My heart goes out to the families and friends of the victims of the Fort Hood shooting yesterday. I keep thinking of the families so happy to have their soldiers home and then for this to happen.
What strikes me is how much of the original reporting was wrong on this story. Just follow the automatic updates that Allahpundit put up yesterday and see how much of the original story facts were just wrong.
As people plunge through this man's biography, they will try to come up with generalizations about the stresses of combat or his Muslim religion. It's dangerous to make a generalization based on the one incident. Especially when we're just at the preliminary stage of learning about this guy. Better to say that this was one seriously disturbed and twisted, evil man and not try to use his crime to score political points. But the media had a whole evening to fill without much information so a whole lot of fallacious speculating and reporting went on last night.
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20 comments:
Reports are that this guy had never been deployed and was facing his first deployment. So combat-induced PTSD would not be playing into it.
Betsy, you nailed it!
I can only hope there's no TV in Hasan's room. Wouldn't he love hearing the media heads trying to "understand" his frustrations?
Thank you for saying him what he is -- evil.
Locomotive Breath - I've already heard talking heads (this miorning) trying to claim Hasan developed PTSD simply from treating GIs who suffered from it. That's a new one! It's like saying psychiatrists had better not see patients suffering from agoraphobia unless their offices and apartments were in the same building.
But knowing how liberal the American Psychiatric Association and American Psychological Association are, I would not bet against their coming to his defense.
Well the news media spent quite a while telling us that Mohammed Reza Taheri-azar, who drove an SUV into a group of students at UNC-CH, was not motivated by religion. They even did their best to ignore it when he admitted he was.
The guy who perpetrated the attack at Ft. Hood has been reported as yelling "allahu akbar" which might give us a clue to his motives.
"What strikes me is how much of the original reporting was wrong on this story."
That's the problem with the internet. Immediately after the fact you get all sorts of guesses, speculations and contradictory witnesses.
As usual with these things, there's a follow-up shooting in Orlando:
Orlando gunman
"The guy who perpetrated the attack at Ft. Hood has been reported as yelling "allahu akbar" which might give us a clue to his motives."
Exactly.
The more we find out about this man's past at Walter Reed the more you wonder why he was still in the Army -- even though he got a lot of his education paid for by the military. Has insidious political correctness infected even those who are supposed to protect our country--and thus caused the death of 13 innocent people?
I AM FED UP! Political correctness is KILLING us. The Army KNEW Hasan was a traitor AND DID NOTHING to stop him. Think! What would the Army have done if during WWII an officer was discovered writing pro-Nazi and anti-American propaganda? How long would THAT officer be in uniform? How long would THAT officer stay out of prison if he was discovered trying to talk his fellow officers and soldiers out of fighting against Hitler's Germany? Hasan committed the massacre but his commanding officers and the federal agents who KNEW of his treasonous activities are guilty of dereliction of duty. The commanding officers should ALL be court-martialed and dishonorably booted out of the service. The federal agents should be fired.
Political correctness is suicidal madness!
The problem about dismissing someone like Hasan is that many servicemen, once their military paid schooling is finished, suddenly find they have an intense loathing of the military life, the very real possibility of deployment to one of the parts of the world that doesn't take American Express and a desire to get on with their new careers with different haircuts. Unfotunately a small minority become unhinged when the military takes their complaints and files them away. But since Hasan was a psychiatrist then I suppose it makes sense to ask his psychiatrist what the heck happened.
Pat Paterson -- I've read many of your posts on other topics and I usually agree with you. However, this time I do not. I don't believe this is a case where Major Hasan developed an intense loathing of the military or became unhinged in any clinical sense. I believe he did what he did out of religious fervor. It's not the military he hates but America's military. He hates his country and his country's military because we are at war with Islam whether people in the West know it or not. Major Hasan knows it.
Hasan is no more unhinged than Muslim suicide bombers, or Muslim beheaders of infidels, or Muslims who plant bombs in crowded market places, or Muslims who fly airplanes into office buildings. He's as sane as any Muslim who murders his daughter because she "dishonored" his Muslim sensibilities. He is neither insane nor anti-military. He is an evil, fanatical Muslim soldier in a war against what he believes, with all his twisted heart, is "the Great Satan."
So how much longer are people going to make excuses for this guy? Why were people excusing his behavior before 13 died?
Fort Hood gunman had told US military colleagues that infidels should have their throats cut
Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.
He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.
Colleagues had expected a discussion on a medical issue but were instead given an extremist interpretation of the Koran, which Hasan appeared to believe.
I've purposely withheld comment on this matter to this point because we are still trying to get basic facts straight.
Much has been said about Hasan and many extreme comments have been attributed to him. At this point I have have not heard a word said about how far up the chain these remarks were carried or even if they have been confirmed. Until we have answers to those basic questions it is premature to condemn the chain of command or Hasan's colleagues.
A very long and exacting Article 32 investigation will be held and not until it is complete will there be any way of making an accurate determination about Hasan's actions prior to the shooting.
People are understandably disgusted and angry but it is a mistake to make broad, sweeping condemnations of an entire religion. I've worked alongside several Muslims in the military and I've found them to be thoroughly professional, unapologetically patriotic, and completely worthy of my trust. We have worked side by side during a time of war.
There is a powerful emotional response that takes place in Americans when some of our own are lost. It is magnified to an even greater extent when that loss comes at the hands of another American. The bitter taste of betrayal can block out everything rational. This is the time to step back and assess what has happened, learn what we can, and continue to move forward in this fight with our efforts focused on finding the real threats, eliminating them, and effectively countering the means used to sustain the threat.
Blanket condemnation of a demographic that exceeds 1 billion people is not an effective plan for countering terrorist organizations, lone wolf actors, or the criminally insane. In the coming days, weeks and months, we will learn more about Hasan's history and the Army's knowledge of him. Until then it is better to focus our attention on what we do know - there are many family members and service members that can use our support at this time. It is time and effort better spent assisting them now rather than adding to speculation about Hasan, Islam and the Army.
No, what Dr Hasan did was inexcusable both in execution and probably preventable in that the Army did not notice his increasing estrangement from his fellow soldiers at all. I find the idea of him being a mole somewhat lacking in reality. But I wanted to point out that claiming religious persecution, pregnancy, family reponsbilities etc are just some of the excuses offered by many who want to renege on their commitment. It is understandable that the Army looks upon many of these claims as bogus and may not devote as much time investigating as they might have in this case. And as it became more obvious that the Army was not going to discharge him he simply acted.
"And as it became more obvious that the Army was not going to discharge him he simply acted."
If you really really don't like your role in the military there's this little thing called AWOL that doesn't result in the murder of others. I'll bet that to avoid deployment to a Muslim country he could have even gone for conscientious objector status. I have absolutely no doubt that his behavior was allowed to pass because no one wanted to be accused of persecuting the Muslim.
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In the academic world I have worked with highly educated people who I THOUGHT were reasonable.
1) A young woman from a Muslim country who dressed in Tshirts, jeans and sneakers. Somehow the topic of Salman Rushdie came up. All of a sudden she went into this tirade about how he "had insulted Islam and had to die".
2) An MIT educated faculty member from Sudan to whom I once made the innocent remark that Israel and Egypt making peace was a good thing. He went on this tirade about how "Sadat paid with his life for that betrayal".
3) Then there was the Iranian faculty member who sort of disappeared for a semester and it turned out he had been back in Iran opposing the moderating forces who were "betraying Khomeini's revolution".
Three different Muslims, three different countries, identical response to a perceived threat to Islam. Your mileage may vary.
Locomotive Breath,
Your examples are very unsettling and contrast with my own experiences working with Muslims in the military. However, the disparity created by violent extremists and outspoken radicals is why it is so important for Muslims in America to loudly condemn the actions of radicals and lunatics that commit crimes or excuse them in the name of Allah.
We don't hear enough of that and not surprisingly our suspicions grow. It is a vicious circle as American Muslim society seems more comfortable retreating into the politically advantageous safety of "victimhood". Fawning politicians will happily take advantage of that for their own ends but most Americans find it distasteful and will hold them in contempt for perceived cowardice or a deliberate effort to shirk responsibility for the actions or words of the worst elements of the Muslim community.
Many Muslims, whether foreign or American born, choose to integrate into society. There is also a large segment, particularly those Muslims that have immigrated to the United States, that prefers to live in enclaves that allow them to live a separate existence which only feeds the suspicions of many on both sides of the religious and cultural divide.
Islam is not a religion that seems to serve best those that seek modernity and tolerance. Living in the United States requires that if you cannot embrace modernity, you must at least accept tolerance for your neighbors or face being ostracized.
Hasan's actions are not just a rejection of tolerance. To suggest that would bring understatement to a new level. We still do not completely understand his motivation but whatever the case may be, there will be no allowance for it, nor should there be. What we can do is hope that enough can be learned from what is known and what will be uncovered. Those lessons learned should be fully taken in by Muslims living in the United States if they hope to live here peacefully and as accepted members of society.
Here is a story that may push the learning curve but I'm not sure if it will become a matter of being more instructional about what we can do about actors like Hasan or of what we could have done better ourselves:
http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/fort-hood-shooter-contact-al-qaeda-terrorists-officials/story?id=9030873
Subversion and Espionage Directed against the Army (SAEDA) is a long existing program devised to detect and deter intelligence efforts and terrorist activities targeting the Army. Everyone working in the Department of the Army receives briefs on the program and in the post 9-11 era, it boggles that warning signs are ever overlooked. But it does happen.
We will learn if Hasan's chain of command had suspicions and what was done in view of those suspicions. It will also emerge, again, that intelligence, or at least information, was gathered and as usual, existed blissfully useless in separate stovepipes within the Intelligence Community.
Despite the ABC story, it would still appear that Hasan most likely acted as a "lone wolf", but it does appear more and more plausible that his violent closing act was not completely without warning signs visible inside the Army and outside the gates.
Muslims must step forward and act against members of their community when they begin to exhibit dangerous behavior. The SAEDA program needs new emphasis and all of us must come to understand that we are at war and have been for decades, if not on an easily recognized battlefield, but also in the tortured minds of people like Hasan and those that support and execute the designs of violent, radical thinkers that embrace the worst perversions of Islam.
Not only going AWOL but he also could have applied for CO status, which he doesn't appear to have done. But by refusing to go or going AWOL his professional career as a psychiatrist would have been over.
I have a feeling my experience had a lot more to do with the academic/military divide than a Muslim/non-Muslim divide. I heard a lot of nutty things come out of the mouths of non-Muslims too. Keep in mind that these were all engineers who, one might have hoped, had a firmer grasp on physical reality than average.
There once was a article in one of my professional publications speculating on why terrorists often have engineering degrees. In typical fashion, they got it backwards by asking what was it about an engineering degree that made Muslims more prone to being a terrorist.
If you're a disgruntled Muslim and want to go around blowing things up, coming to the U.S. to get an engineering degree is the perfect path to take. We import large numbers of foreign engineers (Asian and India mostly) and learning how things are built is the perfect precursor to knowing how to blow them up.
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If he had asked, I'll bet they would have let Hasan avoid service in a Muslim country, finish his service obligation to the military, get an honorable dishcharge, and go on with his career. Thing is, he didn't ask.
Agreed.
Both you and Pat Patterson hit on an important point and that is Hasan's decision to stay in the Army despite his belief that he could not serve it.
As we learn more about his activities over the last six months or more, it is beginning to look as if he was already determined to serve another cause and was in contact with al Qaeda to further that end.
I've been watching with dismay as the force protection posture and security in general has gradually diminished at various military facilities around what is known as the Military District of Washington (MDW).
What confounds me the most it that Army and FBI personnel were so ineffective in responding to the signals, including overt statements, from Hasan. Whether or not you might have thought Hasan could erupt in a murderous outburst of violence or not, his behavior should have been enough to have warranted his arrest for contact with known al Qaeda figures.
If his contacts with al Qaeda were being monitored for the purpose of exploitation in the future, then it was still incumbent on the organizations involved to prevent Hasan from doing harm in any way.
I hope we do not descend into a finger pointing exercise reminiscent of the "Blame Bush" crowd following 9-11. We'll certainly not see a Michael Moore movie but in the aftermath of 9-11, I don't know how the FBI, the Army, and other organizations, can explain their apparent disregard for what was know of Hasan and his communications with al Qaeda.
Well, the CIA did miss 140,000
Soviet tourists on package tours of Afghanistan. Intelligence gathering is difficult enough without expecting 100% accuracy. All the bad guys have to do is have one rare success to accomplish the goal of diminishing the confidence people have in those charged with protectig the country.
The evidence has moved beyond "suspicious" and "troubling" to absolute proof. Hasan was a Jihadist terrorist and no amount of post-modern, new age, psychobabble bulls--t can obscure that truth.
The federal government (including the military) was "so ineffective" in responding to the glaringly obvious threat he presented because the orthodoxy of Political Correctness demanded that everyone around him close their eyes to the truth and their ears to the shouted warnings of their common sense. 13 young American soldiers were murdered in the heart of America because we have allowed an insanity to permeate our thinking. This murder - the facts and circumstances surrounding it and Hasan - would not have happened in 1945. It wouldn't have happened in 1965. But for 40 + years we have been fed a steady, unrelenting poisonous diet of self doubt, self hate and twisted values. By November 2009, no one wanted to be called "biased." No one wanted to risk public censure because they would certainly have been censured if they dared see the truth and listen to their common sense.
We're told by the mass media, our cultural elites, our educators and by every branch of our government that we may not - we cannot - assume a person who fulminates with murderous Islamic hate is an enemy. We are not allowed to think that America is good and that it has evil enemies. Even now, we hear that Hasan was "stressed." That he might have had a vicarious form of PTSD. That he just "snapped." Almost no one is admitting the truth - that when someone is screaming "Allah Akbar" when mercilessly slaughtering "infidels," that person is, in fact, a Muslim terrorist. Whether or not he is sane, according to our definition of the word, is irrelevant! If we allow the insanity of Political Correctness to continue to inform our thoughts and actions, more innocent Americans will needlessly die at Muslim terrorist hands.
When the Twin Towers were brought down I waited for America's Muslims to rise up and defiantly defend their chosen country. I waited to see large numbers of Muslims joining the military and fighting courageously alongside of their fellow Americans. I waited to hear American Muslim clerics publicly and vociferously defend America and denounce Al Qaeda, the Taliban , and violent jihad in general. None of this happened. With some very few notable exceptions, American Muslims were either completely silent or they celebrated our losses. The vast majority of American Muslims remain silent or continue celebrating. And it's not like Muslims have any qualms about fighting and killing fellow Muslims. They've been doing it for centuries. The Iran Iraq War, alone, accounted for about a million Muslim on Muslim killed and wounded.
So.....put away your Politically Correct blinders and filters. Now, what do you REALLY think accounts for the American Muslims' failure to support their nation?
So Cal Jim,
Well said.
I may have an answer to your question though it may only be partial. The politics of victimhood is the natural consequence of political correctness. There has to be a "victim" to deem an action or statement as having done harm. That relationship has been the lever that has served the practitioners of PC so well for so long.
Muslims have a legitimate claim to minority status but they have to be "victims" to gain the full benefits available through political correctness. Given that many, if not most, Muslims are also racial or ethnic minorities, the transformation to full fledged "victim" is made that much easier as we are some how willing to view their differences as disadvantages though there is as much proof of that as there is evidence of violent retribution against Muslims in America following 9-11.,
Sadly, until Muslims step up and take responsibility for members of their community they will actually be cultivating the animosity they fear.
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