While I was zonked out on Nyquil, I see I've taken a lot of heat for saying that there was no political lesson to be learned from the Fort Hood shootings. Our own Jeffrey Goldberg says:
Megan McArdle writes that "there is absolutely no political lesson to be learned from this." James Fallows says: "The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre 'mean'? A decade later, do we 'know' anything about Columbine?" And the Atlantic Wire has already investigated the motivation for the shooting, and released its preliminary findings. Of Nidal Malik Hasan, the Wire states: "A 39-year-old Army psychiatrist, he appears to have not been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage (he is American by nationality), or any related political causes."
It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. This is the second time this year American soldiers on American soil have been gunned down by a Muslim who was reportedly unhappy with America's wars in the Middle East (the first took place in Arkansas, to modest levels of notice). And, of course, this would not be the first instance of an American Muslim soldier killing fellow soldiers over his disagreements with American foreign policy; in 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two officers and wounded fourteen others when he rolled a grenade into a tent in a homicidal protest against American policy.
I am not arguing, of course, that American Muslims, as a whole, are violently unhappy with America (I've argued the opposite, in fact). But I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims
I'm sorry if I seemed to be denying that Hasan may have thought of this as a political act. I thought that when I said
This guy was some form of lunatic or psychopath, and it seems pretty clear to me at this point that he was inspired by terrorists. But there's no evidence that he was a terrorist--that is, that he was hooked into some organized network. Lots of people do terrible things in the name of their religion--just ask George Tiller. Their acts are, as the Catholic Church says, "sins that cry out to heaven for vengeance". But they are no more indictments of a community than the acts of that Korean kid who went crazy at Virginia Tech.
I made it clear that I believed Hasan was trying to follow in the footsteps of Al Qaeda, et al--either because he was crazy, or because he was a deeply evil human being with no regard for the lives of others. Even a few hours after the shooting, what we knew of him made it likely that this was somehow connected to his religion, and the war.
So why did I say that there were no political lessons to be learned from this? Because it wasn't new information that there are Muslims in the world who object to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and would like to kill a bunch of Americans. It was always possible that one of them, somewhere, was going to find their way to somewhere where they could do damage. I can think of half a dozen easy ways to kill a significant number of people without getting caught, if I wanted to. So could most of you. The terrorist's job is made harder by wanting a certain sort of spectacular crime, not merely a death toll. But not much harder.
As of last week, what information did we have that would lead to any useful political response? Were we going to start kicking Muslims out of the government and the armed forces? That's unconstitutional, would brutally wrong the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community that is not involved in terrorism, and would deprive us of a valuable source of translators and other advisers to our military and intelligence efforts. We know that some number of Muslims living in this country hate our government and want to act against it. We also know (by the rarity of attacks, if nothing else) that this number is small, and any loose networks are poorly organized and largely ineffective. Given this, there's not very much you can do with this information, other than what we're already doing, which is have the FBI try to track down terrorist plots. Something that they seem to be doing very well when the attacker is not a lone gunman with no need for a support team. This particular attack would have been very hard to stop for anyone, without doing terrible, terrible things to our Muslim citizens.
And if you think that's okay, I invite you to consider whether you would be all right with similar incursions into evangelical churches every time an abortion clinic or doctor gets attacked. After all, the pro-life community does produce these wackos, and its radical fringe may even shelter them. Why shouldn't every Southern Baptist get a little extra scrutiny?
Obviously, gun control is a non-issue, since military bases are actually very well locked down, and also, no one was going to prevent a military officer from getting his hands on guns. You could call this a failure of the intelligence community, but there was no evidence that he was in touch with any terrorist network, and the attack was not the sort of thing that would have required any outside assistance.
That said, I have since changed my mind. That's because there's growing evidence that the army and the CIA knew he was a crazy fanatic who wanted to get in touch with Al Qaeda. It sort of seems like someone could have done something about that.
Maybe they were slow-playing him, trying to get evidence on bigger fish. Maybe. But I'm more inclined to believe that they failed to communicate with each other, and in the case of the army, failed to do the obvious thing and open an investigation into whether this fellow should be separated from the army, and maybe watched pretty carefully. Being a Muslim is not grounds for investigation. Being a Muslim who attends a radical mosque, issues lectures on jihad, and attempts to contact Al Qaeda is definitely grounds for suspicion, and I'm sure even CAIR would admit as much.
I don't know what happened here yet, and maybe it's not as bad as it sounds. But I'd certainly like to know how this slipped through the cracks, who is being held responsible, and what is being done to make these sorts of errors less likely in the future.
What struck me about your previous post was your comment that there were no political lessons to be learned here.
To the extent that political correctness impeded a reasonable investigation into the shooter, simply because he was a muslim and "we have to be sensitive", I think that view is willfully blind.
Even in this post you take an alternate path - "lack of communication". That too is willful blindness. There is already plenty of evidence that the reason the Major was not earlier reported and investigated, was that officers feared the political repercussions of reporting a muslim (and some have come out and openly said so).
Mistakes do happen. Mis- (or non-) communication happens. None of that is political. But that's not why the Major was not investigated in a timely fashion. He was, essentially, in a "protected class". That is political and it does deserve investigation - and, though I am not hopeful, correction.
As she points out, Southern Baptists are in a similar protected class...
If they are, it is because of risk/reward.
How many attacks are planned or executed by muslims against Americans each and every year? Contrast that with the number of planned or executed attacks by anti-abortionists on abortionists (or vice versa, if you'd like).
Furthermore, contrast the scale of the planned or executed attacks, muslims versus anti-abortionists. When is the last time you read of anti-abortionists looking for ricin, or radioactive weapons or flying aircraft into buildings?
It's *absurd* to compare the scale of the muslim terrorist threat with any other domestic threat.
In a world with finite intelligence resources it would be derelict to NOT focus them primarily on the largest threat.
Oh? Southern Baptists go on terrorists web sites, talk about how they want to murder abortionists, do it, and have the press say "gosh, we'll never really know why he murdered that abortion doctor"?
What delusional reality do you live in?
The one where where news is reported and facts are given, and I'm not seeing a flood (or a trickle)(or a drop) of news stories that corroborate your claims.
The only significant abortion-related story I can recall from this year had the *anti* abortionist getting killed, remember?
How many abortion clinics were blown up this year? How many abortionists killed? How many plans disrupted?
Because I've got a list that would choke a cow when you switch topics to "muslim."
Very few people said we didn't know why he did it. A lot of people said we shouldn't rush to judgement about whether he was part of some larger conspiracy. And yes, evangelicals do get on bulletin boards to talk about killing abortion doctors. Not very many of them, and for the overwhelming majority, it's just talk. But that's also true of American muslims.
There is a significant difference. The US (and Canada) is at war against a Muslim fundamentalist/political/military group. One of the main targets in Iraq was Al Queda.
From what I've read, the US isn't at war with Southern Baptists.
I suspect that in most bien pensant circles that is an inconvenient truth.
Derek
I have to vehemently disagree with this statement. From what I have read, there has been no evidence to suggest that this is a repeat of the Virginia Tech massacre, where political correctness certainly played its part in preventing the appropriate handling of a troubled individual.
I've seen it reported elsewhere, but I think the true unfortunate circumstance we see in this case was that the Army subsidized the medical education of someone who turned out to be an ethically-challenged physician, someone with poor job performance, who nonetheless was still allowed to practice medicine and treat our soliders returning home with PTSD and other problems. There is more political correctness to be seen in the case of the Army refusing to reprimand someone they forked over a lot of tax dollars to educate. Had Hasan been a lowly infantry soldier, I have no doubt that his conduct would have been thoroughly investigated, to the point of dishonorable discharge (though I'm not sure how the works technically.) However, because he was a DOCTOR (not a Muslim) he most likely was viewed as harmless and indeed indispensible to some degree, considering that in many of the reports I have read this psychiatrist was purportedly negligent at his job.
If there is one "protected" class we need to discuss here - it's the class of US service people who have their expensive educations paid for and protected by the bureaucracy that barters for more and more expensive educations to be paid for.
Apropos of nothing in particular, it occurs to me to wonder how many Southern Baptist or Evangelical doctors have participated in violent attacks? There do seem to be an awfully high number of highly educated & theoretically westernized Islamic radicals with medical degrees & the like who attempt terror attacks.
Probably I just need to work harder at banishing these kinds of hate-facts from my consciousness.
You have your facts wrong. Certainly more attacks have been committed by fundamentalist christians eg Timothy McVeigh. Also there are for example the scores of bombings and assassinations at family planning clinics, the attack on the Olympics in Atlanta, etc etc etc.
To AgSophis:
This year I can only think of one attack that had abortion at it's root, and it happened to be an anti-abortionist who was targeted and killed.
So where are these "scores" of attacks, again?
And how many of them were targeted at massed targets, via poison or explosives or other such weapons? Because there are lots and lots of examples, just this year, of muslims attacking or planning on attacking Americans with the express intent of "killing as many as we can."
What is your definition of "wrong," again?
@AgSophia, where did McVeigh and Rudolph go to med school?
Also, Rudolph identified with the Christian Identity movement, which certainly is not an element of Fundamentalist Christianity. And McVeigh's religious convictions seemed to be nominal Catholicism.
Rudolph explicitly said that he preferred Nietzsche to the Bible. Do you know any Muslim terrorists that prefer Nietzsche to the Koran?
@AgSophia -
First, as others have pointed out, I was asking about terrorist *doctors* of which there have been, that I know of offhand, at least 5 active under Islam in the past few years but none under any other ideological umbrella, so far as I know.
Second, I love that you are scared of evangelicals because of the "scores" of bombings and assasinations they have carried off and as an example you cite 1) McVeigh -- not evangelical, date of bombing 1995 and 2) Atlanta's Olympic bombing - date of bombing 1996.
Clearly, we are under constant threat of Christian terrorists, just look, they bombed us twice in rapid succession almost 15 years ago!
Muslims, on the other hand, are harmless, there've only been maybe 12-15 violent attacks linked to Islam so far this year.
Matt C,
Well, that's very easily rectified.
Read this:
http://www.northjersey.com/news/national/69500262.html
There you have it. Glad to be of service.
Nathan,
I had not heard that - no doubt, there had to be some p.c. along the way that allowed Hasan to get through all the checks and balances.
But I think my point still stands. Indeed, I think your citation supports it. The fact that he was an MD is what allowed him to slip through the cracks. My guess is that had he been in an infantry unit, and had spouted all the Islamist nonsense at his fellow colleagues, that he either a) would have had his ass kicked, or b) would have been tossed out of the Army.
I still think at the end of the day the investigation will show that he was not removed from duty do to his position as an expensive, tax-payer paid-for Army doctor.
Bingo.
The hell of it is, he was trying to get out of the Army. They could've let him go, with a BCD, fairly easily. Sounds like a failure in his chain of command.
" The terrorist's job is made harder by wanting a certain sort of spectacular crime, not merely a death toll. But not much harder."
Every time I go through airport security I wonder why no terrorist has thought of hitting that target. Easy to hit, impossible to secure, would cause massive disruption.
Actually, it'd have been difficult. Commissioned Officers don't get BCDs (or DDs for that matter) They have one level of discharge for bad acts: dismissal. That takes a GCM.
But he had offered to resign his commission.
catcube you are very mistaken, or you area assuming because it is the Atlantic that on one who is a retired officer is here to keep you from misstating the facts.
He offered to resign. He could have been allowed to leave the service (and honorably) with a very simple administrative hearing. The GCM is for offciers who refuse to leave, not the other way around!
More to the point there was a clear failure in scheduling this officer to deploy. Even if he never conducted this attack he would have been a negative factor in any forward theater. More harm then help to the troops.
So, the reward for acting anti-America is that you should be able to dodge unpleasant duties, and maybe even get out of your commitments early? And you consider this an intelligent position to take?
He came to the US military, and said "I want to be a member. Please support me so I can get an education, that I will then use to the benefit of the US Military." The US Military did its part, then he didn't want to do his.
No intelligently run organization rewards such behavior. A GCM, fine, and jail time before being stripped of his commission and kicked out of the Army would ahve been appropriate. Conviction of, and execution for, Treason against the US would be appropriate now.
Giving him what he wanted, when what he wanted conflicted with what he had agreed to?
That would have been wrong.
Greg Q is 100% correct.
A commitment is a commitment. You don't let someone resign their commission to avoid unpleasant costs that come due for the benefits they have already enjoyed.
I'm very aware that it is possible to administratively separate someone with an Honorable, General, or OTH designation, both commissioned officer or enlisted.
However, that's not what wiredog was talking about upthread. He said that he could get a "BCD", which to me means "Bad Conduct Discharge"--if there's another definition for that acronym that works in context, by all means tell me. A bad conduct discharge is very much not available to an officer. (or an EM without either being convicted by a court-martial or pleading guilty)
Now, to your larger point as to whether or not he should have been allowed to separate (leaving aside that the answer is obviouly yes in hindsight):
I've knew Soldiers that really didn't want to be in the Army who sucked it up and did well during their deployment, and I had a guy deployed with me who desperately wanted to deploy (for financial reasons) who was about -1.5 people--It'd have been like having another Soldier and a half there if we didn't have to deal with his problems.
So based on "he didn't want to go and was trying to get out," the answer is "I dunno, I have to know the individual." Now, if that link Megan had in the OP is correct, then there definitely was a problem in not letting him go (or court-martialing him) However, I'm going to reserve judgement until we actually know something resembling the truth--remember the news was also reporting that there were 3 shooters.
Greg Q:
Remember, we're talking about the US Army here. :-)
"Now, to your larger point as to whether or not he should have been allowed to separate (leaving aside that the answer is obviouly yes in hindsight):"
This brings up a good question - what should they have done? Is it likely that, if this guy had been released with a nice friendly pat on the back, he would have learned to love infidels (or at least tolerate them) and lived a peaceful life? Or would they just have been sending a terrorist out into the general population?
While not focused particularly on the security lines, I'd say the Islamic Scottish doctors who tried to drive explosive jeeps into airports would qualify as attempting an attack on that target, no?
Good point. Fortunately they were almost comically incompetent.
Almost? It was quite comical.
As of last week, what information did we have that would lead to any useful political response? Were we going to start kicking Muslims out of the government and the armed forces? That's unconstitutional, would brutally wrong the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community that is not involved in terrorism, and would deprive us of a valuable source of translators and other advisers to our military and intelligence efforts.
How about simply not burying our heads in the sand? We don't have to "kick out Muslims" but we can investigate potential terrorists - particularly those in the armed forces - rather than pretending that Muslims don't commit terrorism.
This sort of reminds me of an interview Big Think did with Naomi Klein. She said that the Montreal Massacre was the reason she got involved in politics. This was kind of shocking to me, since I couldn't really seen any political lesson that could have been learned from that tragedy.
http://bigthink.com/naomiklein/naomi-klein-the-montreal-massacre
The wikipedia article on the Montreal Massacre is fascinating. Speaking of not drawing political lessons, there's this tidbit:
"Marc Lépine was born Gamil Gharbi to a French-Canadian mother and an Algerian father. His father did not consider women to be the equal of men and was physically and verbally abusive to his wife and son, discouraging tenderness between mother and child."
In completely unrelated news, upwards of 90% of Algerians are followers of Islam.
Islam, of course, has nothing but the highest respect for women and is in no way linked to general misogyny. Very occasionally, there will be a case of abuse of women under Islam but these are abberrations similar to what happens under any religion.
The fact that women are legally considered less than men in many Islamic countries is just an example of the beautiful tapestry of diversity that blankets our world and in no way should be taken as an indication that women are systematically devalued by Islam. After all, women in the US still don't enjoy full equality by many measures, so really one cannot say anything definite about cultures that would rather their women die in flames than exit a building uncovered.
The canadian Gun Registry came about after the montreal massacre. Definitely a political reaction to an event.
Derek
I agree with Don Pettengill's comments. The "political lesson" is too many refused to look closely at Major Hasan because they feared embarrassing themselves or the military by being accused of instigating a witch hunt. What more could Hasan have done to encourage some action against him? He openly encouraged Muslims to violence against the US military. The only thing he didn't do was say: Tomorrow I'm going to go shoot up Fort Hood. With 20/20 hindsight, it's obvious some action should have been taken. However, when it comes to the Muslims in our society, we seem to require a violent action before we're willing to take threats seriously.
Even after Fort Hood, this attitude seems to prevail. The military and the Administration are warning us against jumping to conclusions. We are told we don't know whether Major Hasan's religion played any role in his actions. The media are full of other explanations for his actions -- pre-traumatic stress! While those investigating this crime must remain open minded and appropriately skeptical to properly do their job, does anyone believe the media, the military, or the Administration, would be trying so hard to overlook the obvious if Hasan were not a Muslim? The Oklahoma City bombings were blamed on talk radio (!) without any evidence, yet we cannot connect the dots between Hasan's religion and his actions -- even when those dots are so close together they are for all intents and purposes a straight line?
The administration's plea to wait until all the facts are in before making any judgement is particularly rich, no?
When a white cop arrests a black Harvard professor, we can immediately tell that this is clearly because of racism. Because history has taught us that all white cops are racists.
When a Muslim officer shoots up his base, it's hard to say why this might have happened but it's safe to assume it had nothing to do with Islam. Because history has taught us that there is no connection between terrorism & Islam.
Apparently it's only okay to jump to politically correct conclusions.
Awesome illustration...
When does Obama tell us that the Waco PD "acted stupidly?"
If you thought Blink was about jumping to conclusions you read it wrong. It's about making quick, valid decisions based on information that you have that may not rise to the level of hard data, i.e. knowing when you have enough information to act. And Gladwell specifically warns about how personal bias can affect the validity of the choices. If there's a lesson that can be applied here, it the tons of people coming out of the woodwork that knew something was "off" with Hasan, and yet no one was willing to act without more information.
I must say, I've never read Blink. I did, however, read this in more than one place (first in the NYT)
"His message is that we should trust first impressions — except when we shouldn't" and the specific reason why we're not supposed to is that Gladwell got pulled over for speeding more often when he grew an afro.
But, of course, the only way to determine if this or that particular member of the overwhelmingly peaceful Muslim faith is an embryonic radical would be to investigate him. But being a Muslim is not grounds for investigation, even if you are a Muslim with access to guns or sensitive government intelligence or who knows what else.
If you're the superior or coworker of a Muslim who gives you the heeby-jeebies when he casually mentions that he won't be photographed with women because they are unclean, you're choices are twofold: 1) try to draw attention to the fellow who raised your concerns & face the almost certain risk of being branded a racist bigot & getting tossed out for your trouble or 2) keep a lid on it & if you're really worried the fellow is a time-bomb, work on getting him transferred out, preferably via promotion to dampen the high risk of being branded a racist bigot for your troubles.
So, really, the only constitutional, sensible & moral way to deal with potential radical Muslims is to wait until they have actually carried out a successful mission and then reiterate that there's nothing about this to suggest it had any connection to the ancient & noble religion of Islam but was just a crazy loner who no one could have figured would resort to this kind of thing. And later when it comes out that he, in fact, was clearly a radical Islamist, allow that it might have some tenuous connection to the outer fringes of the veritably pacifist religion of Islam but that there's certainly no call to investigate Muslims willy-nilly and really, no reason to think they are, as a group, any more prone to violence than evangelicals.
After all, there have been a handful of homicidal attacks in this country by Evangelicals out of a population of some 10's of millions over the past couple of decades and a handful of homicidal attacks by Muslims over the past few months out of a population of a couple of million, so simple logic shows that there is no discernable increased tendency to violence on the part of either group. If you think there might be, that's just your racism/ethno-centrism/classism & possibly sexism showing.
Above all, there is no reason to consider taking any but the most rudimentary steps to limiting Muslim immigration or ascension to sensitive positions in our society. That would be an abandonment of everything we stand for and is, again, completely unnecessary as there is no reason to think that we would get more honor killings or random acts of anti-infidel violence by dramatically increasing the number of adherents to a religion that some wacko loons claim justifies both along with many other barbaric practices.
As to Megan's contention that even CAIR would allow for some sensible interventions when it comes to the radical fringe of Islam, I wouldn't be so sure. Is an Imam who preaches a sacred duty of killing infidels in jihad a dangerous radical or just a colorful speaker excercising his free-speech rights and in no way different from an evangelical minister dishing out the old fire & brimstone?
As ever when watching elite opinion-makers respond to realities that they'd prefer didn't exist, I am consumed with wonder over how long a society can continue to function when large & influential swathes of it are hell-bent on ignoring reality. Not all that long is my bet.
Sorry to hear you're under-the-weather, Megan, hope you recuperate fully & soon.
"Above all, there is no reason to consider taking any but the most rudimentary steps to limiting Muslim immigration or ascension to sensitive positions in our society."
We allowed someone who spent two decades listening to hate being preached in a Christian church to rise to the highest office in the land, so how can we discriminate against Muslims for belonging to an anti-American mosque?
Ahhhh. Ann, the reliable tower clock, chimes her bells of Reverend Wright
Are you saying she's wrong or just making a stupid comment because you've nothing better to contribute and she hit a nerve?
It seems as though Ann is though one who has nothing meaningful to contribute to the conversation. The country obviously decided a year ago that our president has a mind of his own and doesn't hold the same views as the pastor of the church he was a tangential member of while developing his political career in Chicago. That debate has been settled, grow up and move on.
To address the topic at hand, there is no need to discriminate against Muslims in order to prevent tragic events like what happened at Fort Hood last week. This was clearly a failure on the army's part that will not be repeated again, but it's as if some of you believe all Muslims serving in the military make statements similar to those made by Hasan, and are all secretly trying to make contact with Al Qaeda. Is that your stance? Because if it is, that would make it necessary for us to discriminate. It's note mine, and that's the point. A small minority of all religious groups hold severe and sometimes violent convictions that are untenable for sustaining peace throughout society, and by and large those minorities can easily snuffed out. The failure to do that has nothing to do with castigating the entire religion, but more to do with remaining vigilant about identifying the fringe. This case doesn't change that fact.
By the way, this whole debate about whether this act was one of terror or just horrible violence, seems inherently racist to me. Lieberman is on Fox News Sunday conjecturing about whether or not this was an act of terror, based on whether Hasan was motivated by "Islamism". In my opinion, any act of mass violence is terrorism. It doesn't matter if he's killing in the name of Allah or apple pie, he's killing masses of people. That is TERRORISM. Virgina Tech, DC snipers, Tim McVeigh, Eric Rudolph....ALL TERRORISTS!!! Why does he have to be Muslim to be a terrorist?
You might want to open a dictionary and discover what terrorism is and then pay attention to who is called a terrorist. Everyone agrees that McVeigh and the DC snipers were terrorists and most agree that Rudolph was, but no one who knows what "terrorism" is thinks that the VT guy was a terrorist. Nothing to do with Islam except that terrorists have to be motivated by something attempting to achieve some sort of political or social end.
underceij -
I still think it's worth considering the difference between the two churches/mosques. Rev. Wright is clearly anti-American in many of his messages, yet I don't recall hearing that he tried to convince his congregation that they had a moral duty as Christians to go out and murder a bunch of Americans.
And you seem to be the one accusing all Muslims of having secret terrorist ties. People are saying that Hasan should have been investigated because of his statements and his attempts to contact Al Qaeda. To say that this type of investigation would target all Muslims in the military implies that they all have the same secret sympathies and have all begun to act on them.
Until there is enough medical officers none is going to be allowed to leave if their superiors do not think they are a threat.
That's the reality of waging two wars in an era without a draft.
This. We have stretched our armed forces too thin, and we are allowing Muslim extremists, white supremacists, gang members, and felons in, and not getting them out.
The Lessons of Fort Hood
What they said, particularly Blighter.
Not as off-topic as you might think:
Did Clinton kill Ron Brown ?
Well, yes, but not that way:
Clinton wanted the military to cut
operating costs.
The Base Commander was doing his best
to comply: "you just have to squeeze
more work out of your people."
The Flight-line Sarge-in-charge was
heard to mutter in reply: "Yes, and
if you squeeze too hard, their eyes
pop out."
So somebody did not do due diligence
on the flight planning, and the pilot
flew into a cloud that had a rock in it:
"The final Air Force investigation
attributed the crash to pilot error
and a poorly designed landing approach."
Basic weak point in human nature/society:
POTUS, the powerful politician, has a plan.
Subordinates eager to please ignore safety.
People die.
Whitewash and repeat.
Yes. Yes. As soon as the conversation turned to stretching the Army too thin, I thought of Bill Clinton. I mean who else could possibly have come to mind? hmmmm. I just cant think of any.....hey, what about Bush the Lesser?
Take a look at the size of the US Military when Bill Clinton became Presdient. Compare it to the size of the US military when Bill Clinton left office.
After you've become at least minimally informed about the subject matter, do feel free to come back and comment on it.
"Lesser" is a completely inappropriate term. It'd imply that one of the Bushes deserves the title "the Greater", which we all know to be false.
Megan wrote: " .. Obviously, gun control is a non-issue ..."
Huh???? Whaddya mean 'a non-issue'?? The whole Army base is apparently a *&^%$ 'gun-free zone' just like your neighborhood kindergarten. Once again the same old tired story: A bad guy gets to carry out his mayhem unimpeded because all the good guys have been pre-emptively disarmed by the government.
Megan wrote: " ...I invite you to consider whether you would be all right with similar incursions into evangelical churches every time an abortion clinic or doctor gets attacked..."
The difference is that the occasional Christian who commits some evil act in the name of his/her religion is violating the central tenets of that religion. Christianity is, at least in theory, based on niceness: "love thy neighbor" / "Turn the other cheek." / "Blessed are the meek" etc. etc.
Islam on the other hand is **fundamentally** a religion (or a pseudo-religion) based on force, violence, intolerance and world conquest. Fortunately for the rest of us, the vast majority of Muslims are not especially devout.
I agree, Muslims just need to be especially careful with these kinds of people. Christian extremists generally become radical pacifists (Quakers, Amish) or engage in mass suicide (Jonestown, Branch Davidians, Heaven’s Gate). Muslim extremists tend to be violent chauvinists, whether here, in Iraq, in Iran (where the run the country), or in Afghanistan (where they used to), and they can get a lot of innocent people killed if the saner people around them (esp. the saner Muslims) don’t control their delusions.
Unfortunately, a small but significant portion of Muslims seem to think this kind of behavior is just fine, even worthy of encouragement. I've seen half a dozen interviews that were just disturbing.
I decided to start a list of the political lessons learned from the shooting. The first one is "political correctness kills." There are others. You are all welcome to come over and offer your thoughts on the matter.
Lessons Learned from Ft. Hood:
See this for a history of antidepressants and violence (including ALL mass shootings).
First rule of survival - ditch the PC crap. Then we can start talking.
I guess that I am a dirty, predjudiced occupationalist. When encountering a psychiatrist, I automatically check for signs of mental instability in him or her. Fundamentalists I am wary of, but principally because they tend to be boring. Muslims are just ordinary people. Palestinans tend to be interesting folk.
Army chains of command have to do a great many things by the book, and I guess that makes commanding psychiatrists difficult.
As of last week, what information did we have that would lead to any useful political response? Were we going to start kicking Muslims out of the government and the armed forces?
How about just the ones that are mentally unstable and trying to contact Al Qaeda?
I mean, come on. Political correctness should not be a suicide pact.
You bet it is. I was told that for a leftie PC is their highest religion.
Once again, so much hate and so little perspective.
Explain to me what makes Hasan's actions so much worse or so much different than Klebold & Harris at Columbine? They are pretty much the same. All lashed out in destructive rage against their primary institutions (Army or school), and all seemed motivated by an ideology of violence that they found in cultural messages. Whether it is Islam or Marilyn Manson, the point is the same: 99.9% of the audience is never moved to violence, and then there are crazy people who react horribly.
What makes you certain that if the guy wasn't exposed to Islam, he wouldn't have found something else? Remember the horrorcore rapper who killed that girl and her family a few weeks ago? Again, what motivated him? Did the hip-hop make him do it?
It seems to me that what happens is that mentally ill people in whom a destructive rage is growing tend to be fascinated by cultural expressions of violence. Those can be found anywhere. White Supremacist literature, right-wing paranoia, Christianity, Judiasm, Islam, Hinduism.
What religion were the post office killers like Jennifer San Marco and Thomas Sherrill? The former was an unabashed racist who targeted minorities. The latter, who knows? He certainly wasn't a Muslim. What about Charles Whitman? He wasn't Muslim. By all accounts, he was a good Christian.
Sorry to remind you but the US is currently at war against a group that Hasan seems to have some affection for, or some at least ideological affiliation to.
I know it's inconvenient to your tidy little world view.
Derek
Muzzy: So you're strongly against hate crime laws?
@ muzzybelly: Hate/perspective ?
Who here said they hate Hasan ?
I do not; I simply want him, and every
like-minded threat to me and mine, dead.
Let me give you some perspective;
Ordinary Mucker attacks are a random risk
to individuals, like cancer and lightning.
IslamoFascist Terrorists are an existential
threat to the nation; If allowed to continue
their attacks, some combination of luck,
planning, and advancing technology will
result in a death toll in the millions
of US citizens. Even one such terrorist
"Sleeper Agent" could be the key to
such an attack.
Not a question of hating Hasan, but in the comments made about Islam.
Yes, we are "at war" with ideological extremists. In this case, so what? His actions weren't aimed at a target with any political, economic or military strategic value. He just went to his workplace and opened fire, like countless others.
He happens to be a Muslim, and for that reason, he shouted some jihadi things. Otherwise, I see nothing about this event to indicate it was anything other than a madman.
NOW, of course we should be trying to protect our people against crazy madmen. Especially on military bases, where they can cause a lot of trouble. And of course, we should be making sure that our military personnel are all loyal, and if there are any traitors, they should be found. But those things are no more true nor urgent now than they were last month.
The rampage of this Hasan guy tells us nothing of predictive value.
Yes, if you discard every single salient detail of something you don't want to face up to, then yes: you no longer have to face up to it. He didn't just "happen to be" a Muslim, and he didn't just shout "jihadi things." He also attempted to contact al Qaida, advocated for heinous killings of infidels, attended the same mosque at the same time as the 9/11 terrorists, adhered and advocated the teachings of a terrorism-spouting Islamic cleric, told co-workers he considered the US military an aggressr against Muslims, etc...
Sheesh.
Wrong. On all counts. The scale of his attacks were insufficient to do excessive damage. But he chose a military deployment staging area to conduct his attacks. That most definitely has military strategic value. And it wasn't his workplace, so he didn't just go to his workplace and open fire.
Why are you so stubbornly refusing to face basic facts? Are you so afraid to face up to the bankruptcy of the underpinnings of liberal ideology?
What the heck are you talking about? What does this have to do with "liberal ideology?" And where do you get off ascribing some "ideology" to me? You don't know me, or anything about me other than a few things I have written on this message board.
My views on most social matters are heavily influenced by Gandhi. If it is "liberal ideology" to be moved by the insights of one of the greatest heroes in world history, insights that are largely derived from the teachings of the oldest organized religion in the world . . . then I guess I'm guilty as charged. You might as well call me "jslfjsdfl," though, since your words will have lost all meaning.
As for Hasan the madman, OK, he did some jihadi things too. So what? Here are the critical questions:
1. Was he part of a terrorist organization like the 9/11 perps, whose actions for years were part of a larger scheme to harm the US?
2. Did his Muslim faith *cause* him to do this? That is, was he an otherwise well-adjusted man who decided that his duty as a Muslim required him to attack American soldiers?
As far as I can tell, the answers to both questions are no. Thus, he was a madman who latched onto to some extreme ideology as he was descending into instability. Again, like hundreds of other psychos. Go look up the name William Kreutzer and tell me exactly what makes you sure this Hasan guy was any different.
The other important question is: how do we prevent this sort of thing from happening again? I'm pretty sure the answer to that question has very little to do with whether the word "terrorism" applies or not. And I'm also pretty sure that running around talking as if we are at war with Islam doesn't help, and probably makes life a little bit harder for our guys who are over there in Iraq and Afghanistan trying to win hearts and minds.
I never understood the fascination with spectacular attacks. The Army loses far more soldiers to accidents than it does to war. And it loses far more to war than it does to ordinary murder, which it loses more soldiers to than spectacular attacks in garrison. I'd gladly trade a 10% decrease in vehicle deaths for a 100% increase in Islamic extremist murders within the military.
If we're worried about violent extremism within the military, we should first look to ordinary street gang affiliation (yes, it's a problem) and white supremacist groups. If we're worried about general damage to combat efficacy, we should REALLY start worrying about soldier's mental health, of which the Fort Hood shooting could be seen as an example of its importance.
HMOG.
I'm stunned that you not only have this viewpoint, but believe you are contributing to a discussion by sharing it.
I'm not trying to stop you from writing it, because this sort of thinking needs the disinfectant of sunlight and air.
I will admit that my way of thinking is a bit tone-deaf when it comes to other people's emotions, but that's the point of my post. Simply put, I don't understand why people have to "draw a lesson" from these infrequent occurrences, when mundane, day-to-day events cause far more harm. It's a tragedy to lose a family member, no matter what the cause.
I'd really like to win these wars we're in - and that will require combat effectiveness from our military. A witch-hunt against Muslims would be incredibly counterproductive when we're already struggling to fill billets for Arabic/Pashto translators with security clearances. Seriously, this isn't about political correctness, because I'm not a very politically correct guy.
So the summary of my position is:
-This was an act of terrorism, whether he was actually linked to an organization or not
-There isn't a lesson to be learned here
-We lose about as many soldiers to off-duty vehicle accidents every month as were killed at Ft Hood. That is, the magnitude of loss that the Army suffers due to personally owned vehicles is the equivalent of a Ft Hood shooting every month.
-The military has finite resources and should pursue low-hanging fruit first when considering soldier safety.
-Islamic extremism isn't even in the top 10 concerns in terms of threats that are cost-effective for the military to address.
Let's step back a bit. When you do your maths, or an analogous thing, it is often useful to look at problems of a similar type. After the Holocaust, one hypothesis was that it was due to 2000 years of Christian antisemitism. This history has been well explored in Constantine's Sword. In response to this consideration, the Church overtly in Vatican II said that the covenant between G-d and the Jewish people was not revoked by Christianity, the liturgy has been changed from Roman (or Latin) to a vernacular thus the priest does not identify, as much, in successive stages of the Mass considered as a play as the Roman ruler and then Christ thus deflecting hostility in the recreated passion play from 'the Gentile rulers who lord it over you,' and also at least one Mass reading, Nov. 1 this year, Revelations 7:
shows in the fourth verse Jews being taken to heaven without the ostensible intervention of Christ. All of this does not require accepting the view that 'Pacelli was up to his elbows in Jewish blood' as a commenter on Volokh expressed the other day. Similarly however, the Muslim religion can be seen to have an influence in the murders at Fort Hood and 9/11.
The Muslim/Baptist comparison is a symptom of the intellectual inbreeding you suffer from. As others have pointed out, we're not at war with any Baptist terror groups, nor do Baptists have a lengthy history of killing large numbers of people, Baptist or otherwise, in terrorist attacks. Frankly, you sound like an idiot when you make this comparison.
"Were we going to start kicking Muslims out of the government and the armed forces? That's unconstitutional, would brutally wrong the overwhelming majority of the Muslim community that is not involved in terrorism"
As a point of trivia, is that unconstitutional? I'm pretty sure it's illegal, but not so sure about the constitutionality issue. The problem here isn't that Hasan was Muslim; it was abnormal behavior associated with his faith and his adoption of the cultural customs of parts of the world where Islam predominates, but which aren't necessarily associated with Islam themselves. I know a number of Muslims, mostly immigrants. None of them walks around wearing a jelabiya (sp?), because that isn't normal here. When a Muslim who grew up in the US starts doing that, it should be a warning sign.
What this incident demonstrates is the need for a system, both in government and private sector employers, in which personnel can report on the behavior of a colleague without any risk of being accused of racism or other prejudice. There's no question Hasan's colleagues were reticent about reporting him to superiors, and superiors were reluctant to confront him, because their careers would be damaged when they were accused of prejudice.
"Explain to me what makes Hasan's actions so much worse or so much different than Klebold & Harris at Columbine?"
I don't know that they're worse; what makes them different is that I don't recall a huge number of Klebold and Harris' friends, neighbors, and colleagues coming out of the woodwork and saying they were on the path to do what they did for a long time. They had done some videos and such, but IIRC, that stuff was discovered after the event, not six months before.
"Obviously, gun control is a non-issue, since military bases are actually very well locked down, and also, no one was going to prevent a military officer from getting his hands on guns."
Au contraire. A Clinton-era rule prohibits carrying firearms on base. They're all kept locked up. If everyone was carrying, there would have been a hell of a lot fewer casualties.
Gun-free zones are dumb. Then, only criminals have guns. Everyone else is helpless.