This is beyond absurd, verging on the blackest humor:
As a senior-year psychiatric resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Maj. Nidal M. Hasan was supposed to make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program.Instead, in late June 2007, he stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a copy of the presentation obtained by The Washington Post.
"It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims," he said in the presentation.
"It was really strange," said one staff member who attended the presentation and spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the investigation of Hasan. "The senior doctors looked really upset" at the end. These medical presentations occurred each Wednesday afternoon, and other students had lectured on new medications and treatment of specific mental illnesses.
Here's a key bit:
Hasan's presentation lasted about an hour. It is unclear whether he read out loud every point on each slide. If typical procedures were followed, his adviser would have supervised the development of his project, said people familiar with the practice.
So, let me see if I understand this: it's likely (though not proven) that a supervisor not only was aware that Hasan was pursuing this unorthodox and provocative project instead of preparing a lecture on a medical issue, but also approved of it? What kind of Diversity Paternalism is this?!
There's an interesting theological question here:
Under the "Conclusions" page, Hasan wrote that "Fighting to establish an Islamic State to please God, even by force, is condoned by the Islam," and that "Muslim Soldiers should not serve in any capacity that renders them at risk to hurting/killing believers unjustly -- will vary!"
Is this true? Is this believed by most Muslims to be true? If Islam does teach this, on what basis do modern Muslims reject this teaching (as they must to be able to serve in the military and defend the Constitution)?
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If Islam does teach this, on what basis do modern Muslims reject this teaching (as they must to be able to serve in the military and defend the Constitution)?
A possibility:
Morally Therapeutic Deism is not solely the province of Christians.
You, Rod, are deeply concerned about religious doctrine and how it applies to your own life and how you should live your life. Perhaps it is the case the many, even most, Muslims who serve in the military are not so deeply concerned about these questions as are you.
Could it be the case that you, through your lens of religion being intensely important, have trouble imagining that an American Muslim might not feel that establishing a world-wide Islamic state is desirable and support the secular nation of the US?
Shorter version - perhaps they don't care so much about this doctrine that you believe they should care deeply about.
Charles Curtis:
I'll close here by saying that this "clash of civilizations" narrative is fundamentally bogus, and dangerous. It serves the interests of the very extremists we are so afraid of, as well as very peculiar special interests amongst our leadership and financial elite.
AB:
and this isn't just about Islam, it's about mental health and it's about having enough personnel to accomplish the missions we set for them.
Both worth keeping in mind!
"I'll close here by saying that this "clash of civilizations" narrative is fundamentally bogus, and dangerous. It serves the interests of the very extremists we are so afraid of, as well as very peculiar special interests amongst our leadership and financial elite."
I completely agree with that bit.
Taken with your earlier post today on sudden onset of immoral conduct as signifer of a suicidal jihadist, I read this "presentation" as the conduct of a Muslim intent on jihad. Prosaletisers teach that infidels must be offered a chance to submit voluntarily to Islam (danger - unrecantable - apostasy is a capital crime in such an historicist worldview, ie onwards and upwards is the only permitted direction for man in time, no backsliding or conscientious objection -- indeed conscience as a concept is meaningless in the voluntarist ethic of Islam, you have no free will Inshallah is all that counts) before force may be applied, how very decent of them. This Powerpoint show was his duty before proceeding to Thursday's act - see slide 21 ff quoting sura 67:2 that God created life and death solely for the purpose of distinguishing who could acquit himself the best (no Trinity, no sacrificial atonement of Christ, but rather predestination of the harshest most arbitrary kind. In other words, if you're alive its cos you're ok if you're dead its 'cos you're not, so submit now or forever hold your peace, because you can't say you weren't warned!)
This is so obvious to any one with any grasp of the historical record of dealings of any of Islam's neighbors that I can only shake my head at the collective VINCIBLE ignorance of the civilian authorities charged with directing our armed forces - with the military brass being excused thanks to their conventional invincible ignorance under blind obedience to authority:
___Theirs not to make reply, Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die
What kind of a democracy are we asking our young men and women to actually fight and dying for? A lazy hazy morally confused mediocrity, a dictatorship of tolerism? Oh pulleeze say it ain't so!
This is an interesting link:
http://www.jihadwatch.org/islam-101.html
After reading this it seems clear to me that non-violent muslims are the "cafeteria catholics" of their religion. They're the ones that pick an choose which parts of their religion to believe.
The dangerous part of being politically correct is ignoring this fact.
In a more rational time, senior officers would have acted on the emerging profile of an officer with divided loyalties and questionable allegiances. So Hasan did what all mediocre students do. He crafted a presentation about his pet peeve and gussied it up with enough clinical terminology to make it passable enough for the critics in the room, knowing full well that they were constrained from acting because of the PC command structure.
Sadly, 13 dead and 40 wounded is not enough carnage to return Casey to his senses, nor were the 3,000 victims of 9/11, nor have been the 4,000+ battle deaths at the hands of Hasan's buddies. It raises the question:
If over 7,000 dead Americans, including escalating numbers of soldiers killed in every successive act of fragging by muslim troops, is not enough to make us abandon the indiscriminate cognitive processes of PC, how much further effusion of blood will it take? From now on, a significant amount of the blame for further effusion of blood rests with the military and civilian command structures that refuse to engage in common sense profiling of potential criminality.
We know who the enemy is. When our troops exhibit strong sympathies, that's called being an enemy sympathizer. There is simply no place in the military for such people, combat or non combat related roles. They need to be kicked out on a dishonorable discharge. Brave men and women continue to die and become maimed, discharging their duty. We don't need to stink up the military with enemy sympathizers. Some things are truly, and rightly, intolerable.
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