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Hasan and the "Koranic World View"
Dana Priest has gotten hold of the presentation that Nidal Malik Hasan delivered to a group of fellow doctors at the end of his residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center:
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.
....The title of Hasan's PowerPoint presentation was "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military." It consisted of 50 slides. In one slide, Hasan described the presentation's objectives as identifying "what the Koran inculcates in the minds of Muslims and the potential implications this may have for the U.S. military."
....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 morale and decrease adverse events."
Does this make the "terrorist" theory more or less likely than before? I'm not sure. But this, along with other reports, certainly suggests that this stuff had been on his mind for quite a while.
...
Unlike most crazed shooters, he actually tried to use the system to change what was bothering him.
I don't think that makes him any worse, though it makes me more worry about the system that harasses instead of repairs.
Terrorist?
Well, I'm sure we can waterboard him until he says he's a terrorist. I think that's still within the rules.
Short of that, it sounds like the decision to call him a terrorist will depend more on our definition of terrorist than on his actions.
And America's reaction to the matter is independent of whether he is a terrorist - except of course labeling him a terrorist will make him too dangerous to be held on U.S. soil.
Hate to be blunt..
Hate to be blunt, but I can't tell from the cursory info I've seen on this fellow, if he had wrapped a lot of this up in order to justify not having to serve overseas. He didn't seem to have an issue serving, just in the operational areas. The last line about conscientious objectors, seems a bit self serving to someone who had only expressed concerns about going overseas. He never really complained until he was supposed to serve overseas.
Frustration with the inability to change his fate, could have led him to think of himself as persecuted...then down the path of punishing those around him. Who knows, psycho analyzing this from a distance is a bit silly.
Sorry for the OT, but
Sorry for the OT, but doesn't Hasan look like this guy:
http://www.dvorak.org/blog/2009/10/15/have-you-seen-this-mans-face-in-yo...
I can understand the Army's
I can understand the Army's bind in this situation. First, they paid for Hasan's medical education and had a right to expect that he would fulfill his duty. Second, they can't discriminate against him on the assumption he needed a "cultural" accommodation.
Having said that: there is no question he could have served somewhere other than on the frontlines. In addition, it's not as if the army has never understood that putting people in positions where they might find it difficult to view the "enemy" as "other" might be problematic. My grandfather and many, many immigrants were intentionally NOT drafted in WWI because their documents indicated that they were originally "German" or "Austrian" (though in my grandfather's case he was actually Serbian).
Nothing excuses Hasan's violence, and conscientious objectors will always be problematic -- it's funny how often one's conscience is particularly bothered when one is picked to go to the front -- but the army should never reflexively even refuse to consider the implications of cultural affinity.
Somewhere I read that he
Somewhere I read that he defended suicide bombers, equating them to a soldier falling on a grenade to save his comrades. That would have raised my eyebrows and I hope encouraged an evaluation of sorts.
If a soldier sympathizes more with the guys blowing up outside the humvees -- he should probably be kept stateside or dismissed. That said, I don't think we have enough a picture to understand anything yet.
...
So you just had to share this analysis of some hearsay in a thread without any evidence to add to the discussion?
Red Herrings galore
It is entirely predictable that blame will fall on the Islam and the Army's medical decisions and the Army's deployment decisions and on every other bogus explanation that might serve to further obscure the OBVIOUS CAUSE: we invaded Iraq and Afghanistan and continue to ocuppy them for no goddamn good reason. Such a huge injustice will provoke violent resistance. Duh!
Absolutely
I totally agree. It was our fault that Hasan needed to kill all those kids!
re: "Somewhere..."
Without a cite and some background, that's pretty useless B. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the "defended suicide bombers" allegation came from that presentation that Maj. Hasan gave in 2007. Given the hysteria spewed out by the MSM and some of the usual Christianist fundies, any comment he might have made regarding the mindset and motivations of a suicide bomber that didn't involve foaming at the mouth denunciations would likely be interpreted as "defending" suicide bombers.
I'm actually pretty much
I'm actually pretty much trying to ignore this stuff like I said above. We won't have the whole picture for a long time. However, I think I gave you enough specifics to run with if you know how to use google. My statement ends up being a little more accurate than your uncited assertion.
For the benefit of your lazyiness, this is from the NYT:
The claims about Hasan's internet postings
have not been verified. It's not certain that the person who made the postings was the same man.
Hasan's internet postings
I hear that he was a regular commenter on Friday Catblogging and he
was especially enamored with Inkblot.
Maybe someone should arrest Inkblot eh?
yeah, it says that in the
yeah, it says that in the article. Yet they did link it to him at least preliminarily. I imagine it was his computer/IP address. Arggghh! I find myself dragged along on this thread even though I don't know why we should be up on Hasan trivia, other than to make sure we don't get on the jury.
terrorism
Does "terrorism" include targeting soldiers, if fear is the objective? That definition makes the U.S. a terrorist nation unless we've never attacked with the intention of scaring the enemy.
The guy is just a common traitor.
Couldn't agree more about
Couldn't agree more about Hasan being worse than a terrorist, he was a traitor.
You could make a case that the U.S. bombings of German and Japanese cities were terrorist atttacks, since their goal was to terrorize civilian populations.
Traitor to who? Traitor for
Traitor to who? Traitor for who?
They say he acted alone, that is, not working for Al Qaeda or the Taliban. So who was he a traitor for?
Allah
Which makes him a religious terrorist.
He was a traitor for
He was a traitor for militant Islam. But that doesn't make him a terrorist since his target was military. A terrorist targets civilians by definition.
I really don't see what's so hard to understand. Not every Islamic attack is "terrorist." but that's not to apologize for what they do or stand for.
"A terrorist targets
"A terrorist targets civilians by definition."
You're looking at a false, and inaccurate, dichotomy. Various wiki (yeah I know) go on about the hundreds of different definitions of terrorism. Inaccurate because not all of those require civilian targets. False because saying it's a military target presupposes there is some declared war between the two groups. The US is not at war with Islam. Just because soldiers were involved does not make the military some form of legitimate target.
If any of the victims in the processing unit had been civilian contractors, would you feel differently? Does it matter to you that he shot a civilian police officer?
I think you're focusing on the target inaccurately here, when what is more predominant is the guy's motivations, which where religious in nature. I wonder if you focus on the target because it's such a pisser when we discover Islamic terrorists in our midst in spite of how much we have defended the religion of peace.
If this guy had been a Catholic Chaplain attacking a National Guard Unit trying to stop a riot outside an abortion clinic, would you dismiss him merely as a traitor to fundamentalist Catholicism and the military as a legitimate target?
If you don't accept my
If you don't accept my definition of terrorism, then you must provide your own. Words have meanings, after all. Terrorism is a tactic, not a motivation. Not all religious violence is terrorism.
And I hate this thought that if somehow you don't use the word "terror", than you are somehow soft on Islamic militants. That's nonsense. I think they are a real threat and will use a variety of tactics against us, including terrorism. I hate them and everything they stand for.
Your Catholic Chaplain can't be a traitor in the sense that Hasan was, because he does not wear a military uniform. Bombing an abortion clinic is clearly terrorism. Your attack on the Nat Guard is too hypothetical to judge.
Oops, sorry, of course the
Oops, sorry, of course the chaplain wears the uniform and that makes him a traitor. For what, is his to tell.
The guy's motivations
were not "religious in nature," they were mentally unhinged in nature. Now you're defining terrorism not by the target, but by the religion of the actor. Yech.
It's not generally
It's not generally considered terrorism unless the targets are civilian. I really think the guy had become mentally turned inside out.
Every story I've read about
Every story I've read about the Internet postings has said there was no certainty that it was *this* Nidal Hasan who had written them; the name is apparently a common one.
Hasan is a spree killer, like a school shooter
Suicide bombers never target their familiar environment and are associated with groups that provide them with logistical support.
Hasan is a spree killer, like a school shooter. That his motive involved Islam and Islamic militancy is simply a coincidence.
Sort of agree, except that
Sort of agree, except that crazy extremist causes attract nutjobs and reinforce their anti-social tendencies by jusifying them. That may have happen in this case. So probably a little more than coinidence, but it's unlikey that he was recruited by extremists.
Actually I meant
Actually I meant 'incidental'
but somehow typed 'coincidence' inadvertently implying unrelatedness.
The impression is that his religiosity is one of the contributing pressures upon him and as the pressures increased it exacerbated the fanatic religiosity.
If he'd been able to actually contact some lunatic bomber organization and associate with like minded disordered types it might actually have calmed him down rather than send him over the edge.
I think there ought to be some kind of a religious Section 8 that can let people like this out of the service since their perspective is so inherently --unworldly they have to be presumed to not be able to seriously understand what they're doing.
I really doubt it was the
I really doubt it was the name that linked it to him. If so that's incredibly lame.
Anybody going by Al would be on all sorts of watch lists and mental health institute waiting lists.
Submitted by cld Hasan is a
Right, he is an Islamic militant spree killer, not a terrorist.
Sheesh.
Killing someone because
Killing someone because you're thinking about Islam isn't the same thing as killing someone because someone else has recruited you, trained you and provided you with the means and the opportunity and told you where to go and who to kill.
A spree killer is not associated with other like-minded people, it's their isolation that's part of their motive.
He's using Islam to work
He's using Islam to work himself up to doing this the way other spree killers have used video games or movies.
Consciensiuos Objection
I have always wondered why it takes religious conviction to be considered for consciensious objector status.
It doesn't require a deity to believe that killing is wrong, especially in a world where deities of peace are used as an excuse for war.
Yes, this man is a traitor: a traitor to his god.
Unfortunately, he is not alone.
Jesus is coming, look busy.