Comments on: Fort Hood: Same Battle, New Front

By: jakester

jakester — Sun, 15 Nov 2009 06:08:17 +0000

sinz54
That is why after the jihader himself, I blame the Army. He was showing signs as large as interstate billboards yet they ignored them all.

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 15:13:46 +0000

Oneon1isto:

One more thing. Let’s completely factor out religion from the equation. Let’s just say we’re dealing with army Major John Smith, a known atheist.

Why would we allow someone with a “severe mental state” to keep his job as an Army psychiatrist??? How good a job at mental health counseling can someone do, if he’s psychotic himself?

By: sinz54

sinz54 — Sat, 14 Nov 2009 14:11:22 +0000

Oneon1isto: Why? Because there are degrees here that ignore the perp’s mental state and yes, his religion. It matters that he might have had an irrational religious belief coupled with a severe mental state.
I don’t know why you keep playing Freud at a distance and talking about a “severe mental state.” What if, at the upcoming trial of the 9-11 plotters, the defense claims that they too were just mentally ill before they got recruited into terrorism?

Did it ever occur to you that it’s the neurotic young Muslim men, often made neurotic by the religious teachings of these radical imams that women are unclean sirens who are constantly trying to lure men into bed to corrupt them, that are the prime candidates for recruitment into terrorism? A well-adjusted Muslim man, leading a good life, isn’t going to want to give that up and become a terrorist. A neurotic young Muslim, sick to death with the sewage that’s been pumped into his head by radical imams, is a good candidate for terrorism.

There are a whole lot of people that have mental illness. Some of them have even gone violent. But none of them, AFAIK, did so after a long history of citing one of the Abrahamic religions as their justification for their delusions.

By: Oneon1isto

Oneon1isto — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 18:52:43 +0000

Everyone screaming Jihad is missing the point. Completely.

Why? Because there are degrees here that ignore the perp’s mental state and yes, his religion. It matters that he might have had an irrational religious belief coupled with a severe mental state. It’s quite possible he wasn’t a garden-variety terrorist (if there is such a thing) that requires immediate knee-jerk reactions from every single couch-warrior out there. It’s possible he snapped. It’s doubtful that he’s cellular. This is one massive grey area we shouldn’t be jumping into without prior knowledge.

The dirty liberal view expressed is that you need to determine what role religion played in his attack before you even start rolling out the hysteria. The fact that he is Muslim in and of itself is not useful information. It’s his own personal motivations and beliefs that are. To immediately point to his religion (while 100% ignorant of his BELIEFS) is unfair to the rest of the American Muslims in the room.

Regardless, it seems the most important part of this is that it has raised red flags in the military’s screening of people with mental issues and how it handles them.

By: balconesfault

balconesfault — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 15:57:11 +0000

midcon: Regardless of what the Kuran teaches, it is clear that the current manifestation of Islam includes the acceptability of violence to achieve an end.

Let’s change that to “some current manifestations” … and I would wholly agree with you.

While I may have daily interaction with those who practice Islam I consider them extremists until proven otherwise.

Perhaps prudent, for your purposes – I won’t judge. But on a societal level we have to be aware that depending on how we “treat” those we would therefore consider “extremists until proven otherwise” can backfire.

If society deliberately sets higher bars for Arab/Americans to do certain things, if we set obstacles to them being more incorporated into our institutions – we will most certainly have the effect of estranging a larger percentage of that population when the success of the American model rests on assimilation. If only 1 in 100 American muslims feels estranged because of your policies … and only 1 in 1000 of those who are estranged come to embrace terrorism and violence as a response to this estrangement … you have probably ended up making America a far far more dangerous place as a result of this policy.

To a certain extent, this is the Israel paradox. They have decided to guarantee security by setting up walls and checkpoints, but people sitting in hours long checkpoints every time they want to travel 5 miles to a different town begin becoming more disaffected, and some portion more prone to anti-Israeli violence.

And the terrorists are counting on that each time they blow something up. You don’t think Hasan had in mind that he was making it more difficult for Muslims to be a part of the US military when he went on his spree? I would be surprised if that wasn’t his primary motive, the tragedy of the dead soldiers being not only secondary but irrelevant except for the response it would provoke.

By: midcon

midcon — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 13:19:42 +0000

Regardless of what the Kuran teaches, it is clear that the current manifestation of Islam includes the acceptability of violence to achieve an end. It is virtually indistinguishable from ethnic cultural practices, such as “honor” killings. This integration of ethnic/nationalistic culture and religious identity gives rise to the perception that Islam is violence, when it is the culture that is actually responsible. However, there is a common denominator, it is either Arabic/Islamic culture or Islam the religion. To deny that there is a significant advocacy for violence in Islam (the religion or culture) is just plain silly. While I may have daily interaction with those who practice Islam I consider them extremists until proven otherwise.

By: jakester

jakester — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:02:16 +0000

Marcus
McVeigh was not in the army when he blew up the building. No one said check all Muslims, but ones who spout jihad sentiments, have contacts with a radical Imam and try to contact Al Qaeda should ring a bell somewhere.

By: jakester

jakester — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 20:57:32 +0000

I totally agree he is the classic home grown jihadist and I am sick of morons at Huff Po et al pretending he wasn’t. Do you know how many times some jerk went on about McVeigh, I had a stock response, he was not a practicing Christian, was not part of any Christian terrorists group nor cited any biblical references or religious text to justify his act. I must have followed a hundred of those comments with that come back.
On the other hand, I totally blame the Army for not weeding this cretin out. I don’t think PC had anything to do with this, just usual Army incompetence. He could have been arrested for numeroous charges, had his shrink license revoked for proselytizing or been transfered to some remote US base.

By: Raider1

Raider1 — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:54:43 +0000

Honestly it isn’t even the overt terror war that concerns me most. Even the trolls here (except Otto1, Otto2, Otto3 and Balcon maybe) can understand a bomb going off. But what about the p.c. that prevents honest discussions of Islam. What about textbooks that whitewash the history of Islam while demonizing Christianity? What about Saudis pouring huge sums of money into our highest institutions to buy influence? What about German publishing houses self-censoring for fear of Mulsim street violence? (Something that Otto2 never answered of course). Etc.

They are taking over the West while putting it to sleep at the same time.

By: Independent

Independent — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 19:42:31 +0000

“Of course, the far Left trolls on this site still haven’t been able to do that simple task. In order to do that, they’d have to admit internally that the War on Terror still rages –and you can’t admit to something the Obama says no longer exists, right?” –mi-gop

absolutely, 100% nailed it. in fact, some of the trolls here keep right on going like some perverted energizer bunny of far left lunacy.