and then flees the scene (even though he reportedly boarded a bus heading back towards Dealey Plaza where the shooting took place and then when trying to hail a taxi he offers the first one he finds to a little old lady; hardly a man trying to flee the scene). On the run he encounters a Dallas Officer, J.D. Tippit, and then shoots him to keep himself free. Now he has a lot to be remembered by, killing the President and now killing a police officer on the run. So what does he do, while already running away from the scene (hardly the actions of someone looking for attention), he takes refuge in a movie theatre and while when he is taken down by police it creates quite a spectacle, Oswald shows no signs of being someone interested in the pomp and glory of having killed the nations highest ranking public official. He at no time, in the roughly two days he was in police custody before being gunned down himself, admitted to killing the President. Yeah, out for the glory indeed! He at no time made a big scene to attract even further attention to himself. When taken throughout the police station, being filmed and photographed numerous times he never boasted about his incredible feat but instead pleaded his innocence when he was berating the police for their treatment of him or practically begging for some legal counsel so he could be properly defended, counsel he never came close to recieving. His whole tenure in police custody the officers who dealt with him described him as ‘calm, cool and collected’. This motive that he was out for the glory of killing the President just doesn’t hold water… in the least!
One final argument in the fact that while in police custody, Oswald uttered something to the effect of, “Well, now everyone will know who I am.” Of course, this was used for all it’s worth as proof that Oswald killed the President so that people would finally recognize him for who he was. This misuse of the statement was put into proper perspective by Dallas Officer Roger Craig (a critical witness to the assassination events and the aftermath), who was there when Oswald made this statement and pointed out that it was really taken out of context with the way people have used that as proof of the motive attributed to Oswald. He would state that when Oswald made this statement it was more one out of embarrassment, like it was something he would rather people didn’t know, but now he had no control over it and everyone was going to find out. It makes perfect sense then, if Oswald said this in such a manner, that he may have been referring to his connections to American Intelligence, things that he would much rather have kept under wraps. Whatever the case, even this statement cannot be used as proof in the official motive against Oswald. There just isn’t one, and why? Because there is really no sensible reason, other than the potential that he was connected with more people in a much larger plot, why he would have wanted to kill President Kennedy.