Nidal Hasan: A pious Muslim
Friday November 6, 2009
Categories: Islamic terrorism
Latest from the NYTimes: As military and law-enforcement investigators waited to interview Major Hasan, a contradictory portrait of him emerged. Neighbors described him as a man who dressed alternately in a military uniform and flowing white robes, and who gave...
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About Crunchy Con
Rod Dreher is an editorial columnist for the Dallas Morning News, and author of "Crunchy Cons" (Crown Forum), a nonfiction book about conservatives, most of them religious, whose faith and political convictions sometimes put them at odds with mainstream conservatives. The views expressed in this blog are his own.
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rod, tagging this as "islamic terrorism" is beneath you. i thought.
"What did the Army know about this man's views -- and why were they not on alert over him?"
My guess (and somewhat informed as I work in the medical field, and often at a VA medical center) is that the military is struggling to deal with PTSD afflicting its soldiers and the supply of psychiatrists to deal with the aftermath of PTSD does not meet the demand. I think we may find in the days to come that warning signs were ignored because any psychiatrist was considered superior to no psychiatrist.
The answer is easy. The views were overlooked/excused because they needed this guy for a deployment. This guy wanted out of the deployment, and this is probably a factor in his going extremist.
The military doesn't have a lot of spare personnel. Especially not in career fields which take years of training, like military linguist, physician, mental health professional. Mental health personnel are in especially short supply, and a large number of them are needed to serve in combat areas (in Iraq, you don't get evacuated out for mental health concerns, you go see a counselor for an hour and then go back to work.) This officer owed the Army time in exchange for the Army funding his education. They were due a deployment from him - overdue, actually.
The Army will pay closer attention from now on but it can't afford to dismiss from service everybody who rails against their coming deployments. There are regulations for prosecuting commissioned officers who criticize U.S. policy. And there are laws on the books against sedition. I imagine these two will be better enforced from here on out.
All the speculation makes for blog hits and good hate talk, but there are several things that should be looked at if people are interested in some sort of truth. This should be with the understanding that we really dont know what it is that drives people to commit mass murders.
First, there were red flags in this guy's history. A loner with no girl friend (or boyfriend for that matter) should have worried someone in a group about to deploy. We looked for these kinds of problems before we deployed, and after for that matter. If this kind of behavior was coupled with a recent increase in religiosity, that should have raised another flag.
Next, we need to know more about his online activities. According to Army War College studies, there is a fair amount of online jihadist recruiting, but it is not very successful. Person to person recruitment works best. If there was online recruiting that influenced this guy, why was it successful? Was there personal recruitment?
Lastly, there are conflicting reports about this guy's competence and behavior. If finding competent medical people, or any specialty, is becoming more difficult because of our extended wars, we need find ways to decompress our troops and recruit more competent, stable people.
Steve
What I want to know is this: What did the Army know about this man's views -- and why were they not on alert over him?
The U.S. military, and the larger federal government that it is a part of, is a giant bureaucracy. It takes time for a bureaucracy to respond to changed conditions in its operating environment. The U.S. military and intelligence agencies have been stuck in the cold war mentality and have been very slow to realize that Islamism has replaced Soviet Communism as the next threat. In the same manner, it took the U.S. government a long time to recognize Soviet Communism as a threat from the 1930's until the early 1950's when it became generally recognized.
It takes a decade or more for a bureaucracy the size of the U.S. government to recognize a new challenge and to respond effectively to it.
"What did the Army know about this man's views -- and why were they not on alert over him?"
Seriously. Maybe the military should spend less time investigating and booting out gay soldiers and more time trying to root out the mental cases bent on mass murder.
What outrages me about this is the differential standard offered to Islamism, as compared to other totalitarian ideologies. My wife, who is Japanese, had to sign a declaration under oath (as do all immigrant applicants to the U.S.) that she was not a member of any communist or any other organization that advocates the violent overthrow of the U.S. government and its replacement with a totalitarian system. The oath, which I read with her, definitely focused on communism and even fascism.
Islamism is certainly as much of a totalitarian ideology as either Nazism or Soviet Communism. Yet we do nothing to keep its proponents out of the U.S.
Islamism is a totalitarian ideology for the following reasons:
1) It does not recognize our constitutional form of government.
2) It does not recognize the separation between state and religion.
3) It does not allow current members to quit the religion.
Number 3 is the individualized islamic version of the old Brezhnev Doctrine that did not allow a country, once communist, to quit being communist.
Steve, active recruitment may not come from online content. Rather, these forums serve to inspire and further the acceptance of Islamic extremism. This material can certainly inspire lone actors or small groups with no formalized personal ties to terrorist groups to seek out contact with such groups, or to commit attacks independently. Independent attacks are usually less successful, but much harder to detect and prevent.
I'm thinking of the Fort Carlson soldier who raped and murdered a woman. Remember him? The one who thought he was an alien called "Black Raptor"? We sent him into the field, knowing he had, um, issues. When we are sending obviously deranged folk into the field, because we simply need all the people we can get, why should one person complaining about going get set aside? This is a joke question, right? We aren't serious about these wars. We weren't when we started. If we were serious, we would have planned for long wars, and enlisted or drafted enough folk to make it happen. Ft. Hood is a tragedy. It's not a surprise. Pushing the Big Green Machine past the breaking point has consequences.
"What did the Army know about this man's views -- and why were they not on alert over him?"
---
Oh, for a second I thought you were referring to Tim McVeigh.
What precisely do you want the Army to do? While you give up a lot of rights when you sign on the dotted line, you still have the right to your political opinions, as well as the right to express them (as long as you don't portray them as endorsed by the Army).
Nor do you give up your right to bear arms under the second amendment (although you can't store them in the barracks; soldiers there have to lock them up in the arms room, but that wouldn't have applied to Hasan). So as long as Hasan bought the guns legally, what could the Army have done?
And if you think they should have gone after Hasan on the basis of his beliefs, do you think they should go after these guys too?
One participant under the username “WhitePride85,” who said he is a 24-year-old staff sergeant from Madison, Wis., wrote: “I have been in the Army for over 5 years now ... I am a SSGT ... I have been in Iraq and Kuwait ... I love and will do anything to keep our master race marching. I have been a skinhead forever.”
Incidentally, I recall that a few months ago, DHS identified certain veterans, especially right-wing extremists, as being a potential threat and certain parts of the conservative blogosphere went into a collective tizzy (although this blog declined to join in IIRC).
Is there a way of reconciling what Rod is talking about without sending Glenn Beck into paroxysms? (OK, that's probably a lost cause)
Personally, I believe that one of the prices we all pay for liberty, especially the second amendment, is that we expose ourselves to danger from potential bad actors, very occasionally deadly danger. The balance between individual liberty and security is a tough one to manage, but I think the benefit of the doubt should fall on the side of liberty.
His Name is: Rodriguez
Mexicans are reassessing their place in America today after a guy named Rodriguez went on a shooting spree. Not.
Want to know how the Army missed Hasan coming apart.
Try eight years of war and a metal health system in his chain of command that is burdened beyond breaking to cope with all the soldiers wrecked by the war in Iraq.
It would be helpful to give the military the resources it needs to deal with all it's broken soldiers, but ten that would mean raising taxes. And we all know how evil that is to the Ann Rand party.
AB-Yes, which is one of the reasons they probably keep it up despite an apparent lack of success. I think his online traffic should help sort out his mental state a bit and give some clues about motivation. His telling us himself will be even better.
Steve
It's clear that the military is just another dysfunctional wing of the government and should be handed over to the private sector to be run more efficiently and effectively.
and when was the last time a Christian uttered God's name in an attack. lol Rod.
Dude, Rod.
There's no way he's crazy?
There's no way he's not crazy.
Please don't disappoint me.
Really nice article looking at the manpower constraints the military is dealing with.
http://www.politicsdaily.com/2009/11/06/new-afghan-war-headache-not-enough-troops/
Steve
Part of the problem might have been that the military is a federal bureaucracy and "political correctness" is enforced there and can get you into deep trouble if you notice the wrong things--like a potential Moslem terrorist in the ranks. Noticing that and reporting on it could get you into a lot of grief.
Second--President Obama was a total disgrace when people like myself were waiting to see him say some serious words on the news TV about the tragedy at Fort Hood. Instead, we get a yuk-yuk shout out to some buddies and some smiles and glad talk--then Oh Yeh about that shooting in Texas.
Third -today he tells us not to jump to conclusions as stories about Hasan yelling "Allah Akbur" circulated from eyewitnesses to the tragedy. Yet, isn't this the president that (verbally) wrongfully hung a Cambridge, Ma. cop in front of the whole nation.
Left-liberals preemptively accuse the viewers of the Glenn Beck show of violent crimes that they will never commit, on the basis of motives that they don't in fact have.
The same left-liberals retroactively deny the motives of radical-Islamist militants for violent crimes that they have already done, violent crimes that they have committed already on the basis of motives that they manifestly had.
Like Sonny and Cher said:
"The beat goes on ..."
http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ
Steve, they can muster enough troops without impacting deployment schedules IF the Iraq drawdown continues apace. Realistically, that drawdown is going to have to go through, even if Iraq postpones elections and gets violent again. We don't have the bodies to add troops in Afghanistan without drawing them down in Iraq. Simple math.
The last big troop increase was sustained by extending combat tours to 15 months and stop-lossing troops for the duration of their unit's deployment. Both measures have been phased out, but could be phased back in again if necessary. Such measures do not come without a cost. But the military will carry out its assigned missions, regardless. It is up to civilians in government to count that cost.
Has anyone heard if there was dancing in the streets in Tehran, Palestine, etc over this event?
Deacon, I'm not sure you know whereof you speak. Go visit an Army motor pool, unobserved, and see how much political correctness you can find...
I just learned about this story this morning, and it is horrific. Two of my friends work at Walter Reed, and for all I know, may have worked with Hasan. It does appear that he was a loner who acted alone. While I doubt very much whether he is psychotic, and am sure he knew what he was doing, it is disturbing to think that Hasan's understanding of himself as a Muslim would lead him to take this horrific action.
However, I don't believe there was any organized conspiracy behind him. One thing I read said he was disappointed that Obama hadn't changed U.S. policy related to Iraq and Afghanistan more than he has.
What I find really fascinating is, while all the attention here is about him being a pious Muslim, everything I've read in the news coverage emphasizes that he was an army counsellor dealing with soldiers who have post-traumatic stress syndrome, and a lot of people who knew him suggest that he became afflicted with exactly the mental condition he was assigned to treat. That is a whole new dimension. It could be true that he is a pious Muslim, and that colored his mental stress, or that his mental stress colored his sense of Islam.
Perhaps this fits into a larger pattern: to fight a war by rotating a small number of troops into a war zone for a year or more, then back to civilian life, then back to the war zone, is beyond what human nature can take. In Vietnam, you went over once, except for a few higher-ranking professionals. In WW II, you were in for the duration, and the whole civilian population suffered with you, if not at the same level of risk. Maybe everyone who believes there is something worth fighting for over there should volunteer for one tour of duty, nobody should serve two, and nobody should serve more than two years counselling those who are falling apart...
"How is it possible that all this was overlooked or excused? The entire country will be asking this, first in stunned, hushed voices, then, as the shock subsides, with rising fury. Many today already have a nagging sense that we are still collectively sleepwalking through the imminent and ongoing danger of Islamic fundamentalism, unable or unwilling to focus on what is before our eyes for fear of recrimination or causing offense. And 13 are dead and 30 are injured. It defies comprehension"
Defies comprehension? Not really. Actually, it's all rather comprehendible.
Look at the initial thread Rod had on this last night. Look at the reactions of some to the truth of Islamic fundamentalism and its use of mass murder as an instrument of evangelism and policy. Those responses tell us everything about how this has come to pass.
Look at our response to 9/11, the sick farce that is airport security, shaking down old women and children, while deliberately not attending to men and women whose names suggest greater scrutiny, given where the threat is coming from. Look, for that matter, at how Rod was pilloried for 'jumping to conclusions' about the name Malik Nadal Hasan (now known to be Nidal Malik Hasan).
It's political correctness. When we need to modify an absolute like 'correct' with something like 'political', then we are winking at the denial of truth.
Yesterday, 13 of our most precious citizens paid for that denial with their lives.
We know from whence the enemy comes. Appropriate profiling needs to be implemented. But that means that we need to grow up and get past this sixth-grader mentality that keeps us from doing what we need to because we might get called a name like....BIGOT. Considering the Quislings who hurl that one around, I consider it a validation that I'm on the right track when they apply it to me.
So, for openers, it seems that the apologists for PC have suggested on another thread that muslim soldiers are torn over seeing their brothers (that would be their murderous al Quaeda and Taliban brothers) die at our hands. Fine. Let's ignore the fact that Italian-Americans and German-Americans killed quite a few of their distant clan in WWII without the same mental reservation. If muslim service personnel want out or need out, we need to immediately implement a streamlined process for mustering them out of the service and monitoring their adjustment afterward.
That would be a small step in the right direction.
Following up on Deacon John's apt observation of President Teleprompter's typically disgraceful behavior in this case as in almost every case, perhaps, if Hasan comes out of his coma, President T. can hook Hasan up with a gig on the Woods Fund board.
After all, we don't want to jump to any conclusions about Hasan's motives, which may have been of the same "mainstream" and "respectable" sort as those of President T.'s old buddy Bill Ayers, who -- like Hasan perhaps -- recognized that "dissent is patriotic."
Those darn Muslims. You won't catch Christians acting like this. It all goes back to the Crusades when all those Muslims left their homes in the Levant and traveled throughout Europe attacking cities and proclaiming themselves to be kings of those lands. And look at the current Muslim leaders. First Afghanistan invades the U.S. Then Iraq invades the US. And they weren't the first either. Muslim leaders of Panama, Haiti, Nicaragua, Honduras, and Grenada invaded us too.
All I can say is, thank God for Christians; the only peaceful people around.
AB-Hence, all the debate about troop levels and whether to pay that cost. While no one knows why this guy killed those people, the circumstances suggest that his superiors ignored a potential problem on a deployment. They may have thought he was bluffing to avoid going, we have all seen that. My concern is based upon something Ricks, amongst others, has noted. Not everyone is deploying equally and there are shortages in some areas of personnel. Is that causing us to overlook potential problems? Chiarelli's group recently noted that we have already set a new record in suicides for the year.
Steve
What AB says rings true. This is how hurting the military is
Recruitment of mentally disabled youth a 'great discredit' to USMC:
How a mentally disabled OC youth ended up in the US Marine Corps.
We as a nation of very tolerant non-Muslims, are going to have to come to terms with the fact that Islam is a religion that does not tolerate any dissent or denial of it.
I'm just going to put this out there. Not a terribly original thought, but if this same shooter had cried out, "In the name of Jesus!" prior to unleashing his bloodbath.
What would the media and Obama administration reaction have been? At what point does such an act qualify as terrorism? Wasn't Eric Rudolph also a "loner"? Yet he is, justifiably, categorized by the U.S. government as a terrorist (the difference being that there aren't armies of Christians training to repeat Mr. Rudolph's heinous acts).
Still, why should we treat Mr. Hasan differently?
I concluded about eight years ago, based on the horrific evidence presented to me and millions of others, that Islam may have its peaceful quadrants, but it is a faith that has a viral and sinister meme at its source -- one that seems to repeatedly encourage justified violence.
Incidentally, this was tragedy was also Obama's "My Pet Goat" moment, but the media largely covered his posterior: http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/A-Disconnected-President.html
"We as a nation of very tolerant non-Muslims..."
--
Whoa! Stop right there. Talk to Maher Arar, the innocent Canadian who was arrested for Breathing While Muslim and sent for 10 months of US-government-sanctioned torture in Syria.
Americans calling themselves tolerant, would be like the Amish calling themselves flashy. It just can't be heard while keeping a straight face.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/07/us/07muslim.html
MAJ Hasan's mosque has condemned his actions at today's services. He wasn't the only soldier to regularly pray there. (Soldiers would pray in uniform because Friday is a regular duty day - their commanders probably release them for an extended lunch break on that day, with the expectation that they come back in for final formation/end of day briefings.)
How is it possible that all this was overlooked or excused?
The same way we ended up with President Barack Hussein Obama, a do-nothing lefty, friend of domestic terrorists, and acolyte of racist black nationalist preachers. In fact, the more I read about it the more I blame the Ft. Hood attacks on Obama's criticism of U.S. military efforts of the last decade and his international groveling to Muslims.
Houghton, was Scott Roeder, who murdered Dr. George Tiller, a Muslim? Jeez, he must have been. Otherwise you'd have to figure he was one of SomeGuySomewhere's tolerant non-Muslims.
Whatever you do, don't go near a mirror. They'll scare the heck out of you.
Nomilk gets right to the root of the matter. Obama did it. Hey Rod, you've got a nice bunch of folks wandering around here. I'll bet it makes you proud to have this kind of a following.
Good luck with the foil hats, people. And remember, just keep banging the rocks together.
Dio out.
A committed religious person who proselytizes his neighbors, goes to religious services a lot, fanatically adheres to their faith, and has more objections to the war
Except for being concerned about unjust war, that sounds like a lot of the military to me. Of course, they are Christians from Texas and Colorado and Mississippi. I didn't realize that being a devout religious believer made you suspect in the U.S military?
The pious muzlim is the person He who believes in God above: Who scans the universe around And o'er its face sees marks abound Of matchless wisdom, power.
Hey Rod, you've got a nice bunch of folks wandering around here. I'll bet it makes you proud to have this kind of a following.
Funny, I think the same thing about the Sodomophile demimonde that inhabits the comboxes here.
Thanks for the post, of all the articles I have read on Nidal Hasan, I can say he is a staunch believer of Muslim religion. The act is very saddening and 13 innocent people lost their lives. I hope justice is done to all.
r4ds
PantoRant: Why is there Gun Control on Army Bases?
http://02e56fa.netsolhost.com/blog1/index.php/2009/11/05/why-is-there-gun-control-on-army-bases
sure muslims are violent and believe killing gets them closer to God.
but aren't Christians hoping for the death of all humanity so they can ascend to heaven and that the non-believers will be punished?
I'll stick with the lesser of two evils for now.
"but aren't Christians hoping for the death of all humanity so they can ascend to heaven and that the non-believers will be punished?"
Ummm...No! Christians pray for Jesus' return and the salvation of all sinners. That's the faith handed on through Scripture and Tradition.
"sure muslims are violent and believe killing gets them closer to God...I'll stick with the lesser of two evils for now"
So you'd rather just the killing and conversion at the point of a gun? Please tell me that you had a few last night before posting this.
George Washington,
Actually, *you* can't stick to the lesser or to any other kind of evil.
You don't believe in God -- so you *can't* believe in evil either, or in good.
Whatever Muslims or Christians do might displease or please you.
But -- at least by *your* lights -- it can't be evil or good, just displeasing or pleasing as the case may be.
If we regard Fort Hood as a kind of small-scale 9/11, then shouldn't -- for consistency's sake -- left-liberals be starting a Fort Hood Truther movement now.
After all, the the government had warning in advance about Nidal Hasan.
And the current President is the only President we've ever had who's on record as collaborating with domestic terrorist.
So clearly Fort Hood was "an inside job" -- or clearly it ought to be, at least in left-liberals' eyes.
Perhaps Fort Hood was planned in advance by the administration to help the public overcome its "fear" of domestic terror.
The idea would be to have a domestic terrorist attack that the President and his administration would deign to acknowledge as such, thereby demonstrating that the public has nothing to "fear" from domestic terrorist attacks.
One would think that the new left-liberal Fort Hood Truther movement would want that truth to get out, since demonstrating how little we have to "fear" from domestic terror would be "speaking truth to power," or, in this case, "power" speaking "truth" to the "fearful" public -- which is the whole point of the Obama presidency, after all.
Hey everybody,
First of all, I'd like to thank everyone assembled here today. This is the finest blog on the internet, and you are all a big part of the reason why. I'd like to give a shout out to Rod for creating this fine community. Now, I understand we've had a tragedy at Ft. Hood...
I guess I don't understand- or perhaps, understand all too well- why the headline to this post isn't "Nidal Hasan-- A Deranged Lunatic". Not trying to say the Islam isn't a factor, just not nearly as much of one as many here would like to make it out to be. The guy was a nut and has more in common with Seung-Hui Cho or the Columbine kids rather than Osama bin Laden. But talking about that doesn't bring the blog hits, now, does it?
Stari- Your earlier comment about recruiters: This is a problem that has been documented repeatedly. Recruiters have quotas, and meet them as they can.
Major Hasan seems to strongly fit the profile of the mass murderer. "He was quiet, and kept to himself" etc etc. Let the muslims have one. We get whites and asians, they deserve their own.
As a matter of curiosity: How much stress and anxiety does a mental health professional pick up from his patients?
Brett R. has a point.
Maybe we should just file Nidal Hasan away with other free-range "deranged lunatics" whom left-liberals have been the first and most vocal to argue had no ideological motives at all for their crimes:
Shawn Allen Berry
Lawrence Russell Brewer
Russell Henderson
John William King
Aaron McKinney
Timothy McVeigh
Scott Roeder
Eric Rudolph
Left-liberals sometimes seem to spend half their time day-dreaming about how righteous they'll feel if Barack Obama is ever killed.
But, of course, if, God forbid, he ever is, they will be the first and most vocal to argue that his killer, whomever that might be, was merely a free-range "deranged lunatic" with no ideological motive at all for his or her crime.
The use of the word "tragedy" in these cases is telling. A tragedy is an event beyond human comprehension or control, an excuse to furrow our brows, wag our heads, talk psychologically, drop off a teddy bear, light a candle and, finally, shrug it all off. A tragedy is something you must submit to. A A tragedy is exactly what certain elements and their abettors and dupes want us to believe. I don't.
For Deacon JMB – President Obama made his comments about the Ft. Hood shooting while appearing at a previously scheduled event at the U.S. Department of the Interior. The beginning of his statement reflected what any President would say to departmental employees at an event related to that department’s mission. In fact, I believe most CEO’s would have done that the same way at a private sector event, as well. After going thought the “thanks for setting up the event blah blah blah” the President segued into his comments on the Ft. Hood tragedy. Sounded fine to me in that context but then I don’t tend to see that much difference between Republican and Democratic Presidents (including our present chief executive). Nor do I fear this one any more than I have any other one. He’s just the dude the American people elected, no different from any of the other dudes they’ve entrusted with the powers of the Presidency over the centuries.
As to Hasan, his military service began in 1997. After 9/11, he reportedly asked several times for a discharge but was denied. That indicates he realized he wasn’t a good match for service in a changing environment. There are any number of reasons why someone who no longer wanted to serve might not have been released from his obligation. However, we don’t know them yet.
I'm curious which of Hasan's behavior should have been the tip-off there was a problem? A single webposting allegedly done by him? The fact he was religious? The fact--in addition to wearing scrubs and his uniform--he sometimes wore traditional Islamic clothes? That he went to religious services and held orthodox beliefs about women? That he criticized the war? None of those--or even all of those in combination--don't strike me as evidence he was about to go on a shooting spree.
Jennifer Rubin is a Zionist who writes for the neocon contentions blog. These people are fanatically loyal to Israel, rationalize all her crimes, demonize her enemies, and are doing their best to provoke an aggressive war against Iran that would kill many more people than the criminal psychiatrist.
Some kill with a six-gun and some with a fountain pen.
We need to be equally alert to criminals from both camps.
Sounded fine to me in that context but then I don’t tend to see that much difference between Republican and Democratic Presidents (including our present chief executive).
Well, your lack of discernment would seem to diminish your credibility quite a bit.
You also might have missed the fact that the POTUS misidentified the very award he himself had bestowed on Joe Medicine Crow just 3 months prior. He called it the "Medal of Honor," our nation's highest military award for valor, when in fact it was the "Medal of Freedom," our nation's highest civilian award for contributions to the national interest.
Has big O any credibility left?
Nomilk, look at my handle, Indy. I'm an Independent. That means I vote for Democratic and Republican candidates alike. To say people like that have no credibility makes no sense. Every POTUS misspeaks sometimes, you just haven't convinced me that this one is any different on such issues than any other. There's plenty of room within the U.S. for people such as I, not everyone has to be a mindless cheerleader or an unrelenting critic of a President. Whther it is Bush or Obama, some of us are like, ok, he's the Prez, let's hope America comes through the challenges as well as possible.
As to Jennifer Rubin, among the professorate, there has been some recent expressions of concern about the weaknesses students show the classroom in areas requiring self- representation. Professors relate this to the examination of Emotional Intelligence and how a person views him or herself within a group setting. Some students are overly focused on political correctness, others are too coccooned from living within a consensus culture that they haven’t experienced much pluralism or serious difference of opinion. Some professors have pointed out that neither too much political correctness or over protection by enveloping themselves in orthodoxy prepares them well for entering the working world, where they are going to have team up and collaborate with many differing people.
I wonder how much of that is related to the poor models we see on the Internet. Look at how Jennifer Rubin says “How is it possible that all this was overlooked or excused? The entire country will be asking this, first in stunned, hushed voices, then, as the shock subsides, with rising fury.” A good example of how not to frame an issue. No room for other reactions, just a didactic assertion. No writer can speak for “the entire country.” And to assume hushed voices and rising fury represent the entire range of reaction sounds silly to me. By making me roll my eyes at that sentence, she weakened the rest of her presentation. I have a friend whose son is stationed at Ft. Hood. What Rubin writes didn’t reflect how my friend and I discussed this. Our reaction was more along the lines of this is horrible, why did it happen, and could it have been prevented? No hushed voices, no rising fury, mostly just shock and regret.
From the cosmic irony department. The ads along the right hand side of this thread are for a Muslim dating web site. Proof positive that computer algorithms can't understand context.
The religion of peace strikes again. Anyone that doesn't see the truth of about islam is a fool.
Why can't we just wait a little while and let the facts come out before engaging in near-mindless speculation? How about a little patience? Why is it crucial to speculate before we have facts? Initial impressions often turn out to be true, but sometimes they don't.
If Dreher's suspicions turn out to be true, there will be plenty of opportunity for informed comment. But without facts, our discussion of the subject of the role of Islam in the US is no better informed than it was a week ago. In fact, if it's probably less well informed because of the emotions of the situation.
Also, the armchair mental illness diagnoses Dreher has quoted show the complete ignorance of the speakers. Someone is not mentally ill because they are "unfriendly"? That's just stupid. So is speculation that acting "methodically" is inconsistent with serious mental illness.
A follow-up for Nomilk. I understand why Americans who live comfortably in the middle of the ideological spectrum and aren’t alarmed by either a Republican or Democratic administration may mystify some people who identify strongly with one party or the other. However, we are in the mix as far as voters are concerned and that’s as it should be in a nation which values democratic principles. As to the credibility issue, isn’t yours or mine to assert on behalf of the country, any more than it has been in the past. Polling in October showed that 2 out of 3 Americans said President Obama has the qualities a President should have. On policy issues, many of which are complex and don’t have easy solutions (Afghanistan, the economy) half agree with him, half do not. The way I see it, we’re just individuals who are in the mix along with millions of our fellow Americans. I'm cool with that.
If muslim service personnel want out or need out, we need to immediately implement a streamlined process for mustering them out of the service and monitoring their adjustment afterward.
That seems like a sensible idea.
Crustacean - H. M. Stuart, the good owner of Alexandria, a blog I post at, has requested that I extend an invitation to you to take a look at our humble site and consider joining us there as a blogger.
AnotherBeliever - I am taking it upon myself to extend the same inviation to you, as I think you would be a welcome addition to that blog.
The site is:
http://aleksandreia.wordpress.com/
I just updated the original post with a long passage.
Can we please stop this Rodriguez nonsense? Rodriguez's ethnicity is utterly irrelevant to his (alleged) act. Hasan's religious beliefs are apparently central to his.
Thanks for the update, Rod.
The Washington Post reports that
“A cousin of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan said that he began a stricter practice of Islam after his mother died nine years ago, observing the five daily prayers and taking other aspects of the faith more seriously after a loss that affected him deeply.
"He became religious after the death of his mother. Before that he was more secular," said Mohammed Mounif Hasan, 25, part of an extended family split between the United States and their ancestral town on the outskirts of Ramallah in the West Bank. The mother had undergone a long treatment for cancer, and the three sons "were really connected to her."\
Like others who knew Hasan, members of his family here on the West Bank were struggling to reconcile the murderous Fort Hood shooting spree with a man they knew as unassuming and seemingly dedicated to his military career.
"He is a doctor and loves the U.S.," Ismail Mustafa Hamad, 88, his grandfather, said to the Reuters news agency from his home in Al-Bireh. "America made him what he is. Whether he became angry or something else, I don't know."
John E. - Agn Stoic, I bookmarked your site and will be taking a look at it later.
Rod,
"What did the Army know about this man's views -- and why were they not on alert over him?"
You answered you own questions with your own next sentence.
"Col. Terry Lee said on Fox last night..."
Hey, The New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC, and every Neocon's favorite, The Washington Post, are hardly much better in the accuracy department, but at least they have a few people who try to deliver the facts without spin.
Fox?
That's Shep Smith and ... what?
Roger Ailes's Personal BS Machine?
Had you written that "Shep Smith reported..." or "Col. Terry Fox told Fox's Shep Smith..." I would have bought it. Smith doesn't let much BS get past. He asks actual pertinent questions - a rarity throughout the media today.
Fox in general? It's selling, but I stopped buying about five years ago.
Rod,
My apologies.
Neglected to mention Jennifer Rubin, or Jenny Poo as she's known in these parts for her fondling and coddling of one Avigdor Lieberman.
As to Jenny Poo's question, one ought to point out that the Pentagon and State Department ignored American Israel Public Affairs Committee bosses Steve Rosen and Keith Weissman stealing our secrets for years.
Or does AIPAC trying to use a foreign government to endanger 330 million Americans somehow pass muster in your neck of the woods?
From Kamran Pasha’s column at HuffPo, an account from an acquaintance of Hasan’s at Ft. Hood (a fellow Muslim, albeit a recent convert who first studied the religion for strategic reasons to understand the adversary after 9/11, then converted while continuing to serve in the U.S. Army).
“Richard remembered one of his first conversations with Hasan. The newly-arrived army psychiatrist told Richard that he felt the “war on terror” was really a war against Islam, and that perhaps Muslims should not be part of the US military.
Richard told Nidal that he disagreed. . . .Richard’s view as a Muslim was that he had a responsibility to do good in whatever situation he found himself in. He was a Muslim in the American military at a time when the United States was in conflict with areas of the Muslim world. Richard’s role was to do his part as a Muslim by creating new friendships and partnerships between the American military and the Muslim community.
But Hasan clearly did not share Richard’s point of view, and Richard decided not to get into an argument with a fellow solider he had just met. And so the two moved on from their dispute and established a friendship as fellow Muslims in the Fort Hood community.
As Richard got to know Hasan better over the next several months, he found the major to be a pious man who was at the mosque daily. But Richard also began to garner a sense of Hasan’s political views that troubled him. A black-and-white outlook on Islam and life that had no room for nuance or debate. Hasan had apparently attended a mosque led by an imam named Anwar Al-Awlaki, a Yemeni scholar whose political views Richard disagrees with.
Awlaki is a controversial figure among Muslims, and has been accused by the Congressional Joint Inquiry on 9/11 of serving as a “spiritual advisor” to two of the September 11 hijackers. While Richard is careful to say that he respects much of Awlaki’s historical scholarship, he rejects his political ideology, which posits a black-and-white, us versus them, view of America’s relationship with the Islamic world. . . Richard does not know how heavily Hasan was influenced by fundamentalist thinkers like Awlaki.”
Brian :
"Except for being concerned about unjust war, that sounds like a lot of the military to me. Of course, they are Christians from Texas and Colorado and Mississippi. I didn't realize that being a devout religious believer made you suspect in the U.S military?"
It used to be called "profiling" in law enforcement. It was a very simple concept. It went like this:
A certain kind of crime keeps coming out of a certain community. Law enforcement would then send in undercover personnel to infiltrate the criminal networks in that community. Of course, that agent would themselves be an ethnic/religious member of that community, so as to blend in and be convincing. In the case of the mafia, we know where they live, where they worship etc. Simple concept, right?
Then there was a very separate and sinister issue of law enforcement officials abusing the powers and trust vested in them by the people, and engaging in racial harassment and intimidation based upon nothing else than their own personal and even communal hatreds. That's not to say that the communities targeted, like African-Americans were utopian societies.
However, the PC crowd hit on the idea of conflating the two issues and rolling them into one, calling it profiling. Thus, a valuable tool of law enforcement was shredded, having nothing to do with its legitimate exercise in protecting the public welfare.
That's how 9/11 came to pass. Profiling is bad. Mindlessness is good. Throwing the baby out with the bath may assuage certain misguided, one-dimensional thinkers, and even some more perfidious activists among us, but this conflation has also led to the killings at Fort Hood.
Malik Hasan sent red flags skyward for quite some time. Hectoring PTSD patients from Iraq and Afghanistan about their Islamic-related traumas, and even proselytizing them. He was 'counseled' for doing so. He compared homicide bombers to soldiers who threw themselves on grenades, did not associate with fellow officers outside of work, inveighed against the war as unjust, etc.
But profiling aversiveness has so permeated the military as well, that no officer dared risk his or her career by assembling the data and creating a.....PROFILE!, and reporting it to a superior officer.
13 Troops paid for that with their lives. I hope that at least one officer above the level of Lt. Colonel gets run out of the service for this.
No, Brian, there is nothing in those Christian soldiers to compare with this particular constellation of behaviors which amounted to a billboard at the Officer's Club, announcing the inevitable. Christians have engaged in treason and murder for reasons unrelated to their faith, but there too profiling often catches smaller problems before they become larger ones.
It was a nice snark Brian, but Fort Hood has become another watershed moment. PC mindlessness will yield to more discriminate thought; the ability to discriminate true profiling of behavioral constellations from harassment for who or what a person is. Every thinking American needs to call every PC proponent at every step. No more winking at protecting criminals because they also happen to come from traditionally persecuted minorities. This is America, where all of us fall into that category.
i wonder how much of all of this is about islam per se, and how much is really about religious fundamentalism,
islam can be a very fundamentalist dogmatic faith. and that fact is being wrestled with by muslims and non-muslims alike. and on the flipside of that coin, christians who advocate a fundamentalist adherence to their own brand of dogma (or as it is spinned; 'values') should expect to be put to the same level of scrutiny.
so a lot of the 'look in the mirror' comments are not a pc defense of islam, but rather a sincere consideration of what the practical effects of a fundamentalist religious mentality may be. whether it be islam, wiccanism, or christianity.
Hard to say at this point whether “PC-ness” was a factor or whether there were other factors that played a more prominent role in his retention in his position, such as resource questions. Hasan was a highly trained officer. As far as recruiting enlisted men, a report released this past week said that approximately 75% percent of the America's 17- to 24-year-olds who seek to enter military service are ineligible “largely because they are poorly educated, overweight and have physical ailments that make them unfit for the armed forces.” Since the war in Iraq, the Army has had to use more waivers and reduce some standards in order to meet some of its recruiting goals.
Should someone such as Pfc. Steven Green, convicted of the rape of an Iraqi child and the murder of her family while deployed, been accepted for military service in the first place? Would he have been deemed eligible to serve in the peacetime army prior to 9/11? Maybe, maybe not. He was discharged honorably as having a personality disorder shortly before he was arrested.
In the case of Hasan, he entered a peacetime army and attained a very specialized function, with the Army paying a substantial amount for his education. (I’ve heard an unverified report that he offered to pay back the cost if he could be discharged.) What I’m interested in learning is what risk assessments calculations those who turned down his repeated requests for discharge made. How did they balance the Army’s considerable investment in a doctor with other factors? And how many of those red flags that we are hearing about anecdotally after the fact are recorded in the record of the decision making process? Or were known to decision makers? We don’t know yet.
Unlike some posters here, I actually have a fair amount of confidence in the military and the government (but not the political world) to sort this out. The military takes the concept of “lessons learned” seriously, which requires a candid look at what went wrong.
MH, thanks, you are certainly welcome, as is anyone who might like to comment there.
I should mention that it isn't 'my' site, I am simply one among several posters, and an infrequent one at that.
Indy, you're right. The military will sort this one out and take a hard look at borderline psychiatric cases serving in combat units, at least. It will take a very careful policy to ensure that nobody who is a serious risk remains in uniform, while at the same time taking care of those who may be considering hurting themselves or others. The Army can handle it. They may be bureaucratic to a fault, but they are fair, tough-minded, and they generally default to what WORKS, because they have to, to get the job done. There is a heavy emphasis on "lessons learned" and on taking responsibility when you screw up. It's not perfect, but I have greater faith in that system than I do in many systems in the private sector.
To those here still belaboring the Crusades--remember the whole Middle East was Christian until it was conquered by Islam through fire, sword, and blood. Western Christians were very slow to come to the aid of their fellow Christians, but when they came the majority in most areas of the Middle East under the Moslem boot were still Christian so some modern historians are beginning to label the Crusades as being actually wars of liberation. Some of the best books by real historians (not fly-by media people) are the just published: "God's Battalions--the case FOR the Crusades" by Rodney Stark of Baylor University, "The Decline of Christianity under Islam: From Jihad to Dhimmitude," (Dhimmitude is the way Moslems treat those of other religions as second-class and with no rights) by Bat Ye'or (An Egyptian) and any of the books on the Crusades by Jonathan Riley-Smith of Cambridge University.
Deacon Bresnahan,
As a Catholic, I love the belaboring of the Crusades here, as it highlights the willful ignorance of those who invoke them.
At the time of the crusades, Christianity was emerging from its dark ages, and Islam was at the height of its Golden Age. Since then (800 years later), the Moslems have degenerated into what we see today. Catholicism went on to found the great universities of Europe that have become the model for the world. Quite an 800 year old reversal.
Secondly, the Crusader method of waging war was standard for its day. The Islamic terrorists today have removed themselves from the standards of decency and honor in war (Geneva Conventions) that have evolved since the crusades. So, judging from the standards of each age, we see Islam woefully lacking today. Juxtapose that with the hundreds of billions of dollars that we have spent on smart weapons in order to minimize civilian casualties (Taliban and al Quaeda's TARGETS), and this predominantly Christian nation is found even more virtuous in the balance.
If Islam truly means peace or surrender, then Nidal Hasan is anything but a 'pious muslim', as the title of this thread suggests; unless mass murder is the fruit of Muslim piety. It's beginning to seem that way.
God Bless You Deacon
I'd actually agree with AnotherBeliever and Indy on the Army's response. The military in general functions rather well -- it is overmanned and the private sector could do some jobs more efficiently, but like the Post Office, it performs a public service without gross inefficiency.
I would disagree on the PC part. I'll use a tragic example, that of PFC Velez who was shot and killed, along with her unborn child/fetus. Turns out she got pregnant on her Iraq tour (or shortly before) and thus was sent home. Apparently this is a big problem -- I know it was somewhat a problem when I was in, and that was just dealing with sea/shore rotations (a small but significant proportion of women would get pregnant to avoid their sea rotation) Thing is, the military (Navy in this case) adapted. No doubt costs were incurred, no doubt male sailors, especially young, single guys, got screwed. But hey, the political masters said we'd have women on combat ships, and that's what they did.
The point of this ramble is that there are some lessons that won't be learned, because they can't do so politically. The military won't learn that a significant proportion of their Muslim recruits can cause real damage.
On a lighter note, I'd say the events turned out once again to show the real worth of the the flyover country, smalltown, redneck sector.
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/11/06/2009-11-06_police_sgt_kimberly_munley_credited_with_ending_fort_hood_gunman_maj_nidal_malik.html
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