Nidal Hasan’s PowerPoint
Yesterday I saw the blogosphere gripped by what I thought was not a very enlightening semi-semantic dispute over whether or not Nidal Hasan should be considered a terrorist. As more information comes out, I think it’s now pretty clear that he wasn’t part of any kind of formal or informal terrorist organization. It also certainly doesn’t seem as if he had any kind of coherent political theory about what shooting people at Fort Hood would accomplish.
At the same time, it also looks like he was motivated by some kind of politico-Islamic ideology. Dana Priest, for example, reports on Hasan’s Walter Reed Medical Center presentation on “The Koranic Worldview as it Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military”:
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!”
The final page, labeled “Recommendation,” contained only one suggestion:
“Department of Defense should allow Muslims [sic] Soldiers the option of being released as ‘Conscientious objectors’ to increase troop moralex and decrease adverse events.”
I think a pretty good case can be made that this kind of situation actually is the main face of the terrorist threat. Not a big well-thought-out plot centrally directed from a “safe haven” in South Asia and undertaken by brilliant covert operatives, but the desperate violent act of a clearly disturbed individual. It’s going to be very hard to prevent this sort of thing. As long as the United States remains a country in which firearms are widely available—for the foreseeable future, in other words—we’re going to be unusually vulnerable to mentally ill spree killers of various kinds, including spree killers who nod in the direction of Islamist thinking.
But the larger point is that while these incidents are serious crimes and major tragedies for the victims, they hardly rise to the level of a major macro-level social crisis. They’re certainly not a first-order national security threat. And even put in the lower-stakes context of violent crime in America, the whole set of mentally disturbed spree killers is a pretty minor slice of the pie. Reducing the volume of these incidents isn’t going to inspire gun rights enthusiasts to support major curbs in firearms availability, and certainly shouldn’t convince Americans to contravene our commitments to diversity and non-discrimination. Simply put, if this is the terrorist threat then the terrorist threat isn’t that big a deal.
71 Responses to “Nidal Hasan’s PowerPoint”
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November 10th, 2009 at 10:10 am
I think it’s now pretty clear that he wasn’t part of any kind of formal or informal terrorist organization
Huh? He was in regular contact with a major al Qaeda recruiter.
Why Matthew wants to cover up facts like this is inexplicable.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Peanuts and lightning have killed more Americans since 1960 than have terrorists.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:17 am
Waiting for details to emerge, but “sent an email to” is a far cry from “regular contact” and “radical expat cleric” isn’t “major Al Qaeda recruiter”. Could be wrong, though.
I don’t see how this event makes a bigger policy difference than, say, Columbine or Virginia Tech. Everybody should be more considerate of everybody else, and more vigilant for somebody on the verge of snapping.
The only productive policy proposal would be more oversight of blog comments sections. That’s probably a bad idea, especially for trolls!
November 10th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Fuck you, Al. Seriously.
Part of the problem is that “the terrorist threat,” whatever that is, actually IS a big deal. Conflating this guy with “the terrorist threat” though makes the whole thing look trivial. Then we also have Andrew Sullivan chalking this whole episode up to “religious fanatacism.” No. This guy was a nut who used religion as a convenient vehicle for his mental illness. If it hadn’t been religion, he would have found some other excuse to something crazy. Again, conflating this asshole with true religious fanatacism is a huge mistake.
In conclusion: fuck you, Al.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:18 am
Terrorism is preventable. Lightening isn’t.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:20 am
As a Muslim, I have a hard time believing that’s easy for the average American that doesn’t know anything about Islam to do when the mainstream media, four days in, continues to push the “Islamist terrorist” narrative instead of explaining that in Islam, 1) You are bound by your oaths which in this case is military and 2) If you choose to serve your country in war, you cannot use the “I don’t want to fight Muslims” as an excuse and 3) This guy’s behavior flies in the face of everything Islamic (covorting with strippers in the time leading up to this attack and supporting suicide which is expressly forbidden in all cases).
Why are we not getting this sort of in-depth research/investigation on the killer and his background in the case of the George Tiller murder, for example?
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/yb/137543035
We know his name and that he recently confessed, but where is the background on which radical pastor he learned his ideologies from? Where is the speculation on which fringe anti-abortion groups he was connected to? Hell, do people even know this guy’s name?
November 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am
@6: Sorry that should read “do average people even know this guy’s name?”
November 10th, 2009 at 10:23 am
While I’m at it, can I also point out how this exposes one of the principal arguments of the gun nuts? Remember the line about how Virginia Tech wouldn’t have been so bad if there had just been more well-armed citizens (or students, in one particular version) around? This latest shooting happened on an army base. More law-abiding folks with guns is clearly not the answer.
Speaking of which, I haven’t heard Matt’s right-wing line on guns in a while? Has that changed or has it just not come up? That’s a serious question. Views sometimes change.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:27 am
Did he own a XBOX? Perhaps we can blame this on videogames like Virginia Tech. But I guess Islam works too. Anything to make the NRA happy.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:31 am
“sent an email to”
This, of course, is just outright false. He sent at least 10-20 emails to Aulaki.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:31 am
Given this PowerPoint presentation an Hasan’s obvious desire not to be deployed and the fact that he was investigated for contact with a radical cleric, how is it that he wasn’t immediately flagged as a problem and placed in a position where he would be less likely to hurt anyone?
Unless red flags from soldiers of all backgrounds are so common that the mitary just doesn’t consider them a threat.
I am also looking forward to right wingers claiming that if only people carried firearms on military bases, this could have been prevented.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:32 am
Simply put, if this is the terrorist threat then the terrorist threat isn’t that big a deal.
Treason! Traitor! Dhimmicrat!
Let’s be honest: we’re fucking huge in treasure, population, and weaponry. The most likely enemy to bring us down is us, because no one else really scales right. And if it is us, we all know it’s going to be the folks down south who do it to us. Just like the last time. And a repeat of that any time soon seems extremely unlikely.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:35 am
Terrorism is preventable. Lightening isn’t.
I see Al carefully evades the peanut issue, presumably to avoid angering the peanut lobby.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:39 am
I am also looking forward to right wingers claiming that if only people carried firearms on military bases, this could have been prevented.
My understanding is that generally people don’t carry weapons on military bases, other than for specific purposes.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:49 am
Matt, can you do a post on how often these things happen? It seems Like we have at least one spree killing every year.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:50 am
Who is this idiot?
November 10th, 2009 at 10:51 am
Terrorism isn’t preventable if we’re going to remain a free society. I’m with Ben Franklin on that one.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Unless red flags from soldiers of all backgrounds are so common that the mitary just doesn’t consider them a threat.
I wouldn’t be shocked if this turned out to be true. Recruitment standards have been lowered so far, the Army (especially) is full of ‘bad apples’ of the criminal-background, mentally-unstable, and/or religious-fanatic variety. (Not presupposing which of these was operative in this case.)
November 10th, 2009 at 10:55 am
Huh. I must have imagined all of those terrorist plots we actually prevented. Never happened, I suppose.
Good to see that Ben Franklin and Witless Chum think that George Bush could not have prevented 9/11, since, after all, terrorism isn’t preventable.
November 10th, 2009 at 10:56 am
Terrorism is preventable. Lightening isn’t.
Actually lightening can be prevented with enough time in the sun or a tanning bed — your skin will retain the even dark tone you so value!
Now, lightning isn’t preventable, but deaths from lightning can be reduced — you may have heard of the lightning rod, and not standing outside in a thunderstorm is also wise and effective. That’s why golf courses have lightning advisories.
It’s also impossible to entirely prevent deaths from terrorism while people want to commit it. Almost anyone can get a gun and start shooting. (Corollary: It’s a good idea to try to get people not to want to commit terrorism.) Perhaps on a related note, the conclusion of Hasan’s presentation suggests not only that he was motivated by radical Islamic ideology but also that he wanted the fuck out of the army. A lot of other stuff suggests that too.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:03 am
“…how is it that he wasn’t immediately flagged as a problem and placed in a position where he would be less likely to hurt anyone?”
This is a good question. I’m not sure how you could make him less likely to hurt people, though. He used privately purchased weapons. Even if he had been kicked out of the military, he could have caused just as much mayhem attacking civilians in a mall.
With hindsight, I guess the biggest screwup was the army insisting that he be deployed. If they had relented, then there is a good chance he would not have reached the breaking point. This is speculative, obviously…
November 10th, 2009 at 11:03 am
&(*&@&&*#$%#$ thinkprogress.org comments!
I am not typing the whole thing again! The gist: “if this is the terrorist threat then the terrorist threat isn’t that big a deal.”
Amen. It’s also not new!
I heard this morning that they’re charging him in a court martial with murder, which is the correct course of action.
@witless chum: Preach it.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:05 am
Something just doesn’t seem right here. The man speaks his mind, openly and peacefully, for years. Then for no apparent reason, he snaps and becomes a violent killer.
One could speculate that his impending deployment to Afghanistan caused the sudden change. Perhaps. But based on his history revealed to date, he must have had numerous discussions with superiors about the deployment — everything in his history says that must have happened.
His deployment was also months away, as I understand it. So why the breaking point now?
Something must have happened. There’s a missing piece to this puzzle.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:05 am
I think a pretty good case can be made that this kind of situation actually is the main face of the terrorist threat.
Then you ought to make that case rather than assume the conclusion. But it would be a pretty stupid case to make. The main face of the terrorist threat is some sort of jury-rigged WMD, either bio, chemical or nuclear “dirty bomb” that can kill a lot of people at once. That requires organization and materials and logistics and reasonably skilled operatives, and it’s something that would be a lot easier to pull off if you have a semi-permament HQ someplace where no gov is going to bother you. Maybe that threat really isn’t all that serious and/or there’s not much we can to diminish it that would be worth the cost either, but again those are arguments you need to make. Pretending that some lunatic with a gun is all we’re worried about when we talk about terrorism is just, err, sticking your head in the sand.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
It seems rather odd that his superiors would have failed to flag him for fear of being perceived as being politically incorrect. Perhaps our government should make it clear that we are not at war with Islam and enforce some discipline in the ranks.
There are a lot of white supremacists and gang members in the army right now. Suicides are at an all time high, and there is a high incidence of PTSD and traumatic brain injury. These multiple deployments could break anyone. Soldiers are being given psychoactive drugs in the field.
Most recruits are too fat and unfit to serve. We are not a nation of rock hard warriors and stop pretending that we are.
Rumsfeld’s streamlined pipe-dream isn’t working. The DOD should get real about what it takes to adequately staff the military for two wars and occupations. When you can’t spare crazy people and criminals, you’re going to have problems like this.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:09 am
It’s so simple that I’m really surprised others haven’t gotten it yet:
The whole right wing meme is that Bush “kept us safe” because there were no terrorist attacks in the US after 9/11 (the anthrax thing is conveniently ignored, of course) – and then – boom! Obama’s only in office a few months and look what happens – terrorism!
No right winger worth his weight in hypocrisy can afford not to argue that it’s terrorism.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:10 am
Good to see that Ben Franklin and Witless Chum think that George Bush could not have prevented 9/11, since, after all, terrorism isn’t preventable.
A particular terrorist attack might be preventable depending on the facts but the threat of terrorist attacks can’t be eliminated entirely without turning the US into a police state. Just like the threat of murder and other violent crimes can’t be eliminated entirely without turning the US into a police state. Hence the famous Ben Franklin quote. Which quote, by the way, never proves anything because the question is always finding the right pragmatic balance between liberty and security and (to quote another famous American) “general propositions do not decide concrete cases.”
November 10th, 2009 at 11:13 am
It’s actually Al who is regularly in contact with major Al Qaeda recruiters. In fact, he receives a monthly check from them.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:13 am
The whole right wing meme is that Bush “kept us safe” because there were no terrorist attacks in the US after 9/11 (the anthrax thing is conveniently ignored, of course) – and then – boom! Obama’s only in office a few months and look what happens – terrorism!
Correctamundo.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:15 am
“But the larger point is that while these incidents are serious crimes and major tragedies for the victims, they hardly rise to the level of a major macro-level social crisis. They’re certainly not a first-order national security threat.”
Oh, Matty, Matty, Matty. How cute you are.
On the cover of the next New York Times Magazine: a picture of Hasan and the question, “Is This the New Face of Terrorism?”
November 10th, 2009 at 11:24 am
Instead of classifying Hasan as a “terrorist” for his political beliefs and associations, shouldn’t we ask whether this shooting was an act of terrorism? Generally we say that terrorism consists of violence against civilian targets to advance a political cause. Here we have an act of violence that either a) is directed at a military target, or; b) fits the profile of workplace violence. You can’t just say that Hasan was sympathetic to Jihad therefore any violent act is terroristic.
Or let me put it another way. Let’s say a man sympathetic to Jihad kills his wife for being too western. Is that an act of terrorism just because there’s a relationship between his ideology and his actions?
November 10th, 2009 at 11:28 am
That’s more or less exactly where my thoughts on this have been for the last couple of days. I’m just not sure I can put it into the same category of other, more obvious, acts of terrorism as they’ve been defined. Specifically because of the circumstances you mention.
I’ve just been unsure how to word it without expecting a visit from DHS. (And yes, that is sarcasm, mostly.)
November 10th, 2009 at 11:28 am
Al writes:
Huh. I must have imagined all of those terrorist plots we actually prevented. Never happened, I suppose.
Good to see that Ben Franklin and Witless Chum think that George Bush could not have prevented 9/11, since, after all, terrorism isn’t preventable.
As often seems to be the case, it’s hard to tell whether Al is being clumsily disingenuous or is genuinely being an idiot.
When someone says that “terrorism isn’t preventable,” they obviously don’t mean that no acts of terrorism can be prevented. If someone decided to attack the Empire State Building by repeatedly ramming their car into it, I’m pretty sure that dastardly plot could be thwarted. And the 9/11 attacks, while well planned and surprising, certainly could have been prevented by somewhat more government vigilance.
But, if we’re going to define “individual wacko kills some other people due to wacko beliefs” as terrorism, then it obviously isn’t possible to completely and reliably prevent that kind of thing from happening (short of establishing a highly repressive state).
November 10th, 2009 at 11:37 am
It is true that this type of incident is not why we should be concerned about safe havens in Afghanistan. And it is very possible that there is no reason at all to be concerned about safe havens in Afghanistan. But to the extent that we do need to be concerned about safe havens in Afghanistan, no one is saying that it is because of incidents like this in the first place! The concern is that people there may h, via a safe haven, game the time and space to develop the know-how to plan much more destructive crimes than isolated gun violence — crimes that rise to the level of national-security threat. By all means, choosing to fight in Afghanistan may not be the best way over all to address the threat of people making such plans in the world, but no one is saying that success in Afghanistan is going to fix our gun-violence problem stateside.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:39 am
I think the bigger danger to America is the group of hot headed vigilante wannabes, fantasizing about stopping the terrorist with the concealed-carry .44 magnum they pulled out of their butt crack.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:41 am
We in the West are manifestly incapable of combating an ideology wrapped within a religion due to our church/state separation secular view of the world. I believe that most Muslims don’t want to kill non-believers as a matter of course. I also believe that the Wahhabist or Salafist school of thought, which has become dominant with Saudi funding, is grossly intolerant and wants to spread the writ of Islam with violence if neccessary. The Wahhabist/Salafist worldview has its basis in the Koran as written.
Some people believe that if you can’t read Arabic than you can’t read the Koran. I guess me and 900 million believers can’t read the Koran. I can’t read Aramaic so I guess I can’t read the Bible either given this line of reasoning. Also, why is criticism of, say Catholicism, cool but criticism of Islam is “racist”? Both religions have adherents of all races.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Does anyone find it somewhat ironic that if you say you are gay, you get kicked out of the military versus someone who is so religiously against what the military is doing cannot escape it, and thus goes on a killing spree that is now being considered terrorism by some?
I’m not blaming Don’t Ask Don’t Tell for this occurrence, but I do think there is a sad establishment of discrimination that might make Muslims feel uncomfortable in the military as well.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:47 am
Also, why is criticism of, say Catholicism, cool but criticism of Islam is “racist”?
criticism of tenets of Islam isn’t “racist” – criticism of Islam and muslims as a group based upon the actions of some individuals is certainly bigotry and lazy thinking
November 10th, 2009 at 11:50 am
But was Hasan mentally ill at the time of the murders? A case can be made that all religious beliefs are a form of mental illness, but does some significant subset of the leaders of this particular religion advocate killing “non-believers”? If so then that could be Hasan’s “coherent religious theory about what shooting people at Fort Hood would accomplish.”
It’s terrorism, religious terrorism. And it is a big deal if the number of victims increases.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:57 am
Well, just paging Round here I don’t see anyone calling criticism of Islam “racist.” For people around here to criticize Catholics is “cool” (whatever you mean by that) because there’s a pretty good chance they’ve met a lot of Catholics and are familiar with the institution and it’s centuries of influence on the culture they live in. For someone in the typical American milieu to criticize Islam, without casually knowing many Muslims, being familiar with the history and traditions and having a stake in the critique is not “cool.”. It’s your right of course, but without these things what could possibly be the objective of your criticism, aside from slandering the believers?
Did Hasan go to Harvard? Him and Matt have the same spelling skills, it would seem.
November 10th, 2009 at 11:58 am
Re: Some people believe that if you can’t read Arabic than you can’t read the Koran. I guess me and 900 million believers can’t read the Koran. I can’t read Aramaic so I guess I can’t read the Bible either given this line of reasoning
Don’t be dumb, Dances With Goats. It is a fundamental Islamic teaching that the Quran is the eternal and literal word of God. With that in mind, any translation of the Quran must perforce change it and therefore it wouldn’t be the Quran any more. The Bible isn’t viewed the same way, at least by Christians: we believe that God is revealed primarily through a Person, not a book. I disagree with the Islamic teaching of course but it is logically self-consistent, and provides a good reason why translation of the Quran is not the same as translation of the NT.
The Salafist view of Islam isn’t “dominant” in any demographic sense- most Muslims live in places like Turkey, West Africa, India or Indonesia which are not Salafi-dominated. They do exercise _political_ influence out of proportion to their numbers, largely because of oil money.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:02 pm
You know, in the pre-9-11 days we had a phrase for what he did. It was called “going Postal.” This guy could be viewed a an islamic terrorist, or as a disgruntled worker. (I suppose there are other ways too, but let’s look a just these two for a moment).
One of these ways of viewing him fits the worldviews of people who want permanent religious global war (neo-conservatives, right bloggers, and real live islamo-fascists) and the other fits the worldview of, well, me. Which is the right interpretation? Which one is supported by available evidence?
This is a guy who reprotedly suffered discrimination at the hands of his co-workers. He had consistently bad performance reviews at Walter Reed. His PowerPoint file demonstrates poor communication skills, which are certainly a liability for someone who is supposed to faciliate communication so that soldiers can get through emotional crises. He improved a bit there, but was shipped out of that safe environment into a less safe one so that he wouldn’t be a blight on WR Army Hospital. Once at Fort Hood he received orders to deploy overseas.
This looks like the sort of profile we might expect from someone who is disaffected at work. He was a failure at his chosen profession, unable to relate to his coworkers, harassed by them (which would undercut his ability to feel the necessary empathy to do his job well), all of which makes him a prime candidate for going Postal. If his skin were lighter and his name Christian sounding, he would be labeled a disgruntled worker.
This is not to say that his religion played no role. It may very well have made him feel secure in his belief that he would be rewarded in the afterlife. Heaven knows that plenty of Christians have killed with that same belief. If the evidence ultimately shows that Hassan was in the thrall of some Islamic extremist and was acting in furtherance of a big anti-american conspiracy, I’m happy to change my beleif as to what happened. But until then, I choose to believe what the evidence supports — that Hassan went Postal.
(note: I understand that a more through treatment would require an analysis of the terms “terrorism” and “going Postal” because, well, one is horribly ambiguous and the other is kind of offensive to the many US Postal service employees and their supporters who are not shooting each other up.)
November 10th, 2009 at 12:14 pm
@15 ThatPirateGuy: “Matt, can you do a post on how often these things happen? It seems Like we have at least one spree killing every year.”
It depends on how you define “killing spree.” If you mean like, say, shooting you wife and daughter in the head with a pistol, slitting the dog’s throat with a butcher’s knife, then toeing the double-barrel and blowing your head off -we have about two or three of those per week in this country.
If you mean a premeditated “random” act, where a person loads up with weapons and then heads on down to the local school, McDonald’s, former place of employment, etc. then unloads on what ever shows up in the gunsight, ending with the shooter being either killed, wounded, or committing suicide -we have about one of those per month.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:16 pm
norgh – call your congressman. Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell is federal law. I haven’t seen any homosexuals shooting up Army posts lately so I looking for a linkage?
Iluvcapra – I am not one to criticize religions, much, but you can criticize Catholicism without being labeled a racist. You aren’t paying attention if you don’t think the label “racist” isn’t shutting down criticism of Islam throughout the Western World. Perhaps my criticism of Islam would be viewed as an attempt to educate people in the West on the dangers of elements of Islam as it applies to their society and culture. Before you hit me with the “moral equivalency” argument about the dangers of Christianity as it applies to society and culture, I’m not buying it, you don’t know how good you have it and you need to get out and see the Muslim world (I have).
Hector – demographics doesn’t mean much. A country of 25 million produced 15 of the 9/11 terrorists. Will, cultural confidence and funding count for a lot.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:21 pm
Christopher at #31 is right on.
Generally we say that terrorism consists of violence against civilian targets to advance a political cause.
Yes. Clear definition of terms is how you avoid coming to the silly conclusion that a disgruntled lone gunman killing his co-workers (regardless of the reasons for his disgruntlement) is “the real face of terrorism” and therefore “terrorism” is not a “first-order national security threat.” It’s true that preventing a disgruntled gunman from killing co-workers is primarily a matter for law enforcement and workplace security and has nothing much to do with national security or foreign policy. But preventing organized violence against civilians to advance a political cause is both a law enforcement and a national security matter.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:23 pm
Looks like Obama thinks terrorism is preventable: “we’re going to take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that something like this doesn’t happen again”.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:27 pm
I fam still waiting for Mr. Don Williams to mosey along here and blame the Fort Hood incident on Israel and the neocons.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:36 pm
Everything aside, those are not the words of a terrorist. Those are the words of someone who didn’t want to be dispatched to somewhere he might be killed who was reaching out for any thread of a justification to not go. Whether he was trying to convince himself as well as others is debatable, but he was searching for a way out and clinched on religion as a reason for exemption.
That he graduated to extreme measures is no different than any other act of worker violence against a workplace they hold in disgust – as many others here have pointed out.
November 10th, 2009 at 12:39 pm
Read his final slides, and mentally replace all his references to “Muslims” and “Muslim soldiers” with “Maj. Hasan”. He’s clearly troubled about his own involvement. This was a huge warning sign. I have to assume that nobody was listening by the end of his presentation.
The other thing I notice is that he’s got a real problem with homophone abuse. Could that also be a warning sign? Should readers of this site be concerned? I just don’t know.
November 10th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
Looks like Obama thinks terrorism is preventable
Yes, but does he address peanut death?
November 10th, 2009 at 1:19 pm
If you can cite a legitimate doctrinal or social critique of Islam that has been “shut down” as “racist” by reasonable people, then go for it, but generally people call racism out for what it is. Particularly when it takes the form of catgorical statements about how entire classes of people behave.
November 10th, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Strike “reasonable people” ibid. Find me a situation where any person was able to scalp an critic of Islam in Marketplace of Ideas by unfairly calling their opponents racist.
November 10th, 2009 at 1:46 pm
It is looking more and more to me that Dr. Hasan was actually trying to do his job as a psychiatrist and suggest the psychological difficulties Muslims in the US military might have with ongoing conflicts in Muslim majority parts of the world. If only the US military had listened and had started dealing with this complex issue early on this could have been averted.
His action is certainly inexcusable and horrifying and he needs to be prosecuted; but his message in this 2 year old powerpoint shows that there is a direct connection between Muslim faith and identity that most Americans do not fully understand.
November 10th, 2009 at 2:23 pm
I’m a very new visitor to your community and have enjoyed reading all the debate/posts. However, there seems to be some doubt as to whether or not Major Nidal Hasan was a terrorist. Perhaps what he put on his own business card will provide a more positive confirmation.
http://atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2009/11/major-muslims-calling-card-soa-soldier-of-allah.html
November 10th, 2009 at 3:05 pm
-> RonM
Help me out here;
(1) What is basis for belief that SoA stands for “Soldier of Allah” rather than “Servant of Allah” (very common religious term — google it)
(2) Of what religious faith was militant David Karesh?
November 10th, 2009 at 3:09 pm
Please pardon numerous errors in prior post –
-> RonM
Help me out here;
(1) What is the basis for your belief that SoA stands for “Soldier of Allah” rather than “Servant of Allah” (very common religious term — google it)
(2) Of what religious faith was militant David Koresh?
November 10th, 2009 at 3:40 pm
The FBI investigation classified the Columbine attack as an act of terrorism. I suppose it was: not all acts of terrorism involve contact with a pre-existing group, or even a political program.
Still, that is quite a bit removed from the terror threat we face from al Qaeda, that Israelis face from Hamas, or that Britons used to face from the IRA.
Once again, we see the wingnuts doing what their political movement requires them to do – deliberately blurring the lines between different issues and threats, which require different solutions, because it is politically useful for them to do so. Just like they did with their idiotic “Saddam is working with bin Laden” theory.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:53 pm
Perhaps what he put on his own business card will provide a more positive confirmation.
Perhaps paying too much attention to Pamela ‘Friend of White Supremacists’ Geller is a bad idea.
November 10th, 2009 at 3:56 pm
Em… does one not think it strange that commanders in the US Army feel less Muslims (due to them being allowed to be conscientious objectors) will raise overall troop morale?
November 10th, 2009 at 3:59 pm
Apologies, I misread, t’was not a commander but Dana Priest.
November 10th, 2009 at 5:47 pm
But the larger point is that while these incidents are serious crimes and major tragedies for the victims, they hardly rise to the level of a major macro-level social crisis.
Major Hasan’s fellow Palestinian murdered Sen. Robert F. Kennedy on June 5, 1968, the one-year-anniversary of Israel’s attack on the Arab states, for promising to send 50 American jet fighters to Israel. That was hours after Kennedy won the climactic California primary. In other words, a lone Palestinian gunman might well have been the difference between President Bobby Kennedy and President Richard Nixon.
November 10th, 2009 at 6:02 pm
After reading the comments on this blog and others, I have started to feel some sympathy for Mr. Hasan. Like many losers, he got a bad case of religion, and in his case, his religion of peace told him to “strike terror in the hearts of unbelievers”, “slay the idolaters wherever you find them” etc. Consider his sad story:
1) Hasan gives a lecture at Walter Reed in which he tells his kaffir colleagues that kaffirs will have boiling oil poured down their throats[Sura 18:29], that Muslims are commanded to fight till the kaffirs acknowledge there is no God but Allah [Sura 1:53]etc.
Kaffir reaction: His colleagues applaud politely and his superior suggests using a bigger font on some of his slides, but that otherwise it was a great talk.
2) Hasan then openly sends multiple emails to his imam, a Muslim jihadist hiding out in Yemen, tries to contact Al Qaeda, and defends suicide bombings on various blogs, posting under his own name.
Kaffir reaction: The FBI tracks all of this activity, but does nothing to disturb the gorgeous mosaic of American society. Hasan is immediately put on a DHS panel that advises the president on terror threats.
3) Hasan then shows up in Fort Worth, and goes around the neighborhood in Arab regalia, handing out Korans to the kaffirs and telling everyone they should convert before it is too late.
Kaffir reaction: Initially, Hasan hits pay dirt – some kaffir kid scratches his car, but sadly, his kaffir neighbors insist he file a police complaint against the kid, and help him do so.
4) Hasan then murders 13 American soldiers and grievously wounds many more.
Kaffir reaction: Spend millions to give him better healthcare than most Americans get, so he can recover from his wounds, and tell him it is not his fault because he is suffering from PTSD. When he protests that he’s never been near a war-zone, they tell him PTSD in his case stands for pre-traumatic stress
syndrome.
The only thing left for Hasan to do is to shove a cell-phone and some Semtex up his ass and have his Yemeni imam call him collect so he can detonate himself in the Mall of America. Of course with his luck, his cell-phone battery will run out of juice before the call. And if it doesn’t, the kaffirs will help the Hasan family sue the cell-phone manufacturer for making a dangerous device, and donate the proceeds to some madrassah in Peshawar to further inter-faith dialog.
What exactly does a jihadi have to do to get some respect in Amrikah?
November 10th, 2009 at 7:08 pm
(2) Of what religious faith was militant David Karesh?
OK, he was a Branch Davidian, and he *wasn’t* a terrorist. The government essentially attacked him *because* of his wacky Christian beliefs that hadn’t been translated into proven action (though he almost certainly committed multiple rapes and stockpiled som illegal weapons).
So, the Koresh point actually works against the point you’re trying to make.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:17 pm
I see. Koresh was a victim. He had no history of violence. Four dead and sixteen wounded BATF agents could hardly be seen as “proven actions”. The four BATF agents probably didn’t die; the 16 probably weren’t wounded. In serving a search warrant on these victims the government “essentially attacked”. Koresh’s slamming of the steel door and refusal to allow the BATF entry before any shots had been fired was a normal response to a government search warrant attack. Koresh never threatened violence during the 51 day standoff.
Fine upstanding law-abiding citizens, those Branch Davidians.
November 10th, 2009 at 8:44 pm
The bottom line on Nidal Hasan as compared to the Branch Davidians? The government caused the Branch Davidians’ massacre by acting too soon but should have acted against Hasan before his massacre.
November 11th, 2009 at 3:56 am
The more sensible sort of progressive bloggers such as Matt, Kevin Drum, and Steve Benen have badly embarrassed themselves over Major Hasan.
It shows a fundamental problem with the dominant progressive mindset: anti-stereotypism. The conventional wisdom is that calling something a stereotype is tantamount to dismissing it as untrue.
In reality, that’s backwards. But, then, reality ain’t that popular these days.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:28 am
Islamofascists aren’t going to FedEx a nuclear weapon to a Hamburg Germany flat. It’s going to take a base of operations, preferably next to the likely source of the nuclear weapon (eg. Pakistan).
If it weren’t for nuclear weapons, I wouldn’t buy the “base of operations” theory either. But the bulk of the weapons, expertise needed, planning, shipping, aspects of carrying out a nuclear bomb attack seem to me to require a safe base. And that is the scenario, however unlikely, we should be thinking about.
Because if such an attack would occur in the US or Israel, and a nutter like Dick Cheney was in charge at the time–Goodbye Constitutional Republic/Democracy, Hello ChristoFascist Crusaders.
November 11th, 2009 at 6:30 am
Your stereotypes and your conventional wisdom may be very different from my.
November 12th, 2009 at 2:39 am
The conventional wisdom is that calling something a stereotype is tantamount to dismissing it as untrue.
So it’s okay to call you a stereotypical crypto-scientific racist, then?
November 12th, 2009 at 11:00 am
I love that argument, but no it’s not okay to call me that. How do you dismiss every detail that points to the fact that even if he was/wasn’t associated to a terrorist organization, he still killed/terrorized people.
For all the dense people out there, Webster’s Dictionary says terrorism is “the use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, esp. for political purposes”. I’m pretty sure he terrorized not only people on Fort Hood’s base, but people outside that community as well. Also from Webster’s, they say jihad is “1.a holy war undertaken as a sacred duty by Muslims. 2.any vigorous, emotional crusade for an idea or principle”.
Now with those two descriptions, he was a terrorist (the same as Timothy McVay and all the other wackjobs) and it was his own personal jihad for his ISLAM faith. Now children in grade school can decipher a situation like this, why is it so hard for everyone on this post to recognize that. Wake up, if you don’t start talking the “radical” muslims down then this will continue. Being Politically Correct is walking a very fine line of danger that I don’t think we want to experience again.
November 14th, 2009 at 11:59 pm
[...] Yglesias is right, when he suggests that incidents like the Fort Hood shooting are, to some extent, are the [...]