When you hear people speaking about how Maj. Hasan must have been motivated by PTSD-by-proxy, or mental illness, or saying that we may never know what motivated him, that it might just remain one of those mysteries of life -- hit 'em with these seven important facts about Hasan, courtesy of Christopher Hitchens. Hitch adds:
All right, then, wasn't the gallant major also subject to ill treatment and even abuse? Only up to a point, when you consider that his parents had been given refuge from Palestine and enabled to build a life here, that he himself had knowingly joined an all-volunteer army, that he had been promoted (it seems rather faster and higher than his true abilities warranted) and allowed on the job to vent extremely noxious opinions about members of other faiths, to say nothing about his adopted country. No doubt he came in for a taunt or two, but if you want to avoid that, then don't express contempt for your fellow soldiers while in uniform. Black Americans used to be segregated. Jewish recruits were mercilessly hazed, as were men or women who looked as if they might be gay. Did any of them ever come up with an act of mass murder as a response? Did any of them ever offer a black or Jewish or gay ideology in justification of it? Would they have earned sympathy and understanding if they had? By the time the mushy "pre-post-traumatic" school was done with the story, Maj. Hasan was not just acquitted of being a bad Muslim. He was more or less exonerated of having even done a bad deed.This is not at all a matter of the usual stupid refusal of the FBI and other security services to understand an early warning even when they have detected one. It is a direct challenge to the unity and integrity of the armed services, which have been one of our society's principal organs and engines of ethnic and religious integration. A U.S. soldier who wonders about the reliability of his, let alone her, Muslim colleague is not being "Islamophobic." (A phobia is an irrational or uncontrollable fear.) If Maj. Hasan has made this understandable worry in the ranks more widespread, he has done his fanatical preacher friend the greatest possible service. But that's his fault for doing what he did, and his superiors' fault for letting him openly rehearse it for so long, not mine for pointing it out.
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Brian, an ad hominem attack on Hitchens does nothing to answer his arguments, and is in fact a sign of weakness on your part.
Poor Major Hasan. The stress of performing his job as a well paid physician with the rank of Major, in the safety of an American Fort, must have been terrible. The poor baby.
I wonder if in his training as a psychiatrist he ever came across the concepts of objectivity, transference or countertransference? Even if every one of his patients hated muslims, the hatreds are theirs. How many other psychiatrists, civilian or military, have dealt with the stress inherent in their jobs by mass-murdering the clients?
This mass murder of troops by a commissioned officer will have profound effects on the enlisted personnel for years to come. This wasn't just one rogue officer. It was a rogue, Islamofscist officer fully enabled by a culture of cowardly silence up the chain of command. This cowardly silence, this dereliction of duty came to full bloom when the Commander-in-Chief and Army Chief of Staff respectively denied the terrorist roots of the crime and praised the 'diversity' culture that willfully ignored all of the red flags.
Perhaps many of the American people are fooled. The enlisted personnel aren't so naive.
I usually disagree with Brian, but his sarcasm has a solid foundation to it that Rod seems to have missed. Hitchens would cheerfully blame a Muslim's homicide on his faith, a Christian's homicide on his faith, a Jew's homicide on his faith... because Hitchens is the author of "God is Not Great." Of course, Hitchens has also been widely quoted since 9/11 for sensibly pointing out to what pass for liberals and leftists that Osama bin Laden is not a freedom fighter, he wants to impose a rigid, ruthlessly enforced theocracy on the world. The last westerner to call bin Laden a freedom fighter, as I recall, was Ronald Reagan, back in the days when the CIA thought boosting this variant of Islam was a good way to damage international communism. So, Hitchens has some credentials to talk about, 'hey everyone, a man who guns down thirty fellow soldiers is dangerous.' But we all know that, don't we?
The truth is not going to emerge from this kind of discussion. The truth is going to emerge from a thorough examination of all the evidence. It takes a little longer than the kind of venting everyone, including Rod, gets away with here. In my seldom humble opinion, it is quite possible the net verdict will be, this guy was objectively mentally unstable, his religious passions contributed to and exacerbated that condition, the preaching of certain clerics who indeed want individual Muslim Americans to commit this kind of violence did call forth exactly what they were looking for, and his superiors did turn a blind eye in the name of diversity. The solution: keep the diversity real, hold individuals accountable, don't discriminate on race or religion, don't allow either to be an excuse for not moving swiftly to deal with the obvious. But, I don't know all this, the investigation hasn't been completed or released. The virtue of a thorough investigation is it pulls together ALL the facts, not just the ones that pop to the surface early on, and it can sort out the rumors and lies, and excuses, which always pop to the surface also.
HOW TO PREVENT FUTURE NIDAL HASANS
We have read with concern the many signs Major Hasan provided which would indicate an unstable and potentially dangerous frame of mind. Our concern is that those who actually saw and heard the signs and those to whom the signs were reported did not act upon them. From Hasan’s contact with a radical imam, to the initials SoA (Son of Allah) on his business card, to his comment that he was a Muslim first and a soldier second – there is no doubt the signs that he was potentially dangerous were there for all to see.
Furthermore, he was under surveillance by two Terrorist Task Forces, one with Department of Defense oversight and the other with FBI oversight. So why wasn’t he stopped?
The answer is quite simple – The military does not have an objective and culturally neutral system that collects information and evaluates it to determine the degree (or level) of aggression an individual is displaying, nor has it people who have a clear responsibility to observe and report this information within an objective system nor a team who is responsible to evaluate it and respond. The military does not have the AMIS solution and it desperately needs it! Major Hasan has illustrated out vulnerable we are, learn more about the problem and the solution by reading our Blog: http://Blog.AggressionManagement.com
I dont think there is any doubt that Hasan's religious beliefs influenced his killings. The question is whether or not the killings were preventable, and was it terrorism.
On the first account, probably no. No one is good at predicting who will become violent. Looking at Hitch's individual claims, he is wrong about several of them. On point 1, those communications were known about and examined by counterterrorism people. Those were people who were motivated to catch Muslims, not engage in PC behavior. 2 is irrelevant as it just shows this was probably premeditated, though I also own guns, so maybe I am a future terrorist. On 4 he cites proselytizing. I suspect he is being disingenuous here as he must be aware of the strong evangelical presence in our military. Or, maybe not. Prbably a waste of time trying to convert him. 5, suicide martyrdom is the central concept of Bin Ladenism? Really? It is an important tactic, but not really the central purpose or idea behind his or any other terrorist group. Think about it, it doesnt make for a long lived group. Most accurately, in reference to suicide bombers, they try to convince others to do it for them.
That leaves 3, 6 and 7. None of these made his violence predictable. Many think that these are wars on Islam. Read the neocon literature on the Long War concept. Systematically invading the countries of the Middle East and replacing them with pro-Western style democracies. Go read Commentary or Contentions. Heck, go read HuffPo and these are seen as wars for oil or wars against Muslims.
Lastly, was this terrorism? He does not fit the typical profile. He is older, American and had no direct contact with a recruiter. He does not fit with the profile you would expect from published military profiles. Remembering that terrorism is violence with a political goal, what was his goal? It needs to be more than just killing? So far, we know it probably was influenced by his religious beliefs, probably had something to do with being deployed. It also may have had components of resentment and anger.
For full disclosure, Bruce Hoffman who does lots of terrorism research, after being a strong proponent of the direct recruitment of terrorists, has reportedly put out new info suggesting that there is a new emerging phenomenon of self-starters. People who based on Internet writings and pictures (Gitmo is frequently cited IIRC) are self converting to terrorism. If verified, this is worrisome, but not worthy of panic. See Schneier.
http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2009/11/beyond_security.html
Steve
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