ABC News reports that US Intelligence had been aware for months that Major Nidal Hasan was attempting to get in touch with al-Qaeda. It is not known what role the “Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia” played in subsequent events. But the circumstances are suggestive. According to the Christian Science Monitor, the mosque once had prayer leader Anwar al-Awlaki. Anwar al-Awlaki had been the spiritual adviser of two September 11 attackers. He is now in Yemen and is certainly pleased at Hasan’s actions:
Nidal Hassan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living the contradiction of being a Muslim and serving in an army that is fighting against his own people. … The US is leading the war against terrorism which in reality is a war against Islam. Its army is directly invading two Muslim countries and indirectly occupying the rest through its stooges. …
But “on the Sunday talk shows, an army official warned against jumping to conclusions about Hasan”. It was the second time the phrase “jumping to conclusions” was used in the context of the Fort Hood attack. President Obama, while offering his sympathies of those shot and killed at Fort Hood was also described by the New York Times as urging Americans not to “jump to conclusions.”
In a Rose Garden appearance on Friday, Mr. Obama urged Americans not to “jump to conclusions” about the motives behind the shooting, a theme he echoed on Saturday. “We cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing,” he said in the Saturday address. “But what we do know is our thoughts are with every single one of the men and women who were injured at Fort Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy.”
Cannot know or will not know? The difference is a crucial one.
Barry Rubin recently spoofed the “jumping to conclusions” phrase by writing a satirical piece retelling historical incidents in modern politically correct style. Why he asked, should John Wilkes Booth have been suspected of Confederate sympathies simply because he expressed them? Was the fact that a bombing suspect had attended IRA meetings any reason to think that it might be a factor in attacks against the British? By emphasizing the ludicrousness of it, Rubin argued that the media was going out of its way to distort the facts and suppressing what ought to be natural avenues of public inquiry.
The phrase “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” can lead to sloppy thinking which incorrectly assumes that it is always best to give a man exhibiting dangerous tendencies the benefit of the doubt. The words “don’t question my patriotism” and “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” suggest that tolerance trumps everthing and pre-emptively shuts down inquiry. It is certainly always true that “we cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing” if one cannot ask. After all, you can’t know what’s in a box if you’re not allowed to peek or at least shake it. And speaking of jumping to conclusions, if you can’t ask, what alternative is there? When the true value of an object cannot be known because it is forbidden to ask many people will simply assume the worst value. Political correctness may have the long term effect not of shielding Muslims from suspicion but making it universal.
How could one have gone about inquiring into Hasan’s true mental state? A Marine veteran of the Iraq campaign wrote to me after the Hasan incident and recalled a relevant incident in his own career. He had a subordinate who expressed highly controversial political views prior to their deployment to Iraq. He could have let it slide. Instead, the officer decided that it was better to actively engage the dissenter rather than ignore him; and if he were indeed a patriotic dissenter then he would actively help the subordinate find legitimate channels to express his disagreements with the US government. The message was: do dissent right or don’t do it. It was a risk, but the officer was prepared to take it.
Before my last deployment, I had a junior Marine who was very competent tactically, and a little bit of a smart-ass, but not painfully so. Over the course of our pre-deployment training though, it became clear that he was also a September 11th conspiracy theorist. At first this seemed just one more part of his being a smart-ass. Over time though I could see it was wearing on the other Marines and that this one really seemed to think that the government had planned September 11th. I had a long conversation about it with him, and gently asserted my own view (I didn’t like overtly influencing my Marines’ political viewpoints). A month or so later, he nearly got into a fight with one of his team members about this. I told him to keep his thoughts to himself from then on.
He chose not to. After another incident, I brought him in for a formal counseling. I was concerned that if we had a casualty or God forbid someone was killed, that he would then blame the whole thing on the government, and the President, etc etc, which would destroy morale after such a loss. I brought him in and told him he had a choice: a) shut the f**k up permanently, b) if he wanted to be a conscientious objector, there was nothing wrong with that, that’s just being honest to your opinions as a man, and it’s admirable, and I would help him fill out the paperwork, and he probably wouldn’t have to deploy, or c) if he spent any time theorizing again, I would charge him under the provsion of Article 134 of the UCMJ that addresses making “disloyal statements,” and he would be eligible for non-judicial punishment, or a court-martial, if he so chose.
He chose option A, and if he ever had much to say again after that, it was out of my own earshot and awareness. He was (and probably still is) a good Marine and came from a long family tradtion of isolationist, America-first politics, which is what spawned his theories.
I wonder why nothing like this was ever put to Major Hasan in Fort Hood. Personally, I made sure my boss knew what I was doing and approved, and I was fully ready to defend my decisions should somebody write their congressman about it. I’m sure it might have been controversial — “suppressing speech” and so forth — but so be it.
Sources have told me that Hasan’s behavior at Walter Reed had long been the subject of conversation of his colleagues. So at least some of Hasan’s superiors may have been in a position to take an active interest in his views. But it is still unclear whether they simply let things slide or tried to get to the bottom of it. If they let things slide then they left the definitive diagnosis until too late. The real benefit of the Marine officer’s approach is that it gained information early. By engaging his subordinate the commander was able to tell whether he was a legitimate dissenter or a member of a dangerous conspiracy. The engagement was a kind of reconnaissance, not without its dangers, but certainly laden with potentially rewarding early information.
Personally, I made sure my boss knew what I was doing and approved, and I was fully ready to defend my decisions should somebody write their congressman about it. I’m sure it might have been controversial — “suppressing speech” and so forth — but so be it.
The effect of political correctness has been to destroy the contrast between dissent and actual criminal behavior. Because certain religious activities are treated differently than other observed behaviors, political correctness has essentially forced a kind of “late binding” on the American organizational processes. Early discovery or even inquiry is actively discouraged. That is like writing a computer program in which the qualities of certain objects are not tested at compile time but at run-time: you find out whether things work only when you actually have to use them. By inquiring into his subordinate’s behavior before deployment, the Marine Officer was attempting to enforce a kind of “early binding” upon the men he was going to test in potential battle. Despite President Obama’s assertion that “we cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing” the Army certainly discovered that this “thing” involved shooting and discovered it too late.
Political correctness can have the opposite of its intended effect; creating divisions where they were none, start issues over trivial matters and impose information blackouts over ludicrously small things. Take for example the matter of the Annapolis color guard at the World Series. The Navy Times reports on how attempts to be “diverse” wound up being “divisive”.
Naval Academy leaders removed two midshipmen from a color guard that performed at the World Series last week because they were white men, and replaced them with a non-white man and a white woman so the academy could present a more “diverse” profile, according to several sources, a move that has reportedly angered mids and alumni.
As it turned out, the color guard still ended up all white because the male replacement forgot parts of his uniform.
Two white, male members of the color guard learned Oct. 28 they were being replaced with a white woman, Midshipman 2nd Class Hannah Allaire, and a non-white man, Midshipman 2nd Class Zishan Hameed, on orders of the school’s administration, according to an internal e-mail message provided to Navy Times by an academy professor. With a national television audience, Naval Academy leadership worried the color guard it planned to send wasn’t diverse enough, the e-mail said.
But the Muslim male cadet forgot part of his uniform and so an all white male contingent marched anyway. It was the worst of all worlds. And instead of projecting diversity the incident wound up covering everyone with embarassment instead of glory. Who benefitted from this incident? The UNSA? The Muslim Midshipman? The World Series? Or did everyone lose? Not surprisingly there were attempts to put the whole thing under wraps.
The administration’s decision upset many of the mids, according to the e-mail. But after Klunder heard complaints about the situation from alumni and family members, the brigade’s company commanders were ordered to tell their midshipmen they were forbidden from discussing the color guard story with people outside the Yard, according to a source familiar with the situation who was not authorized to discuss it.
The source said current midshipmen and alumni were frustrated that one of them was denied the chance to march at the World Series, despite having earned it, and that the administration was trying to squelch discussion of it.
Carpenter said he didn’t know who told the midshipmen not to talk about the situation.
The reason a meritocracy works is that all the members of an organization operate under a single consistent set of rules. What political correctness does is overlay a second, or even a third set of unspoken rules on top of the formal ones. Suddenly nobody knows what gives and the system seems not only unpredictable but may be perceived as unfair. Worse, it encourages those with “special” attributes to segregate themselves to take advantage of the new and unwritten rules. It can be enormously disruptive.
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Great post, Thanks
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”
My biggest gripe with political correctness is that everything is an absolute. Dissent is patriotic and ends there. My take on the Marine veteran is dissent doesn’t end with stating your unrest. You take each case and find out what the dissent is and deal with it. I am glad to see a person consicely present a way to deal with it and realized it was an ongoing situation.
Because management of subordinates is something that is culturally obsolete in the US. We are all supposed to be “self-managing”. When I read the story above about the “Marine veteran”, it sounds like a story from the last century (!). Management’s role these days is representing your subordinates UP to management. Work – just happens. Or, not.
I was going to quibble with the “early binding”, but on second thought, that’s exactly what it is – Hasan was not in the least bound to the program, he did not compile, he did not pass the test, he had a memory exception error, and the Army did not do a good job of handling the general protection fault. Too much of that, and we will have a BSOD over our nation.
#2. “Because management of subordinates is something that is culturally obsolete in the US. We are all supposed to be “self-managing”. When I read the story above about the “Marine veteran”, it sounds like a story from the last century (!). Management’s role these days is representing your subordinates UP to management. Work – just happens. Or, not.”
Leadership is not culturally obsolete in the US military, nor is effective management. It doesn’t help, IMO, to frame the issue in absolute terms. We may have problems, significant ones, but I have confidence they will be addressed. Whether our political leadership will have that same confidence remains to be seen.
I will tell you that I had absolutely no concerns about such leadership while in command (Navy) only ten years ago. Yes, it was in the last century (!) Yes, we have rot in our military, from what I’ve read, and yes, it’s pernicious. But excise it we must. We can help by demanding our political leadership face the issue squarely and support the action our professional military must take.
When you jump to a conclusion
It can lead to much confusion
And that is something we don’t want to see
Just because a man is saying
That to Allah he is praying
Doesn’t mean he’s not the same as you and me
Just because he calls Al Qaeda
Doesn’t mean that he would hide a
Gun beneath his coat and shoot a man or two
And though many heard him crying
There are Muslim babies dying
And he blamed the deaths of all on me and you
Take the mosque that he attended
He would surely be offended
If we thought what he was told there was insane
Even though his Imam praised the
Men who gave their lives and razed the
Buildings in New York by Boeing aeroplane
And of course then we must never
Think a Muslim man could sever
Heads of innocents and those who mean no harm
For he is a man most peaceful
Who insists that we must cease all
Taking acts and words of Muslims with alarm
We must never think that single
Muslim men with whom we mingle
Are reflections of their countrymen at large
No the peaceful Muslim masses
Want to kill our Yankee asses
And put their crazy Imams all in charge
We should not jump to conclusion
That they’re playing with nuke fusion
For the purpose of destroying us this time
We must honor that their version
Of the truth is that the Persian
Rule of all us infidels will be sublime
I can’t help but wonder what our Dear Leader’s public response would have been if the miscreant had opened fire in the Harvard faculty lounge, rather than an Army staging facility. Would the female police officer have “acted stupidly” by intervening? Perhaps the best thing would be to invite the jihadi and some of the survivors to the White House for a beer.
A blog column posted over the weekend by Alan Keyes asked why Obama showed so little real emotion over the death of so many American servicemen and servicewomen at the hands of a Muslim suffering from Sudden Jihadi Syndrome. Keyes’ answer was that Obama has little connection with Americans because he shares so few of the experiences and expectations that make us what we are. Obama is a stranger in the land that has chosen to elevate him to its highest office out of an odd mixture of guilt and exuberance…
By emphasizing the ludicrousness of it, Rubin argued that the media was going out of its way to distort the facts and suppressing what ought to be natural avenues of public inquiry.
And therein lies the whole of it. Hasan had “root causes” for his behavior.
If you live in a leftist bubble, then ANY act undertaken against the military, law enforcement, intelligence community… or simply by an enemy of state against national interests…has a cloak of “qualified immunity” wrapped around it.
In the leftist bubble, antagonism toward America is deserved (hence, the need for globetrotting apologies). One is not “jumping” to a conclusion about a police officer in Massachusetts, if one’s opinion permanently resides on the street where police act stupidly and with racist intent. No jumping required, simply standing on prior judgment will suffice. There may be a “teaching” moment in that, but it’s never clear which party is to be the pupil.
For the nanny-staters, it is always necessary to tamp down the reflexive rage of the “bitter clingers”…and if one has to tell a few lies and distort a few facts to accomplish that fact…then the ends justifies the means.
Our Machiavellian media simply is doing what it does when it comes to identifying the “real” enemy in their leftist bubble and keeping their torch burning against them. Hasan had “root causes”, don’t you know.
And with just a few more distortions and lies, you will begin to see them, just step inside the bubble for a clearer view.
Each soldier/armed forces member, not to mention elected official, takes an oath to support the Constitution. An oath is a sacred promise. If a person can no longer accept the terms of the oath, he can withdraw, as in conscientious objection.
I guess it’s nothing profound to say that the idea of “oath,” “plight,” and “vow” is generally weakening in the culture. That there exists a new category of “oath keepers” in the military is a response to some general sense of danger and deterioration regarding the value of oath.
By what does one swear? The Bible? The Koran? If the Koran, then there is a problem, of course, because a Muslim’s adherence to the Koran and the Ummah is likely to trump, in almost any version of Islam, an oath in support for the Constitution. Indeed, a soldier of Islam would not claim conscientious objector status but would engage in “hudna,” temporary truce. So the troubled, erratic Nidal Hasan type is in some very real senses not the problem, because he was, even if political correctness prevented action, a visible and obvious problem.
If anti-Americanists were looking for an ideal cancer to interject into the military, could they invent a better one than radical Islam?
Gresham’s law works in the moral and organizational spheres as well as the financial.
This is more than a military management problem. As I recall, it is a violation of the UCMJ to make public statements disparaging a senior officer.
President Bush was the ultimate senior officer when he was in office.
Taking a “Truther” position on active duty alleging the President Bush concocted the 9/11 attacks would therefore violate that provision of the UCMJ.
“The words “don’t question my patriotism” and “dissent is the highest form of patriotism” suggest that tolerance trumps everything and pre-emptively shuts down inquiry.”
Dissent against tyrannical government is the highest form of patriotism; dissent against just government is the highest form of ignorance or stupidity, or it may represent a form of Marxist class struggle against the middle class foundation of just American government (as expressed in our Declaration, Bill of Rights and Constitution). Muslims have been brought into the “new proletariat” by our internal Marxists; they have joined forces in class struggle against the patriotic American middle class.
http://hnn.us/blogs/entries/23743.html
Marxists and their newly found Islamist comrades wish to establish tyranny, and therefore find themselves dissenting against just government; this is not patriotism – it is internal political war. American Marxists and Islamists do not believe that all individuals are equal before law – as in Animal Farm – and as in the Quran – some are more equal than others before (Marxist or Sharia) law. American Marxists and Islamists do not believe in the individual’s God-given unalienable rights to life, liberty and private property – pursuit of happiness. The Marxists reject God (The State is god, i.e.: themselves), and believe that the State owns the individual’s “rights” which can be dispensed arbitrarily; whereas the Islamist have a god who does not grant unalienable rights to all individuals – unalienable rights are only granted to the Imams of the Islamic government who then dispense “rights” as they desire. Neither the Marxist nor the Islamist believe that government power should derive from the consent of the governed – their power is derived without the consent of the governed – without consent of the majority within moral (Declaration) and legal (Constitution) restraints. These Marxist and Islamist dissenters wish to establish elite rule: atheist &/or religious – who really cares which once reduced to serfdom?
“The issue today is the same as it has been throughout all history, whether man shall be allowed to govern himself or be ruled by a small elite.” Thomas Jefferson
Blaine,
“My biggest gripe with political correctness is that everything is an absolute.”
I disagree strongly – I think the biggest gripe with political correctness is that nothing is an absolute.
Blaine,
“My biggest gripe with political correctness is that everything is an absolute.”
I disagree strongly – the biggest problem with political correctness is that NOTHING is an absolute.
Sorry if this is a duplicate.
I doubt political correctness had anything to do with keeping this guy on. Frankly the Army invested a ton of money in this guy and didn’t want to let him go. If our armed forces weren’t stretched to the breaking point as they are now they would have discharged him a long time ago.
IMO the higher ups believed he was trying to get himself tossed out by making outlandish comments. Kind of like how you can say ‘I like buttsecks with other dudes’ will get you discharged immediately whether it is true or not. Undoubtedly his religion prevented him from taking this route.
Well as we are fighting a war on at least four fronts – Iraq, Afghanistan, Horn of Africa and Cyberspace, plus so many other holding actions, the Army ain’t gonna let you go just ’cause you want out. Especially if you are in a highly specialized field like psychiatry.
I’ve been saying this for some time. The American people are (largely) not suicidal, and will demand to know who is responsible, and they will therefore seek out the variable with the highest degree of correlation. But if some of the variables are hidden by law, they’ll use the (less precise) visible ones: race, ethnicity, gender, religion, national origin. Every Leftist and Imam professes to be afraid that Ethnic Profiling or Religious Profiling is coming, but if they continue to prevent the rest of American from engaging in Ideological Profiling, then Ethnic Profiling is what we’re going to get. Lots of innocents will be harmed, but Americans will feel safer and think “It’s the best we could do in a bad situation.”
And this is apiece with many other Leftist policies. They continue to believe that Man’s nature can be altered by passing a law, and that unintended consequences are always surprising. They refuse to accept that Supply & Demand will always meet each other, and pass market-distorting laws providing tariffs, subsidies, and government guarantees against loss, and then profess surprise when the market fails. They refuse to accept that taxes are money taken from the private sector, and express puzzlement when higher tax rates (and government borrowing) result in reduced hiring and consumption. They refuse to accept that the essence of economic growth is the innovative destruction of old (less efficient) labor practices, and then stare like a deer in headlights when union work rules and legislated employment relationships causes Michigan’s economy to implode. They insist that more regulation is better than less, and costs be damned; and then wonder why IPO activity and new energy development drops off 80%.
I wouldn’t mind their persistent delusions so much if they abstained from voting. But alas, they don’t, and they force us all to live more dangerous lives.
Mr. al-Awlaki points to something very critical: One cannot serve two masters indefinitely. Eventually the two symbols you claim to owe allegiance to will come into conflict, and then your TRUE loyalties will be revealed. Maybe in a world where the United States was involved in wars in Latin America instead of the Ummah Maj. Hasan could have continued to serve without our knowing of his conflicts; and different soldiers (now serving more or less loyally in Iraq and Afghanistan) would have put on the red headband and made their own personal war on the unarmed soldiers preparing to deploy. “Che es grande!”
Do we need loyalty tests? That can get out of hand. But disloyalty is already getting out of hand. The American people will demand an answer, and if government cannot provide one then they may take matters into their own hands. Hayek thought that disunity would create demand for a “Strong Leader”, but that is not the American way. Instead of the road to Serfdom, do social conditions in the United States mean that the same set of facts seen in Europe might instead produce a road to Anarchy? And will our system of Courts and civil liberties be saved for anyone?
Blaine@1
“My biggest gripe with political correctness is that everything is an absolute. ”
In a way. In other ways, NOTHING is absolute with those people. Everything seems so squishy that nothing is definite. Try to get a very politically correct person to give a straight answer on where the line is between dissent and treason. Or the line between being aware of race and being a racist. Or the line between owning and running a profitable business and “exploiting” your employees. Hopefully you’ll have better luck than I did.
Robert Spencer posted this interview. In which he explains the lefts reasoning for ignoring or embracing Islam.
Robert Also recommends this book
Read the reviews, they are very telling.
Papa Ray
Compare within the political and ideological frame the POTUS’ reaction and response statements to the Tiller v. Ft. Hood shootings. Start ahead of the “shout out” to the whatever medal winner.
If you think of political correctness as a mansion, there’s an entire wing devoted to Muslims. This started right after 9/11 – here in Seattle much was made of the fact that there was no shortage of non-Muslim volunteers to “be with” the members of the big mosque here in case anyone wanted to harm them. (There wasn’t a single incident that I’m aware of. Not that they were armed volunteers, of course, they weren’t “that kind” of people. And needless to say there is no such similar outpouring of sympathy and support for the Jews when Israel comes under public fire) But they jumped to the same conclusion the president and MSM have, which is that the rest of us – meaning anyone who doesn’t live in their PC house and share their view – can’t be trusted.
I worked for the state of Washington for 7 years (the county hospital here is administered by the UW)and special concern for Muslim sensibilities is endemic. One small example, every year in December e-mails from on high make the rounds reminding everyone that anyone who calls in sick the day after Christmas will not get sick pay. Instead you lose a day of vacation time. Now that may be a big “so what” to people without benefit packages and fair enough, but here’s the thing. On the day after Ramadan ends, which is a big feast day called the Eid – much like Christmas, Easter and Thanksgiving rolled into one – 99.9% of the Muslim employees don’t show up. That’s a lot of people, too. The UW has been leading the way, as they like to think of it, in offering “equal opportunity” to Muslims. Three guesses as to whether they get these reminders or the sick-leave penalty. I’ll save you the trouble of working it out- they do not. They are also exempt from joining the union, which is an iron-clad pre-requisite for everyone else. It’s written up as a broad religious exception, of course. Good luck to anyone other than a Muslim getting it approved.
There are other annoyances, like the necessity of dropping everything and disappearing to pray, which no in their right mind is going to question because once accused of racism in that environment you may as well pack it up and go home. I felt compelled to raise issues of competency about a Muslim co-worker and had to walk a tightrope with management for several years just to get them listen. Even so it got me written up for insubordination twice, among many other headaches, and in the end the other person just transferred to another department. And the thing of it is, management was aware of the problem all along. I wasn’t telling them anything they didn’t know, but in fact I was the bigger problem in their eyes for making an issue of in the first place. So long as nothing really bad happened, they were afraid to confront her incompetence in the same way they would anyone else’s because she was a Muslim.
Probably mansion is the wrong analogy – fortress would be better. Couple this with the so-called moderate Muslim view that any criticism of Islam amounts to “racism” and the rest is a foregone conclusion.
(BTW, I don’t doubt the Muslim’s sincere belief on that score. Islam is an absolutist ideology and however moderate in temperament and practice the individual Muslim may be, his religion hasn’t prepared him for critical thinking. Neither does the PC view of things, so we end up with the worst of both worlds)
Oh every couple of generations the youth rediscover or think they have discovered a philosophy that was most notable to Jean-Jacques Rousseau. It leads to disaster of course every time, if not on a national level it will on a personnel level. You get “Bohemians” whose children end up in the gutter and or despising them. Ah the “Noble Savage” concept. It makes me want to pukey wokie.
“I” am the devil.
“I know” or “I decided” or “I understand” or “I have a fatwa direct from a man who has it direct from the Koran what is direct from god” (and you do not!) is the essence of Marxist/ Islamic philosophy.
Self annointed.
Islam is the issue.
Funny that pigs are the smartest animals on the farm. Especially the more equal ones.
On 9/11, the 19 hijackers were screened by a computer-assisted screening system called CAPPS. More than half were identified for further inspection, which applied only to their checked luggage. http://www.9-11commission.gov/report/911Report_Ch12.htm
Amazing we can not bring ourselves to ask questions even after the above? It is also ironic that some people engage in intentionally engaging in flagging behavior in order to use that as pre-text for a lawsuit.
South Park some years ago lampooned this attitude. Mr. Garrison figured if he could get suspended/fired from his teaching job he could cash in with a lawsuit. No matter how outlandishly he would act in class he couldn’t get fired or disciplined and in fact the South Park boys were sent to “diversity camp” for questioning their teacher’s behavior. Eventually it all got so absurd that Mr. Garrison told off the community telling them they were all being stupid and admitting to what he was trying to do.
#3, but that’s sort of the point, obviously from the story there is still (some) effective management of subordinates, in the ranks, but maybe not so much in the doctor ranks – see the old MASH tv series, or Catch-22′s Milo Minderbinder, it’s not like it would be a new thing to see different, relaxed, trendoid practices the further from arms and action you get.
I was discussing this with my 14-y-o son. Of Hasan, he said “They’ll probably give him the Nobel Peace Prize”.
Proud of that boy, I am.
Let’s NOT jump to conclusions that this American BORN, Palestinian murderer who shouts “allah akbar” while murdering American soldiers is in fact a terrorist…
Please let’s sing a chorus from “kum-by-ya” and hold hands and worry that there will be an “anti-islamic” backlash…
Or maybe we could get 100,000 people to send cans of SPAM to the hospital that this “gentleman” is being treated….
Really think of it…
If THOUSANDS of cans of SPAM were sent to him, CAIR or the mosque he attended…
Would that not be funnier than Moslems in a pulled-pork bbq contest….
OT: Tom Friedman says give up the Israeli/Palestinian peace process
For once, he gets it right.
“There are none so blind as those who will not see”.
Thomas Chalkley’. (1713)
Why not ban the use of the Koran in swearing the oath of loyalty to the country? Could a devout Muslim take the oath under those circumstances? Oh, I forgot, it’s OK to lie to unbelievers. So any oath given by a Muslim is unreliable. That in and of itself should allow the banning of declared Muslims from any function whatever requiring the taking of an oath, from serving in the military to being admitted to the bar to taking public office to serving on a jury or testifying in court to becoming a naturalized citizen to certifying a document. None of these oaths can be trusted from a Muslim. What have we done?
In the several threads we have discussed regarding the Muzzie MadMan Murderous Major Hasan my mind has turned a number of times to
Arthur Schopenhauer’s work. In that work,
“On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason”
Using it to explain anything in the world is a bit dicey but when examined the reason pass the truth test.
The laws of thought can be most intelligibly expressed thus:
*Everything that is, exists.
*Nothing can simultaneously be and not be.
*Each and every thing either is or is not.
*Of everything that is, it can be found why it is.
So how does this apply to the various threads and the overall scope of several threads?
The one overarching ostensibly missing harmony, (where there should be) is the acknowledgement that we are at WAR with islam.
I have read various defenses for this action by them or that action by them and all sorts of contorted reasoning about this war is OUR fault.
Until we get a much larger acknowledgement that 1. islam exists 2. it cannot be an ideology of peace and also be the murderous presence it is worldwide. ie. recall the attacks on Britain, Spain, Belgium, Italy et. Al. 3. Each and everything either is or is not…islam is a dastardly, murderous philosophy 4. Of Everything that is. It can be find why it is…..it is because moham-man and sharia law say it is that way and only that way.
We are in an all out world war with this philosophy and its followers. Those who reflect the islamic propaganda are doing so irrationally and should not be taken seriously. That is why I advocate killing as many as need killing in order to alter their behavior. Charles Martel stopped them. I believe we can too.
In the several threads we have discussed regarding the Muzzie MadMan Murderous Major Hasan my mind has turned a number of times to
Arthur Schopenhauer’s work,
“On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason”
Using it to explain anything in the world is a bit dicey but when examined they bear some reflection.
The laws of thought can be most intelligibly expressed thus:
*Everything that is, exists.
*Nothing can simultaneously be and not be.
*Each and every thing either is or is not.
*Of everything that is, it can be found why it is.
So how does this apply to the various threads and the overall?
The one overarching ostensibly missing harmony, (where there should be) is the acknowledgement that we are at WAR with islam.
I have read various defenses for this action by them or that action by them and all sorts of contorted reasoning about this war is OUR fault.
Until we get a much larger acknowledgement that 1. islam exists 2. it cannot be an ideology of peace and also be the murderous presence it is worldwide. ie. recall the attacks on Britain, Spain, Belgium, Italy et. Al. 3. Each and everything either is or is not…islam is a dastardly, murderous philosophy 4. Of Everything that is. It can be find why it is…..it is because moham-man and sharia law say it is that way and only that way.
We are in an all out world war with this philosophy and its followers.
That is one reason I advocate killing in great numbers islams. It may just alter their aggression. Charles Martel did it. So can we.
Tunku Varadarajan suggests in Forbes that we augment the American slang phrase “going postal” with “going muslim” for such cases:
http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/08/fort-hood-nidal-malik-hasan-muslims-opinions-columnists-tunku-varadarajan.html
Dissent is not the highest form of patriotism.
Patriotism is the highest form of dissent.
I get the bad feeling that a kind of anti-Muslim feeling is building up fueled less by what the majority of Muslims do than by by the agendas of extremists and their Western apologists and enablers. While you could make the argument that the Muslim majority have by their passivity allowed this to happen, one could also make the case that the West has let PC forces do the same.
In each situation, a set of lunatic drivers has taken the controls of a civilization. How did we get to this place at the beginning of the 21st century, with its rules against cows farting, schemes for carbon trading, suicide bombing, death panels, injunctions against men urinating while standing, honor killings, plans for destroying perfectly good cars to promote the sales of Japanese “fuel efficient” models as cash for clunkers, suicide bombers — how did we get to this insane place?
I think there is very little difference, with respect to sanity, between the Islamic extremists and the madmen who are the high priests of political correctness. How much nuttier are madrassas than some of the extreme left wing campuses? On what planet, in what century do they live? And they somehow seem to telepathically communicate with each other in ways that ordinary people cannot even begin to fathom. We don’t have a cycle of violence. We have cycle of madness.
Pamela is all over this.
There is method to the madness of Marx and Mohammad – rule of a privileged elite class – two classes which are the law and therefore above the law.
Just noticed this – “But what we do know is our thoughts are with every single one of the men and women who were injured at Fort Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy.”
Our Thoughts. Not our prayers, just “our thoughts”. How very cold and empty this man is.
Here is an excerpt from Article III of the United States Constitution.
Section 3
1. Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
2. The Congress shall have the power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood or forfeiture except during the life of the person attained.
.
.
.
A trial for treason is a judicial function. It will require testimony of at least two witnesses. Given that the acts of Major Nidal Malik Hassan happened on a military reservation, federal jurisdiction applies.
I do not know whether a prosecution for treason in this circumstance is the responsibility of the US Department of Defense or whether it is the responsibility of the US Department of Justice. In any case, it appears to be the responsibility of the Executive Branch of the United States Government to act.
Will the Government of the United States of America act against a clear and unequivocal traitor? What must it take for the United States Government to invoke the treason clause of the United States Constitution?
Maybe if Janet Napolitano hadn’t been spending so much time scrutinizing “tea-bag people” she could have connected the dots on the worst domestic terrorism since 9/11.
I think there is very little difference, with respect to sanity, between the Islamic extremists and the madmen who are the high priests of political correctness./b>
Wretchard, I agree…two points of clarification, if you would permit me.
First, I see William Ayers (and his wife of no soul, both of whom plotted to kill soldiers at Ft. Dix and their dates in a mirror of the Hasanicide), Michael Moore, Jeremiah Wright, Jimmy Carter…all stones on the same footpath, leading to this recent Hasanicide.
If one listens to the words, there is a near overlay of blame against the “Ugly American”, the “bitter clinger”…and an absolution of sorts for our sworn enemies, to whom we owe abject and permanent penance. The deep bow and the globetrotting apology tour are the visible remnants of how we are to prostrate ourselves before our moral “betters”.
THEIR acts are “root cause justified”, retaliation by us ALWAYS unjustified. (I don’t believe for a minute that they believe the war in Afghanistan was the “right” one all along, had we prosecuted that one…we would have heard “quagmire” and “grim milestones” every day for as long as we were there.)
Second point: I don’t think this is political “correctness”, I believe it is political corrosion. We corrode our will, we corrode our justification to act in our own defense, we corrode our image to the world and we corrode our national esteem.
We need to stop using the term “political correctness”, because it validates by definition an act in furtherance of a scheme to undermine this land of ours.
I agree with Wretchard; we (Americans loyal to our Declaration, Bill of Rights and Constitution) are up against an alliance of two clergies: totalitarian Political Correctness (Cultural Marxism) and totalitarian Islam.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=8630135369495797236&hl=en#
Wretchard,
A more “benign” explanation might be Inattentional Blindness.
http://www.creativecreativity.com/2007/11/inattentional-b.html
Charles @34, good catch. But I notice something else when I read this:
“But what we do know is our thoughts are with every single one of the men and women who were injured at Fort Hood. Our thoughts are with all the families who’ve lost a loved one in this national tragedy.”
Every single one of the men and women includes Hasan. He didn’t say, “our brave soldiers,” or “the victims of this senseless assault.”
No, his Manchurian Candidacy is showing through again.
In 1984 Winston Smith observed that Big Brother could feed lies at will to the proletariat class, and they would swallow it whole. This is what Yuri Bezmenov referred to as “demoralization” of a population; brainwashing to the point where individuals are no longer able to accept self-evident truth – the point where individuals are no longer able to reason.
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-2307456730142665916#
Leftism isn’t about inquiry or tolerance, it’s about received wisdom from a self-anoited elite. As someone pointed out a thread or so back, Leftists start with a desire for more power, work backwards to a conclusion that demands more power for them, and them maybe continue working backwards for a reason (but that’s the least important part). Accordingly, their reasons rarely hold up under any sort of scrutiny (GloboWarming theories, anyone?) so scrutiny cannot be allowed. Whether it’s about Muslims, Global Warming, Education, Sex, Tax policy, or anything else, Leftisms answer to the question “why” is always “because I said so, now shut up.”
Which is eventually shortened to just “Shut up.” And eventually just “bang” if you let them go far enough.
Too true. Our prayers ought to be with the victims. Our thoughts ought to be with how to prevent the next attack.
Are you sure it’s not a majority? What about a sizable minority? Should we be happy or worried that “only” 10-20% of Muslims in Muslim-majority nations support attacks on US civilians in the United States? Many Americans also remember the street celebrations following 9/11.
At what level of support can we justifiably call them “just some extremists”, as opposed to a “major faction” within Muslim society?
Wretch you are exactly right about that. One need not look further than these words: ‘I’m sad for those killed and wounded by a traitor to both God and our country, and I regret that I even feel that I have to write something on the subject.’
Notice the lack of sniveling equivocation or meaningless PR drivel such as ‘we condemn in the strongest possible terms…’ Considering we Americans are bombarded with advertising from the time we are born, we have a healthy cynicism about it, and we can recognize bullshit from miles away.
Frankly I am sick to death of hearing ‘but not all Muslims are like that!’ No shit! In the back of my mind I think if it were true why are you repeating it so much? and then the infamous maxim If you repeat a lie often enough it becomes true.
How did we get to this point? Simple. In a democracy the people are sovereign. Well that means ultimate responsibility lies with us. We got here because we are too busy watching sports, watching porn, taking pills and other drugs, and whining about how messed up everything is on internet forums.
If we do mobilize at all it is to protect our sacred special interest cows, such as old geezers with medicare at Tea Parties screaming at the top of their lungs to prevent anyone else from getting a public option or the masses of ignorant illegal alien serfs at the immigration reform rallies of a few years ago.
“12. Captain Ramen: I doubt political correctness had anything to do with keeping this guy on.” Were you ever in the military? I served 22 years as a USMC officer. We had classes every year on sexual harassment, minorities, etc. Allegations along those lines were more likely to end your career than incompetence. Wretchard mentioned an officer going after a 9-11 “truther” but they weren’t/aren’t protected. Believe me, PC played during MAJ Hasan’s entire career (from school selection through retention and promotion). The % of Muslims in the armed forces is negligible, we need the linguists but could dump the rest with zero effect on combat readiness.
Wretchard’s post is awesome. I particularly enjoyed the “not tested at compile time but at run-time” metaphor. This applies to gays in the military as well. Unit cohesion is likely to break at exactly the time it is most needed. And we’ll rarely know why a unit failed, just that it was overrun and wiped out. Returning to the topic of Muslims, they need to “police their own” or they’ll run out of goodwill. The media and President (whether it be Bush or Obama) are at risk of being tuned out, since their statements have been exposed as false by an inconvenient thing known as…reality.
On the Frame thread @124 LotM made the following observation
“In Islam everything there is to know was comprehended by a human being and was set down as understood by him or was demonstrated by his example. Nothing more is to be learned and nothing can be changed. Full Stop. In Judaism, and Christianity and every other faith system that I know of, God is by definition beyond the comprehension of the bounded human system.”
That’s an important insight. Taking that thought a step further and considering also that Islam is not merely a set of beliefs about God but a social, economic and legal ideology that transcends nationality I think at some point we are going to have to stop giving First Amendment cover to Islam as a religion per se. Someone proposed a constitutional amendment to that effect awhile back. Muslims can still believe that God spoke to Mohammed, just as Mormons can believe the angels spoke to Joseph Smith. But it would make the obligations of citizenship and military service crystal clear in ways that the average Muslim doesn’t seem prepared to understand, which is enabled by PC ideology and frankly confused by our own long tradition of religious freedom.
I also agree with Alexis that Hasan should be charged with treason. Not several dozen hairsplitting degrees of assault, or even murder. Treason it is.
Contemporary liberalism and jihadism are cut from the same cloth. Beneath all the rationalizations, their motivation is the same: the sadistic pleasure in destroying that which is good.
Worse, they are systematically eradicating the concepts that allow for distinctions to be made and for logical, coherent thought itself to occur. That’s the source of the insanity that Wretchard identifies above.
There was a wonderful article about this by psychoanalyst Stephen Rittenburg, M.D., in American Thinker, 12/9/07 . A bit of it here:
“The reason we hear so little condemnation, much less military resolve to annihilate these savage perverts, is Western culture’s thralldom to contemporary, politically correct liberalism, which is itself perverse. Post-modern Liberalism shares the mindset of the jihadis and unconsciously enjoys their enactment of liberal fantasies.
Civilization has been built painstakingly on difference: male and female, yes and no, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. There are rules, laws, customs, hard-won scientific knowledge. Civilization is a fragile guardian of reality, which must be defended from the onslaught of barbarians wishing to abolish rules and differences.
In each of our psyches the perverse temptation must be fought, if civilization is to survive. The more advanced the civilization, the more intense the appeal to throw off constraints. Often individual rebels are rewarded with the title of ‘artist’, but Sade was an artist whose ideas were realized in Nazism.
When the discharge of polymorphous perversion is united with murderous aggression we get Jihadism. Such perverse ideologies could be more easily fought if not for the politically correct liberal urge to submit to them in their crudest totalitarian form.”
Jihadism, Liberalism, and Perversion
@46,
I’ve never had the privilege of serving.
Don’t get me wrong, I think domestic multiculturalism and the political correctness employed to justify it are serious problems for our society, perhaps the biggest problem of all. Those factors have to do with his parents being allowed to immigrate here. I don’t think they have much to do with retaining him.
Reports indicate that this guy did not want to go to Afghanistan. If he truly were a sleeper agent why would he drop hints like that? Before we blithely state that he was kept on to fill a Muslim quota or as not to offend the Muslim community, I think we should make the following inquiries:
1) How much did it cost the army to put this guy through medical school? How many years of service do they require in exchange? Clearly it isn’t cheap. So I imagine they’d want him to stay in for a lot longer than they would an infantryman.
2) Does the army have all the psychiatrists it needs/wants? For example we know that the armed forces proscribes go pills to combat sleep.
3) Are there any examples of Muslim enlisted men who want out but are forced to stay?
I have read on strategy page all the time about how the air force is having trouble retaining skilled pilots – the private sector pays better and no one is trying to shoot you. It is not unreasonable to assume that it is hard to retain other highly skilled specialists. So if 1) it was expensive, 2) shortage of psychiatrists 3) Muslim grunts and other less specialized servicemen WERE discharged after making disloyal statements, I think we could conclude that skilled personnel shortages were a larger factor than political correctness.
Now that Hassan is awake and talking it will be interesting learning to which conclusion he jumps. Will it be Time magazine’s second hand PTSD conclusion or will it be the planned well in advance sudden jihad? I assume he is heavily guarded and lawyering up. Perhaps CAIR is mobilizing the flying imams’ attorneys.
Maineman writes:
“There was a wonderful article by psychoanalyst Stephen Rittenburg, M.D., in American Thinker, 12/9/07 (Jihadism, Liberalism, and Perversion). A bit of it here: “The reason we hear so little condemnation, much less military resolve to annihilate these savage perverts, is Western culture’s thralldom to contemporary, politically correct liberalism, which is itself perverse. . . . Civilization has been built painstakingly on difference: male and female, yes and no, right and wrong, truth and falsehood. There are rules, laws, customs, hard-won scientific knowledge. Civilization is a fragile guardian of reality, which must be defended from the onslaught of barbarians wishing to abolish rules and differences.”
Rittenberg has read his Rene Girard. Cultural crisis occurs when genuine difference collapses. Societies cannot tolerate the lack of differences, the blurring of law, of the kind Rittenberg lists.
(Consider marriage: the general population wants to retain the traditional meaning of marriage, which incorporates male-female difference; the post-modernists want to abolish the difference and redefine the word.)
The result is a society’s mainly unthinking search for a scapegoat to blame for the crisis. But in the current crisis the elite controls the meme and defines the goat. Following the Fort Hood event we see a blaming of the innocent victims, i.e. of the soldiers for being part of a post-imperialist racist entity, and a blaming of those conservatives/rightists (often referred to as fascists by the blamers) for somehow enabling the root causes. The genuine concern for genuine victims has been hijacked by “victims” who know how to play the tune like a maestro with a Strad.
What is “treason” in the postmodern lexicon? And what is any abstract concept? Nothing, other than a tissue of contested meanings.
Denizens of academia will recogonize the subtle play of language that enables postmodernists to both celebrate “difference” and to undermine the very difference that provides the foundation for communication. You may want to deride the postmodern language as gobbledygook, but the left doesn’t see it this way. E.g., via Wiki:
“Différance is a French term coined by Jacques Derrida and homophonous with the word “différence”. Différance plays on the fact that the French word différer means both “to defer” and “to differ.” Derrida first uses the term différance in his 1963 paper “Cogito et histoire de la folie”[1]. . . . In the essay “Différance” Derrida indicates that différance gestures at a number of heterogeneous features which govern the production of textual meaning. The first (relating to deferral) is the notion that words and signs can never fully summon forth what they mean, but can only be defined through appeal to additional words, from which they differ. Thus, meaning is forever “deferred” or postponed through an endless chain of signifiers. . . . Thus, complete meaning is always postponed in language; there is never a moment when meaning is complete and total.”
I think at some point we are going to have to stop giving First Amendment cover to Islam as a religion per se.
Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.
Since the whole exercise is aimed to install sharia and overthrow the Constitution.
w @ 31: I get the bad feeling that a kind of anti-Muslim feeling is building up fueled less by what the majority of Muslims do than by by the agendas of extremists and their Western apologists and enablers.
This has been the Islamic strategy for 1500 years. Anthropologically, or in game theory terms, it’s very clever, isn’t it.
If not political correctness, then hope or laziness disarm the opposition, even a tiny but continuous drip of water eventually wears through the thickest rock.
My thought would be that the difference between your Marine acquaintance’s forthright and honest approach to dealing with a subordinate and the lack of effective engagement of Major Hasan would be the difference between a Marine line officer and an Army Medical unit, specifically a medical residency unit. Fort Hood was apparently Major Hasan’s first posting after medical school in Bethesda and residency and fellowship at Walter Reed. Physicians tend to give each other latitude, psychiatrists more so than others. Were Major Hasan a member of a tank unit or an engineering brigade, I’m reasonably certain after the 101st Airborne fragging incident in 2003 that there would have been an intervention. But as it stood, he was a REMF surrounded and trained by REMFs, and non-combat REMFs compared to the Marine officer. So Hasan is a little goofy about the Arab-Israeli thing? If he gets discharged I’ll have to see twice as many paitents, and it’s not like he’s going to go berzerk or anything… After all, we’re all psychiatrists, right? We would know if someone was on the edge.
And then there is the SEP issue so well described by Douglas Adams in ‘Life, The Universe And Everything’. If he became radicalized near the end of his residency, then he was Somebody Else’s Problem (SEP) for his program director once he moved on. The PTSD/Stress Intervention fellowship director had him for a couple of years, and then he became an SEP when he went to Darnall. Your Marine friend was not in a position, either by temperament or circumstances, to pass off his problematic 2LT to someone else as a SEP. There were many people that should have ‘seen the signs’, but large organizations are better at passing along problems than fixing them when presented with them. A radical Islamist in the United States military is surrounded by landmines and barbed wire of political correctness, a moving pillbox of contradictions so dense they could swallow whole careers if the officer was not engaged properly and managed to cry ‘Religious Oppression!’ before the case against him was proved. Best to just let him pass, and become a SEP.
The one effect I do predict is just about anyone in the military who makes any kind of political statement more than a standard deviation from the “conventional wisdom” is going to get more counselling than they can stand. Hopefully by professionals less-radical than Dr. Hasan.
If Major Nidal Hasan is alive and talking, then ship him and his lawyers to Gitmo and waterboard the lot of them.
“Dissent is the highest form of patriotism”
Should be: “Lawful dissent, when engaged in by a loyal patriot, is the highest form of patriotism.”
The dictionary definition of ‘dissent’ is:
To differ in opinion or feeling; disagree.
The dictionary definition of ‘patriotism’ is: Love of and devotion to one’s country.
Therefore, for dissent to be any form of patriotism… the dissenter must, irrespective of their dissent, feel love of and devotion to their country.
Frequently, leftist liberals neither love, nor are they devoted to their country. For many, it’s just the opposite, they hate America.
Patriotism is not a requirement of citizenship and lawful dissent is any citizens right.
But one thing is for sure, such as they are NOT patriots.
Wretchard –
Anti-Muslim feeling stems from the following, in no particular order:
1. Widespread terrorism and violation of all civilized norms in attacks and jihad and suicide bombing by Muslims abroad starting with the PLO, punctuated by the Muslim-led Iranian Hostage Crisis and completed by AQ and 9/11.
2. Special rules for Muslims that make them exempt from all laws and rules and procedures until AFTER they actually kill people. If Hassan (as Ralph Peters suggested) had been a White Supremacist or Christian he would have been in Leavenworth years ago.
3. Widespread support by Muslims ABROAD and in the West (40% of UK Muslims want Sharia Law there according to one survey) for Jihad and violence, and passive acceptance by the rest.
These three points create massive resentment among most people, the more hard in that it is forbidden by elite media and government that seeks to rule not govern.
“How did we get to this place at the beginning of the 21st century, with its rules against cows farting, schemes for carbon trading, suicide bombing, death panels, injunctions against men urinating while standing, honor killings, plans for destroying perfectly good cars to promote the sales of Japanese “fuel efficient” models as cash for clunkers, suicide bombers — how did we get to this insane place?”
DUH. Women. Or more precisely, women profoundly disconnected and not needing most men. Women earn their own fortunes, larger in many cases than their male peers (for younger women), don’t need or want husbands or fathers for their children, and find “boring” Middle class society with constraints on personal, social, and cultural behavior to be the true enemy. Thus the rigid, female-oriented “Nanny State” that loves and encourages “hard men” who are violent and non-White.
Rihanna sang “There is a Thug in My Life” and that might as well be the song of most women in the West, Black, White, or Hispanic. Women don’t need or want men as providers, those men are “boring” and in Sandra Tsing Loh’s words worthy of being “kitchen b*tches” while Islamic men are cited as “dominating” and masculine. Women expressing block voting pushed the West hard-left to banning Cow Farts and peeing standing up, while enabling the “Thugs in their lives” to act with impunity. Acting out Rihanna and Chris Brown in a predictable manner.
Further, as Storm-Rider points out, Islamism/Marxism have kings and princes above the law. Women LOVE Aristocracy, most women would rather be a harem member of a Big Man than the exclusive, faithful wife of an ordinary man.
This is the dark-side of female empowerment, the worst as well as the best qualities of women are expressed. For every bit of male sadism and brutality there is a female desire for it, feeding off it in turn mutually reinforcing.
If you wonder “What is Different About the West?” since say, oh 1955, it is the vastly improved status of women while making the West fabulously rich has brought a down-side: PC. We will NEVER be rid of PC until/unless women abandon it, either for sheer survival or by outside forces. Since PC is a largely female-led and empowering device.
Mark,
Wouldn’t Girard argue that Christianity’s demystification of sacrifice as a conduit for societal rage has rendered it ineffective for such purposes?
I don’t think the efforts of the Left at scapegoating have worked since Bush left the scene.They may try to scapegoat the U.S. military in this instance, but I don’t see how that works, even as dumbed down as we are.
I think Girard would say that the current danger is mimetic rivalry and consequent escalation of violence.
I had this encounter one night after Clinton integrated the sexes in the Navy. A buddy and myself ran into a couple of naval officers in Dubai.
I can not recall how the topic came up but I had asked if women on board the ships gave rise to problems. One officer quickly said no, not at all. The other 180 degrees contradicted his companion. The negative answer sounded much more rehearsed than the positive.
Since, I put the above down I find Kate O’Beirne stating: General Casey has now reiterated his zero tolerance for misgivings about “diversity.” Message received. Is it any more likely that a colleague would report the jihadist sentiments of an active-duty soldier today than a week ago? When General Casey would be fretting about “chilling effects” and “backlashes?”
http://corner.nationalreview.com/post/?q=MGZlOTc4MzZiNjJjNTdkNmM0Y2QyOTg4MTg1M2VlODg=
Captain Ramen 49, I appreciate the logic and detail of your argument. You’d get an “A” in any classroom. But you’re not listening.
Minority status definitely is a factor in selection, retention and promotion in the Armed Forces. Each service has a different policy, the Marine Corps is probably the least “PC” where each board officially was told only to look at merit…but also received a separate letter (called a “precept”) saying words to the effect that if officers are well qualified, then select those with certain MOS’ (you mentioned pilots, often acquisition professionals are specified as well due to Public Law requirements). The precept always (during my career) favored women & minorities (such as MAJ Hasan) for selection and retention/promotion (with officers, this is the same thing since the system is “up or out” until you make 04 = major/LCDR).
Plus, you have no idea what it’s like for YOUR OWN CAREER if you report anything negative which brings up racial/sexual issues. Believe me, the first thing they’ll investigate is whether YOU are a bigot. If he did, as reported, speak informally or even take formal action to avoid Afghanistan, the Army would act like it’s fine. They’re very PC (I served with them as a liaison on two tours, for a total of 3 years). No one is saying he was a “sleeper agent.” Seriously, who (other than you) used those words? We’re saying his ideology led him down the righteous path of murdering his fellow soldiers in an act of terrorism, that’s all.
Am I clairvoyant? Do I know with a certainty that Hasan was incompetent and only retained due to his minority status? NO. What I’m (in your words, “blithely”) stating is that the warning signs were ignored due to his protected status. If I had said as a major I wouldn’t help drop bombs on Kosovo (which I did), I would have been told to resign my commission. No matter how competent I may be, if I only do my duty when it suits me, that’s a court-martial offense. Unless, that is, you’re a member of a protected group. Then it’s oh-so swell that we “value” the “special needs” of folks like MAJ Hasan.
Your list of questions is nice, and they’ll be addressed in the coming weeks. But again, they do not deal with the core issue: no matter how competent you may be, if your motivations are treasonous, this makes you MORE DANGEROUS. Hasan’s access to a military base, knowledge that NO ONE would be armed at the hospital (literally “sitting ducks”), training in shooting pistols, etc. made him a problem if his first allegiance was to Islam (and not his fellow soldiers). Look at the phrasing of your question #3: “…Muslim enlisted men who want out but are forced to stay.” Forced to stay? You’ve got to be crapping me. Your premise is symptomatic of the problem underlying this whole mess.
This is an all-volunteer force. Once you volunteer, you don’t get to cherry pick your missions. I served under Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II. Did all our missions meet my personal approval? Does every member of the Armed Forces get to vote on whether a mission meets his/her personal standards? You’re clearly intelligent and educated, but your thoughts are those of someone cosseted within academia or some other institution (government?) that doesn’t have to fight to survive. MAJ Hasan should’ve been screened out (pre-emption), but instead a “law enforcement” approach was used. He didn’t do anything technically illegal, so he was kept on board until he (oopsies!) murdered/wounded two score people. Now “law enforcement” will help us by having a nice long trial, etc. Feel free to ask your questions of the good MAJ and the Army bureaucracy. No doubt they’ll have some reasonable reasons for you. Just don’t ask the dead people if they think Hasan was given preferential treatment, they aren’t available at this time.
Dissent is not the highest form of patriotism,
putting up with dissent is the highest form of patriotism,
and sometimes it’s just too much to ask.
52. bob from Idaho:
I think at some point we are going to have to stop giving First Amendment cover to Islam as a religion per se.
Bob, I have made the point countless times, several times this past week that islam should be classified as an ideology and not a religion for the express reason of removing the cover they enjoy. It is good to read someone else recognizes this as important component of controlling the effects of this faction..
Instead we have on our Supreme Court judges who believe the incorporation of laws from other nations should be utilized in their deliberations on cases before them. This would include sharia law which is already being incorporated in certain European countries with large Muslim populations.
That no part of islam was part of the Enlightenment is also a dangerous situation.
It is illustrative that no contributor mentioned that we are in a world war against islam……..very instructive of the group mindset.
There are no Muslims who in a western culture are “good” Muslims. That would be Schopenhauer’s second and third reason within the” Laws of Thought” contained in “On the Fourfold Root of the Principle of Sufficient Reason”
This is the second time I’ve heard that the US Naval Academy values diversity over performance. Last thing I heard was about vastly different academic requirements for different ethnicities to be accepted into the Academy.
This needs to be corrected ASAP. The military is all we have left.
Discrimination is one of the highest attributes of humanity. Discrimination based on evidence, that is.
There is a whole science devoted to discrimination – it is called statistics, and is, of course, based on evidence.
And on the evidence all around us, it is probably life-saving to distrust Islamists.
ADE
re “#31 – We don’t have a cycle of violence. We have cycle of madness.”
Unfortunately, we have both violence and madness. To stop the cycle, we.must.act. or we and our culture will be destroyed.
Voting is one such action, writing another. Talking without PC correctness is a third, the corollary to which is refusing to be silenced. Taking to the streets is a fourth, among many. Read any history of the coming of the American Revolution from about 1765 to the shots heard round the world to see the counter-cycle in action.
We can no longer remain passive. Not everyone can do everything, but we mnust all do something. Wasn’t it Franklin who said ‘we must all hang together or most assuredly we will all hang separately?’
One thing I have learned from these recent posts is that our military is seriously corroded by PC. Kiss freedom goodbye folks.
If “professional” officers will allow that they will easily become the next Sturmabteilung, no questions asked.
Jane Fonda should have been tried and convicted of treason. Same with Ted Kennedy for his efforts to undermine Reagan with the Soviets. There is a long list of other deserving souls who have played traitor without the consequences. As a result, we now have people in this government that are openly sympathetic to marxism and communizm.
Of course how silly to worry about things such as enemey identification and military bearing when the military top brass told us just last week that 75% of today’s youth would not qualify to serve.
re #49: “Reports indicate that this guy did not want to go to Afghanistan. If he truly were a sleeper agent why would he drop hints like that? Before we blithely state that he was kept on to fill a Muslim quota or as not to offend the Muslim community, I think we should make the following inquiries…”
CAPT Ramen, 22 years of experience as a Marine Officer is not likely in this forum to result in ‘blithe statements’. And the killer was not a sleeper agent, IMO, not in the classic meaning of the term.
I served over 25 years as an officer in the Navy, including command tours at sea in ships. The Marine’s statement rings true. I will tell you I had no such trouble, and was not hampered by what we perceived as PC attitudes by some. I just documented the hell out of poor performance, provided many opportunities for the individual to improve, and flushed ‘em when the individual failed to met my Navy’s standards. Maybe it’s not that simple anymore, but I doubt things have changed that much – Commanding Officers and their subordinate leadership through the Chief Petty Officer and equivalent messes must stand tall for the Constitution they have sworn to support and defend.
But how silly to worry about such things as enemy identification or military bearing when the top brass told us just last week that 75% of today’s youth are unfit to serve.
In the PC environment I’ve been reading about on these posts those kids must be really, really messed up not to be qualified to serve.
65. Old Salt
“Read any history of the coming of the American Revolution from about 1765 to the shots heard round the world to see the counter-cycle in action.”
Of course 1765 was the year the infamous Stamp Act was passed on the colonies, a mandated item similar to what Nationally mandated health care will be. The tender has been gathered, we just need a spark.
re #59 – “… I find Kate O’Beirne stating: General Casey has now reiterated his zero tolerance for misgivings about “diversity.” Message received. Is it any more likely that a colleague would report the jihadist sentiments of an active-duty soldier today than a week ago?”
Sure, that’s just the point. General Casey didn’t say anything about accepting sub-standard performance. Our military, and our nation, DOES value diversity. But I’ll tell you what – we do not have to value, condone or accept sub-standard performance. And any military officer in any service knows in his/her heart that is the core of the issue. Most military officers know how to work the bureaucracies – find ‘em and flush ‘em. Yes, it’s work to do this – so what. That’s our job, in part – to make our units as efficient and lethal as possible. (And yes, I was in the combat arms). So, to answer your question – yes, jihadist sentiments are more likely to be reported this week.
57. whiskey
Fantastic points about women.
Their “liberation” destroyed the traditional family unit and we now suffer the consequences of a metrosexual country.
(I know my endorsement of your comments will drive down your popularity numbers and for that I do apologize … we have a sensitive, caring, and properly formed group here and we have just spoken a heresy so profound that I’m sure many have gone back for a second brandy)
Habu is correct. There is nothing in Islam that is compatible with a Western democracy. Western nations that allow Muslims to enter are destroying themselves. It’s the Liberal Death Wish writ large.
People who think that our society can somehow process inhabitants who are utterly unsuited for it remind me of those dimwits that find a wild animal baby and decide to raise it. It’s all fun and exotic for a while, but when it wakes up one day and eats grandma, you really shouldn’t have such a bewildered look on your face.
Yet these people have the self-delusion that Malcolm Muggeridge aptly described when he said “Their credulity is unshakeable.” Even after the lion eats grandma, they’re still pimping for the lion. And they’ll be apologizing for it as it swallows them up.
72. Old Salt
“Our military, and our nation, DOES value diversity.”
I hear you loud and clear but what made this nation into a great nation was its homogeneity with regard to the collective knowledge of the Enlightenment and secondarily the homogeneity of the population which in the first census of 1790 show the US was overwhelmingly Caucasian. It remained that was for more than a century and a half.
1. Blaine, 11. exhelodrvr & 14. Agoraphobic Plumber,
You all are correct. This is the work of “The Dialectic” ™ Further clarified by the Leninist principle of kto-kogo/who-whom. what determines the valence at any point in time is the question of what serves the cause.
64. ADE
Discrimination now, discrimination tomorrow, discrimination forever.
I have never known an honest person who does not discriminate. Chicken or fish? Chocolate of vailla? Pontiac or Hummer?
But I have to admit that the worlds most eaten friut, the mango, is a tough one to discriminate when it comes to choosing the one that is just right.
I’d appreciate any pointers on how to discriminate between a good and bad mango prior to actually eating it.
Mango eaters, step up.
Habu,
I sympathize with your sentiments regarding the incompatibility of Islam within our Republic. However, we have a Constitution that grants religious freedom. We cannot and should not throw out parts of our Constitution like the left does when it does not suit them. We need our conservative legal scholars to come up with a constitutionally appropriate way of dealing with those parts of Islam that conflict with our Constitutional system. Unfortunately, to my knowledge, conservative legal scholars have avoided such efforts. I once brought up the incompatibility issue to Hugh Hewitt on his radio show years ago; he completely avoided the issue and acted like there was no conflict with Islam at all.
15. Papa Ray
Thank you for posting the interview with Robert Spencer. He is always a good read.
Is it firm or soft? Does it smell? Like a ripe mango, I mean? Crikey, Habu.
I’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating.
After 9/11 the only people who had a cohesive world view and plan of action that anywhere remotely resembled reality were the Neo-cons.
The moderate center, the left, the isolationist right, anyone else were so busy being utter fools that they didn’t see it coming and had no clue how to react.
It’s not like they couldn’t have. The left dismantled a religious/political structure in Quebec peacefully and quite productively. But they were so bent on the ‘real’ enemy, the GOP, that they had no answers.
The middle could have suggested vigorous police action, or something similar, and may have been ok. But they were suffering a nasty hangover from the drunken tech boom years, and still couldn’t think straight.
But the Neo-cons had ready answers and justifications for them. They had done the thinking, had argued and defended their ideas before. And they won the debate for a time.
This stupidity of no recognizing reality and fighting imaginary enemies (evangelical christians are just as dangerous) is so short sighted. There are real issues, real problems, real enemies. The answers are complex and unknown, and full debate based on facts from all sides can help clarify.
But this nonsense of ignoring reality is just plain dangerous. Reality has a tendency to force recognition.
Derek
@60 evanston2
My son is an Army reservist and he has made the same points about PC indoctrination many times.
@62 habu
I don’t want to make your head explode or anything, considering our recent exchange about the kids, but bob was quoting my post @47. Just saying…;)
78. Unsk
I would want it done constitutionally just as they have done in the past by redefining any number of movements that claim to be religions but are denied. The IRS does it all the time.
In today’s world we would need the imprimatur of the FED and Goldman Sachs to really make it official.
I would remind you that not only are certain religions barred but also simply murdered..ask the Branch Davidians. Sometimes a simple (to us) alteration is force on a religion in the USA..Take for example the burka hood….
Yep, we do and can ban or redefine “religions” for one must remember that the Constitution is not a suicide pact and allowing islam to remain under the umbrella of a religion would eventually be committing suicide.
“Our military, and our nation, DOES value diversity.”
Diversity of cuisine, architecture, music, art, etc. is valuable; diversity of values is not. American values are embedded in the Declaration of Independence, and it is good. The values of Marxism and Islam are the opposite, and in suppression of human individuality and unalienable human rights, they are bad – one atheist – one religious – in the end it does not matter to the masses of serfs underneath.
“However, we have a Constitution that grants religious freedom. We cannot and should not throw out parts of our Constitution like the left does when it does not suit them.”
Our Constitution does not grant religious freedom to religion which is destructive of equality before law – law whose sole purpose must be to secure the individual’s unalienable rights to life, liberty and private property – pursuit of happiness. Our Constitution must never become un-Declarational – that is an act of political war – it will lead to kinetic war in defense of that sacred equality and those sacred unalienable rights.
“Law (perverted Constitution) is often but the tyrant’s will, and always so when it violates the right (Declaration) of an individual.” Thomas Jefferson
“I have sworn upon the altar of God (Declaration), eternal hostility (Declaration) against every form of tyranny (perverted Constitution) over the mind of man.” Thomas Jefferson
Well, Wretchard… that’s the first time I’ve heard Political Correctness equated with NOT using a programming language with Hindley-Milner type inference
.
Not the best of analogies, actually, as the thinking man’s alternative is Duck Typing (if it looks like a duck, then we deem it to be a duck with a duck’s attributes).
The problem we face with Nidal Hasan is that thanks to the Frankfurt School and friends, if he looks like a duck, we are obliged to either convince ourselves that WE are are an ostrich and bury our head in the nearest flower bed… or we must chant in unison that ‘he is not a duck, he is a shrubbery!’.
82. marymcl
Well I am glad you and Ii are on the same page. As I mentioned, it is a point I have made on several occasions over the last several years actually.
If you care to check this site (I don’t know how to look up old comments by contributor)I believe I made it within the last few weeks.
But it is nice to be in harmony with you. I did not enjoy the dischord.
#17 marymcl -
Slightly off topic -
You quoted LotM making the observation
“In Islam everything there is to know was comprehended by a human being and was set down as understood by him or was demonstrated by his example. Nothing more is to be learned and nothing can be changed. Full Stop. In Judaism, and Christianity and every other faith system that I know of, God is by definition beyond the comprehension of the bounded human system.”
This is not a correct statement of Islamic belief. It would be more accurate to say, as the Pope did at Regensberg:
“The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.[5] The editor, Theodore Khoury, observes: For the emperor, as a Byzantine shaped by Greek philosophy, this statement is self-evident. But for Muslim teaching, God is absolutely transcendent. His will is not bound up with any of our categories, even that of rationality.[6] Here Khoury quotes a work of the noted French Islamist R. Arnaldez, who points out that Ibn Hazm went so far as to state that God is not bound even by his own word, and that nothing would oblige him to reveal the truth to us. Were it God’s will, we would even have to practise idolatry.[7]”
It is not that everything was figured out by one guy and learning therefore stops. It is that nothing is figured out because the only acceptable relationship with God is blind faith and obedience, and learning therefore stops.
Thus, to reason – to philosophize in the Aristotelian sense – is to dissent from Islam. When this view prevailed in Islamic intellectual history, the possibilities of an age of reason, an enlightenment, a Renaissance, an age of liberty and of scientific and technological progress were greatly reduced.
Logic holds a similar place in the secular PC worldview – to note the obvious and logical conclusions from Hasan’s statements and associations is heretical, and thus prohibited by the secular Church Ladies like General Casey.
It is the classic sign of paranoia that you hold to your own opinion in the face of contrary truth.
So they have something in common after all.
84. Storm-Rider
Beautiful work.
Habu: Also, color in a mango doesn’t tell you much.
#37 cfbleacher: I agree that Political Corrosion is an excellent corrective term.
In a similar vein, I’d like to propose a new term for the left as a juxtaposition to “bitter clingers”: corn syrup drippers.
Late workout time..good night to all.
“The decisive statement in this argument against violent conversion is this: not to act in accordance with reason is contrary to God’s nature.”
Beautiful. The Judeo-Christian God of our Declaration of Independence is rational, loving and good; the God of equality before law which secures unalienable individual human rights to life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness.
Allah, as understood by most Muslims – even the so-called “moderate” Muslims, is not the God of our American Declaration of Independence; and neither is the State-god of the Marxists.
I have to agree with Unsk @ 78. Religious freedom is the crown jewel of the American system. Giving the government the power to decide what is and is not a legit religion would be, pardon the grim turn of phrase, the nuclear option. This Ring of Power must be kept far away from the hands of the insane clown posse in D.C. because there is no way in h3ll they would ever use it for good.
But by all means go after specific practices and behaviors espoused by Islam. Sharia? Crush & eliminate it. Every place & in every instance where there is special treatment for Muslims qua Muslims — separate prayer rooms, washing facilities, publicly amplified calls to prayer, specially prepared food, demands re: religious holidays — yank this stuff out by the roots like the poisonous weed growth that it is. Bombard the legal system with challenges in every jurisdiction where the weeds have taken hold.
The key is not to single Islam out. The key is to treat it like every other religion.
Until we start living out & enforcing our Constitution, why in the world would they?
@60,
I hear you loud and clear! Affirmative action and the PC nonsense are problems that permeate every institution in our society, including the military. After reading what you said I did not realize it had gotten that bad. The guy should have been out the second time he spoke out against policy (first time he gets a warning I guess).
Unfortunately Americans only awake from their stupor when a tragedy such as this appears on TV. Hopefully enough of us will realize that PC multi-culti crap is only going to lead to more events like this.
Just as we are using this attack to discuss the larger issue of political correctness, I think we should also discuss the overuse of the military. To do COIN right we need 500,000+ boots on the ground. We are trying to get that done with less than half. Do we want to push our boys to the breaking point just to fix Afghanistan?
Sorry that I am late to this thread.
Honesty always struck me as a good management policy. That often includes care not to blindside your boss, no one likes a surprise, and thorough documentation to cover your 6.
My biggest headache was a sailor who kept going over the hill, Unauthorized Absence (UA), but came back just before the book said we could call it Desertion. As someone once explained to me the rules are written so that if he is caught wearing black socks his lawyer can argue that he intended to return. He was making no money but his file was a mess. I called him into my “office” and explained to him that every time he ran away we had to tear up the old paperwork to get rid of him and start over. He said that no one had ever explained that to him before and then the following conversation happened.
“Do you want to get out of the Navy?”
“Yes”
“I have a secret for you. The Navy doesn’t like you either. We want to get rid of you.”
“You do?”
“In fact I can promise you that if you just sit tight and don’t cause me any trouble I can get you out within a month.”
“You can?”
“Is it a deal?”
“Yes Sir”
He stayed on the ship for the first leg of our deployment between San Diego and Pearl Harbor so I got to use him for a training exercise. We had the 3rd Class Midshipmen (College Freshmen from the Academy) on board for their Summer Cruise. My orders were “Make sure they don’t get hurt.” The 3rd Class get to play and dress like enlisted members and the 1st class get to dress and be treated like officers. The troops were told that they were all to be treated carefully and legally they rank between a Chief Warrant Officer (Tells God what to do in the Navy) and an Ensign.
What I did was have my Chief assemble them on the Fo’c'sle, up at the pointy end of the cruiser where we kept animals like the Wildcat, which I owned as the ship’s First Lieutenant Afloat/Deck Division officer, and had my Leading Petty Officer, who was no good but I digress, fetch my soon to be discharged problem child. He introduced himself by saying “Hi I’m Seaman X and I’m what you call a dirtbag. Mr Y wanted me to tell you how to deal with a guy like me.” He was absolutely honest with them and I had not a speck of trouble out of him after that until we could get him off the ship and out of the Service in a couple of weeks.
Darren,
Well said, I am surprised that Walter Reed did not inflate his file with more junkets and special classes to keep him out of their hair. That indicates to me that he was so bad that they were afraid to let anybody even see him. You always send all your stars off for special assignments. Evelyn Waugh has one officer say it was going to be a hell of a war when all the shit came back from special training with promotions.
Evanston2,
When I was on ACDUTRA in Munich I had to participate in a mandatory post Tailhook flagellation session. Your analysis is on target. There is no surprise in how we ended up here. Just to make whiskey feel better he can look up the Defense Advisory Committee on Women in the Service (DACOWITS) process. My ship, the LHA not the CG, was used as a prop for an awards ceremony where we had to line up and smile as they gave an award to a female Personnel Support Detachment officer from Adak. Discipline held, barely.
Old Salt,
Did I ever inflict myself on your command? We hope that the core remains sound and The Service can get past this. The Surface Navy faced serious problems 20 years ago and now that it is half the size it was then there is less room to hide problems. Gresham’s Law takes over and the bad drive out the good.
Well, I don’t know, boys. . . American women have been comparatively liberated for a long time. They first were enfranchised in someplace like South Dakota for the express purpose of making up the required number of citizens to apply for statehood, or so I read somewhere. What I saw in the ’50s and ’60s were a lot of old wives getting dumped. Some of the liberation movement was a reaction, i.e. you’d better prepare to take care of yourself because there are an awful lot of unreliable men out there. Nevertheless, Western man is still the best for women, and has been for a long time.
Equality, though? I just read in Navy Times that there are now so many pregnant sailors that some commands are having trouble “manning” their whatevers. Was it Clinton who opened the military academies to women???
bogie wheel, 93: “Freedom of religion is the crown jewel of the American system. Giving the government the power to decide what is and is not a legit religion would be, pardon the grim turn of phrase, the nuclear option.”
The Declaration of Independence decides what is legitimate religion and what is not. Any religion (say the Marxist Religion which irrationally substitutes government-enforced equality of outcome or Islam which irrationally rejects the equality of Muslim and non-Muslim before Sharia law) which suppresses equality before law is toxic religion. Any religion which is destructive of the individual’s sacred rights to life, liberty and creative pursuit of happiness is toxic religion.
BTY, the Declaration of Independence is un-amendable – thank God for our Founding Fathers on that count. Speaking of the Declaration of Independence; Thomas Jefferson said it was “an expression of the American mind.”
As a purely practical matter Constitutionally, there is no need to ban Islam from the United States. We could achieve much the same goal by banning admittance to anyone from a select group of nations, while also removing anyone already here from said nations. Same result in the end, you have an undesired subset of people declared personna non gratta.
Of course we will never be that sensible, but that’s the easy solution.
Storm Rider:
Until the Declaration of Independence acquires vocal chords and grows arms & legs & hands and the wherewithal to file its own legal briefs and draft its own bills in Congress, it is going to have to be implemented by human beings. Those human beings are the ones currently running our system. Do you really want the oafs who just passed the health care bill in the House drafting 1,900 pages of their deepest thoughts on Islam?
I agree with you about enforcing equality before the law. That is precisely what I was saying in paragraphs 2 and 3.
But maybe I wasn’t explicit enough before, so I’ll take another shot at it here:
The key is to treat Islam like every other religion. That way you expose what is NOT religion. Those parts of it which are not religion — anything that asserts supremacy over the U.S. Constitution … anything that treats legal agreements or any other binding partnership with a non-Muslim as being somehow different in nature than that arrangement entered into with a fellow Muslim … anything that encourages or entices a Muslim serving in any public office to consider Muslims in any way better than, more special, different in the eyes of the law or public services — all this ideology must be vigorously exposed and eradicated.
Shine the big bright light of our Bill of Rights and our founding principles upon Islam. Whatever remains, remains on the same terms as everything else. Whatever withers & cannot stand the light … good riddance.
So far we have been rolling over & caving to Muslim demands for special this and special that from coast to coast.
Again, as I said before, WE are the ones not standing up for & enforcing our Constitution and our professed belief in equality before the law. Unless and until we push back, we don’t know what the Muslims will or won’t live with. We are giving them everything they ask for, so why should they ask for less than everything?
52. bob from Idaho,
Do we give First ammendment cover as a religion to Voodoo, with its sacrifice of the “goat without horns”? Or to other cults from the past which practice human sacrifice, such as the Aztec faith, or Druidism which used to burn sacrifices in wicker cages? Would our society give religious cover to a Christian sect which held peaceable racial segregation as a central tenet? To ask the question suggests the answer. So why shouold we make such extravagant tolerance of Islam? That was never in the minds of the men who framed the Constitution.
#95 – “Old Salt, Did I ever inflict myself on your command? We hope that the core remains sound and The Service can get past this. The Surface Navy faced serious problems 20 years ago and now that it is half the size it was then there is less room to hide problems. Gresham’s Law takes over and the bad drive out the good.”
————————————–
I doubt it, but wish we would have met. But – if you were an inspecting officer, well, then, you probably did (laughing).
You’re right – we did face serious problems ’75 – ’85 or so, but the leadership who recognized that the NIMITZ crash (1980?) exemplified those (drug & performance) problems and who gave us the authority to bottom blow (detach with minimal paperwork)the worst Sailors significantly improved fleet morale and made possible, with much help of course, the fleet that could sustain the operational tempo from ’83-’91. (Long sentence).
GEN CASEY stated (during his brief comments on TV with his wife at his side, two days ago) that the Army is facing severe pressure from the repeated deployments.
Should the leadership man up and do what they KNOW THEY MUST DO, the Army will make it happen. But it will take leadership and support all the way down the chain.
If they duck their responsibilities and voice support only for the diversity crap, or even give that impression to the Soldiers, then there will be hell to pay when our nation’s army cannot sustain the pace.
Don’t short-change GEN CASEY – he knows what must be done. Our Army has done a superlative job – give them a fighting chance and the support to do the right thing.
moniker,
“Was it Clinton who opened the military academies to women???”
COngress did it, during the Ford administration.
I realize that most people who read Belmont would never underestimate the perfidy of CNN, but their latest on the Hasan business as relayed by Mudville Gazette is jaw-dropping in its, ahem, audacity. And vileness.
http://www.mudvillegazette.com/032881.html
Read “What the ‘C’ Stands For,” but not within arms length of any CNN employees, because you’ll be sorely tempted to punch their lights out.
bogie wheel,
The Bill of Rights, and in particular the first amendment, is a differentiation of sacred human liberty into some of its essential components; where liberty is seen as the integrated whole.
It is an oxymoron to consider any religion as Constitutional, much less Declarational, if such religion is destructive of liberty it’s self. Islam is un-Declarational and un-Constitutional since it denies equality before law and since it is destructive of human life and integrated human liberty. Islam is again un-Constitutional because it specifically violates the differentiated rights of others to freedom of religion, free speech, free assembly, petition of government, etc.
Maybe we are saying the same thing with semantics in the way. My style of thinking and writing may be somewhat more rigidly scientific in construction.
The American Marxists really don’t care if Islam is un-Declarational or un-Constitutional because their secularized Marxist religion is also in violation of our founding moral principles (Declaration) and laws (Constitution).
Old Salt,
Funny you mentioned that. When my less than stellar LPO brought the sailor in question to my stateroom he introduced him by saying “Mr Y wants to talk to you about something called Bottom Blow.” Another candidate for the Boatswains Mate Diplomatic Service. Ah, Deck Division. All the stories are true. I was never the inspecting officer but was rather inspected when Reftra or the dreaded Quadrennial came to call. Senior officers talked about ADM Buckley of INSURV as “the little admiral who jumped on the lifelines” with awe, the same way my parents talked about Fiorello Laguardia, as if he might still show up at any moment.
My favorite inspection story is from my first ship. My Department Head explained that we would set up two tables. The closer one had piles of donuts and pots of coffee. The second one had all the paperwork for Combat Systems. With luck they would barely glance at table number two. Along with the world’s worst missile system, the Rube Goldberg BPDSMS (pronounced Beepadeemus) that preceded Nato Sea Sparrow, I had a fan room just aft of the forward missile launcher below the bridge on the LHA. When the Admiral came to inspect I had my best Petty Officer waiting for him. My job was to stand there and shut up.
“Son is this your space?”
“Yes Admiral.”
Do you know what is wrong in here?”
“Uhh, yes Admiral.”
“Am I going to find it?”
“NO Admiral.”
“Good.”
Maybe the Danes have the right idea. Gates of Vienna reports that since the Danes cannot get some foreign immigrants, especially Muslims, to integrate into their society, the “make love not war” Scandinavians are now offering 100,000 kroners ($20,000) to any who will voluntarily leave Denmark. Now if only “anti-social” could be defined, they would have a good law.
On a more serious note, such socialistic solutions to anti-social behavior are ludicrous. Meanwhile back in America, home of the PC world of leftist politics, we would rather be killed than offend.
I find it funny to read comments about Islam that refer to how it wasn’t part of the Enlightenment. I strongly recommend reading some of the writings of Voltaire. The Enlightenment was a reaction against religious fanaticism in general, of which Islam was regarded as an example par excellence.
If you look through the writings of Voltaire, you will find a few comments about Islam that modern custom (also known as “political correctness”) forbids public mention of…
Storm Rider:
Maybe we are saying the same thing with semantics in the way.
For the most part, I think, yes.
I’m on the obverse firing at the same target as you.
The term “religion” encompasses both belief and behavior, both creed and practice. Theology and belief are not the purview of Congress, per the First Amendment, nor should they be the purview of any governmental body in the United States. The problem with using so broad a phrasing as saying “X should declare [i.e. pass a law or other legislative act or even executive order] Islam not a religion” is that such a declaration or act assumes, errantly, that creed is somehow within the rightful jurisdiction of the declaring body. I can’t imagine this standing up in any court anywhere in the U.S., even if you had a Scalia on every bench.
The suggestion that we should therefore pass an amendement to the Constitution stating that Islam is not a religion does an end run around the court challenge but does not address, and in fact exacerbates, what is IMO the fundamental flaw: it would entail, at least in part, Americans using the power of government to define a certain set of beliefs as invalid.
This flies in the face of our founding principles. If individual liberty means anything at all, it means that individuals should be free to hold whatever beliefs they want.
It is BEHAVIOR that becomes the concern of others and, ultimately (if there is a violation of law or the rights of others), government. With regard to behavior that is associated with religions, or practices that claim to be religious in nature, this is where the “free exercise” clause of the First Amendment kicks in, and where so many legal skirmishes have taken place.
It is the BEHAVIOR of Muslims, not the thoughts inside their heads, not their creed and what they believe the Koran to be saying or not saying, that needs to be the point of any governmental action. (This is not to say that their beliefs should go unaddressed, but that the beliefs need to be addressed by methods other than governmental action.)
Wherever Muslims are trying to carve out special treatment and exceptions for themselves as Muslims, this behavior should be vigorously opposed for what it is — an end run around the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (with the knowledge that it is also frequently the opening gambit to ultimately establishing sharia law). Just as the government cannot engage in viewpoint discrimination, it should not engage in viewpoint exceptionalism either.
The response of the government to Mormon polygamy was not to declare Mormonism not a religion, but to outlaw polygamy (via the Edmunds Act of 1882).
I would suggest that this approach has some lessons for us today. And in everything above I don’t mean to imply that I think an all-out legal offense against Muslim attempts to exceptionalize their practices is going to be quick or easy. Nothing done through the courts is ever quick or easy.
But I am concerned with certain overall trends of thought I seem to be seeing on BC, which express a preference for end-stage nuclear-optionish reactions, when it should be clear that the problem at this point is not America’s lack of will in ending this war, but our lack of (mostly political, to some extent popular) will in fighting it in earnest to begin with.
Attorney General to speak to Hamas-linked CAIR despite FBI ban
Right after Dawud Walid of CAIR-Michigan was defending the jihadist imam who was killed in a shootout with the FBI. Yet another Which-Side-Is-Obama-On Alert: “Despite ban, Holder to speak to CAIR-linked group,” from Politico, November 9 (thanks to all who sent this in):
Attorney General Eric Holder has agreed to give a keynote speech next week to a Michigan group which includes the local branch of the Council on American-Islamic Relations even though the FBI has formally severed contacts with the controversial Muslim civil rights organization.
On Nov. 19, Holder is scheduled to speak in Detroit to the first annual awards banquet of Advocates and Leaders for Police and Community Trust, a coalition of several dozen law enforcement and community groups. An online registration form for the event includes the Council on American Islamic Relations-Michigan on a list of “official & participating organizations.”
A spokeswoman for ALPACT confirmed that CAIR is a member of the coalition.
“CAIR has been involved for a while,” said Chandra McMillion, community development facilitator for ALPACT. “CAIR is listed as an official member.”
There IS no “jumping to a conclusion”, there is simply observing the blatantly obvious. No need, really, to say more.
http://www.joinden.com/
#17 “They are also exempt from joining the union, which is an iron-clad pre-requisite for everyone else. It’s written up as a broad religious exception, of course.”
That alone is almost enough to make me convert to Islam.
bogie wheel,
I agree that government has no business in outlawing religious faith and its peaceful practice.
Sharia Law is arbitrary law as it resides in the hands of a religious elite, and it should be outlawed since that is an aspect of Islam which flies in the face of our Declaration of Independence, Bill of Rights and Constitution. The arbitrary Marxist “Living Constitution” is similarly in violation, but stealthily so; covered by newspeak and doublethink. Why should Muslims believe we will defend our founding moral principles (Declaration) and laws (Constitution) from Sharia Law if we don’t defend it from Marxist law?
BTY, not being a lawyer, I look at our predicament from the standpoint of sacred human rights primarily, secular law secondarily; and I believe, even though many were lawyers, our Founding Fathers did the same – Declaration first – followed by a Constitution which secures the first.
As our host implies, PC precludes getting to the basic truths.
Such as Heathrow…all-of-a-sudden murderous Muslim physicians. Ft Hood…all-of-a-sudden murderous Muslim physician. This begs a question: Are ALL infidels at risk, when treated by a Muslim physician? Is their version of the Hippocratic Oath reserved to only the ummah? Then, is the infidel always at opportunistic risk when dealing with Islam; eg, they’ll exploit — kill you anytime they think they can get away with it? Doesn’t their book commands them to do it? Kinda crucial to better understand that set of future scenarios, no?
The truth needs telling, especially under our new (proposed – so far) multi-culti health care regime where Muslims, from all appearances are “naturals” for promotion to supervisory roles on the death panels. They’re like highest-level destructive subroutines, each programmed to destroy trust in the system and wreak general havoc whenever the opportunity arises, to the best of their indivigual abilities.
Speaking of death, I’ve come to believe that Maj Hasan is and was at the time of his incident, suffering from post-traumatic-stress-disorder. And not second-hand PTSD(tm), brought on by pretending to treat our warriors.
No, he was in deepcover for over ten years, which must wear on even the steeliest warrior. Only infrequent contact with his spiritual roots at AQ. Jeez, he was ordered to interact with and talk to WOMEN as part of his undercover work! And women frequently touched him! And they were always asking him to have his picture taken with them! Oh the horror – 24/7/365! It must have seemed worse than waterboarding.
exhelodrvr@11,
“the biggest problem with political correctness is that NOTHING is an absolute.”
And they don’t get the self-contradiction (oxymoron) inherent in that statement, either.
How simple! Blame political correctness and the Left for the Ft Hood shootings.
Ok. Does this mean that conservatives are not at all concerned whether or not the CIA and NSA, formerly entitled and mandated to get intel on foreign connections and now perhaps doing it domestically, without an awareness of Congress is OK?
Does this mean that the well over a few million Muslims, born in this nation, are to be isolated, spied upon, kept out of our military? If so, why not say so!
Round them all up and send them…where? They are American citizens, and they were born here. Do we put them in camps as we did the Japanese born here after Pearl Harbor?
The Army seems to have had an awareness of that shooter’s connections, and so too (new reports) CIA and NSA…yet NOTHING was done. Blame then our intel and our military command and not The Left and Political Correctness. After all, we had intel about those who did the 9/11 massacre and the incoming Bush administration did nothing! Blame that on the Left an political correctness too?
cliches simply add nothing to a serious problem.
Capt Ramen@49
So, does your analysis justify our continuing to train Muslims as doctors, airline pilots and to other critical professions, due to budgetary shortfalls? So, maybe it’s true that only a small percentage of Muslims are actually jihadis-in-waiting. Which ones?
Until we settle this “oath” vs. taqqiya/hudna/allegience stuff, PC towards Islam is bureaucratically-induced national suicide.
Just to clarify, I am not suggesting that Islam be banned from the US. As I said, if a Muslim wants to believe that God spoke to Mohammed and told him He wants everyone to pray five times a day, no problem. What I am saying is that Islam is not simply a religion and therein lies the problem –
Unsk and bogie wheel raise good points about what is or is not within the rightful domain of congressional power. And on the face of it I can’t argue with anything they’ve said on that score. Constitutional amendments should never be undertaken lightly and that may not be the way to go, but we are going to have to do something to make it clear to the Muslim community that their faith does not absolve them from the same laws that bind everyone else, believers and non-believers alike; that they are merely equal to the rest of us, not special by virtue of their faith; and that if a tenet of their faith is advocating treason, they are not constitutionally entitled to have it both ways.
I’ve known many Muslims. Some of them I like very much and on the whole I do not wish them harm. I very much want to believe that we can all just live and let live. But the sad fact of the matter is that Islam is not merely a set of beliefs about God and how to worship – but a system of social, political, economic and legal practice (which, like it or not, ends up meaning behavior) that is trans-national by design and irrevocably at odds with the very same First Amendment that shelters it within our society. As far as I know, we have never faced anything like this before.
Religions that have textual underpinning all eventual arrive at a fork in the road, “Are the texts everything or shall we pursue rational inquiry?”
Judaism reached this fork and Maimonides (Ben Maimon) prevailed saying essentially, “God gave us brains and what’s us to use them to improve ourselves and our world.”
Christianity reached this fork and Aquinas prevailed saying essentially the same thing.
Islam reached this fork and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) — not the author with a similar pen name — said essentially the same thing. Unfortunately another theologian/philosopher Al-Ghazali said, “There are things man is not meant to know.” Islam to the other fork, the wrong fork. Essentially that fork shut down all evolution in a religion founded by a conquerer who set down rules of cohesion for bedouins. Islam which up to this point had been on a roll absorbing the best of all other cultures, came to a dead halt.
This has been called “The War for the Moslem Mind.” Islam is at a dead end and it knows it. The world has been passing it by for centuries. The only answer the fundamentalists have is force the rest of teh world to revert to our level and they have a good bedouin philosophy of war-making to use as a blueprint.
This is all a religious tantrum. No widespread religion only confines itself to a house of worship. The religion spills over to how the observant treat the non-observant. Hard to say Islam is not a religion exactly though it is grounded in a bedouin war-making blueprint.
We need to encourage a reformation. We need to encourage criticism from within Islam and we should not be in the least shy about criticizing it from without.
This is the war for the Islamic mind and we should be overtly and covertly encourage the dissenters.
whiskey,
William Buckley (the CIA agent) had another interpretation, when he came back from his “services” from Korea, and or abroad, he was astonished how much America had changed, not because of women, but because of LSD effects among the youth and their teachers, also that TV screens had become the biggest stores of the US, cuz kids wanted that their parents bought all what were advertised !
Also he is one of the main characters life That GT is narring, among Gotlieb, Cameron, Sargant, Dulles… a whole epopée !
I’m actually reading “the secret arms of CIA” from Gordon Thomas, very documented, and scaring too.
@86 Habu – Likewise.
However, (not to derail the thread or start another argument) I have to take issue with your earlier statement that women have destroyed the nuclear family. While I understand whiskey’s angst about the trends of the past generation, he stretches the point to meet every possible contingency and in any case it’s a huge denial of responsibility to blame everything under the sun on women.
As for the family, the simple truth is that men have been dumping their wives (and children) for younger women since before the flood and for that matter, they still do. The only reason the nuclear family has survived long enough to feel the social shocks of the past 40 years is because women have stuck it out for centuries.
@118,
My point is that as long as we try to fight protracted battles overseas by borrowing money and using an all volunteer force, the armed forces are going to recruit and retain all sorts of marginal people, e.g., FBI says U.S. criminal gangs are using military to spread their reach.
Anyone here want to double their tax burden to pay for the wars? What about bring back the draft? Of course if either of those policies were implemented any tenuous support for the wars would subsequently evaporate. The MI complex won’t have that, so we muddle through.
Marymcl @82
Give credit where credit is due!
Enjoyed your #47 lots. You can really cut a rug!
Limpet6: Your review of medieval theology is spot on. Christians and Jews subscribe to the One Truth philosophy. Two plus two equals four, regardless of what scripture might say. Islam subscribes to Two Truths: two plus two equals four. But if the Koran says they equal five, that’s true also.
Maineman: In recent works Girard has examined the ways that violent oppressors present themselves as “victims.” While Christianity has exposed violent scapegoaters, it needs to free itself from the frame of viewing any self-proclaimed victim as a victim, because this kind of victimhood just masks a new round of oppression. I’m not optimistic, and I gather you are not either.
I can see where you could argue that the Left’s efforts at scapegoating have not worked since Bush left the scene. On the other hand, the Left’s framing of the Right as “illegitimate” etc. are a way of saying they are beyond the Pale. Other. Unclean. Possessed. Now the NYT basically frames the military as generally disfunctional, violent, clinically unhinged. Not in quite so stark a way, of course.
I agree that Girard would say that the current danger is mimetic rivalry and consequent escalation of violence. I fear that this will be true of Islam vs. West but also true of Left vs. Right.
Belmont Club readers tend to be of the two plus two equals four kind of people. I’m not so sure about the Obami folks, who seem a lot like the kind that Orwell represented as mouthing “War is Peace,” etc.
marymcl: thanks for your postings.
#123 “My point is that as long as we try to fight protracted battles overseas by borrowing money and using an all volunteer force, the armed forces are going to recruit and retain all sorts of marginal people, e.g., FBI says U.S. criminal gangs are using military to spread their reach.
Anyone here want to double their tax burden to pay for the wars? What about bring back the draft? Of course if either of those policies were implemented any tenuous support for the wars would subsequently evaporate. The MI complex won’t have that, so we muddle through.”
Lets try some facts.
In 2007, the Army – active, reserve and national guard – was about 1.1 million people. http://wiki.answers.com/Q/What_is_the_size_of_the_us_army
About 80,000 enlistees a year must be recruited to maintain that force size (which is increasingly slowly). http://usmilitary.about.com/od/2008recruitingstatistics/a/september.htm
On April 17th, 2008, NPR reported that the Army had lowered enlistment standards. 79 percent of recruits reportedly had a high school diploma, and in 2007, 8,259 waivers had been granted to enable people with serious misdemeanors to enlist, as well as just over 5000 waivers for physical issues (according to the article, mostly high blood pressure and eyesight issues). http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=89702118
I do not have at my fingertips the number of Army enlistees who fail to make it through basic training, but “drops” are probably accounted for in the gross enlistment numbers above.
You can be sure there is an active effort to dissuade gang members from joining and to remove gang members from within the forces. I would GUESS the Armed Forces are not perfect in their exclusion of gang members, just as I would GUESS that the total number of gang members in the Army is relatively small. As an example, an early 2007 news report based on an FBI report cited 40 gang members identified on Fort Hood since 2003…that’s 40 gang members in 3 years. Hence my use of the term “relatively small”. http://usmilitary.about.com/od/justicelawlegislation/a/gangs.htm
“double our tax burden” – cite your proof.
“MI (Military-industrial) complex won’t have that” – get real. Serious observers do not suggest a cabal defines our national strategy, policies and recruiting standards, nor is that at all what President Eisenhower suggested.
http://www.h-net.org/~hst306/documents/indust.html
In order to address the serious problems of political correctness rampant in our country, and in our Armed Forces, we need to confine ourselves to the facts when possible.
Good work on this thread, especially marymcl.
Limpet6,
Very nice, one question though, was Aquinas asserting the limits of human perception or justifying claims of omnipotent authority buttressed by not only scripture but prior authority, in the form of Aristotle? My theory is moving towards the view that the Medieval to pre-Reformation Church responded to the threat of Islam in part by internalizing some of the enemies perceived strengths. These included a sense of certitude or even fatalism in the face of death and an inescapable authority for those empowered to interpret textual dogma. While we may now say that over time those qualities doomed Islam to fall behind the West in innovation and combative skill that was not so clear to those manning the walls of Constantinople, the Emperor begged his priests to rule that a soldier killed in battle was guaranteed Paradise and they refused, or battling both moslem corsairs, waves of barbarian invasions and successive outbreaks of heresy, such as the Cathars. The Reformation and the Enlightenment, despite subsequent Relativism, saved Western Civilization from that trap.
Mark,
Two Truths
Nice model. Leftists like John Edwards have refined that to “Two Nations” and ultimately Two Moralities.
Well, LifeoftheMind, I’m more a warrior (RVN, AFG, speaking as one naval officer to another) than a theologian or philosopher, but I’ll give it a go. Both Maimonides and Aquinas were greatly influenced by Aristotle. “Moderation” was the key word. Moderation meant never painting yourself into an absolutist corner.
Maimonides was practical and could have borrowed from Porgy & Bess’ “It Ain’t Necessarily (literally) So.” Aquinas believed that human beings had the natural capacity to know many things without special divine revelation.
Both realized that, practically, going only to the text was confining and stunting. I can’t say they necessarily looked on modifying their religions to confront Islam. I think not. Maimonides had to skip out of two countries (Spain and Morocco)with the Moslem authorities hot on his heels before landing in Egypt. And there what did he end up doing? He ended up physician to the Saladin.
I don’t know as much about Aquinas, but suspect he was an intellectual and just couldn’t believe God put the natural world around us to be ignore. Where was the fun in that?
Both however knew there were limits to rationalism. Some things you just took on faith. You did not however not take everything on faith.
Islam was tilted another way. The Caliphate was all about conquest and subjugation. As long as you could fight and conquer what did you need to know about things like science? Islam led the world in mathematics, astronomy, navigation, architecture, medicine, and philosophy and then through it away.
The Caliphate and then the Ottoman Empire survived on conquest and little else. Eventually it ran out of steam. Conquest and subjugation are essentially parasitic and draw the life out of the host organism.
@120 Limpet6
~ “This is the war for the Islamic mind and we should be overtly and covertly encourage the dissenters.” ~
A big part of the problem is that Islam doesn’t tolerate dissent. People become apostates, but they don’t appear to be able to stay within the fold. One would like to believe that American Muslims could be the exception to that rule, but that’s up to them and remains to be seen. And the meter is running.
That said, referring to a point I made earlier @119 about the need to drive home to the American Muslim community the point that they are not constitutionally entitled to have it both ways – if Hasan were to stand trial for treason, it might be a watershed event in that regard. It’s by no means certain that he will be so charged, of course, and perhaps we should all consider making the suggestion to our congressional representatives, local media pundits and anyone else who’ll listen. If nothing else, it’s what he deserves, and who knows – it may have the secondary effect of forcing an open debate within the Muslim community.
Steveaz, Mark, LotM – Thank you. I feel very lucky (and honored) to be in present company
77. Habu:
But I have to admit that the worlds most eaten fruit, the mango, is a tough one to discriminate when it comes to choosing the one that is just right.
I’d appreciate any pointers on how to discriminate between a good and bad mango prior to actually eating it.
Mango eaters, step up.
Sounds like you need to visit Oz, Habu.
Mangoes grow like weeds in the north of Oz and most taste better than ANY I ever had in my native California.
Great thread!
A keeper.
So many valid thoughts and suggested remedies to the challenges posed by Islam.
What a gorgeous collection of minds BC is blessed with.
Thanks, Wretch.
@117 fred lapides
I think you’re being a bit obtuse here. Endemic political correctness is the most likely reason the Army turned a blind eye to the warning signals. That doesn’t absolve the chain of command of its responsibility for not “doing something” about Hasan and no doubt someone will be made to fall on the sword in a very public way before long. But that’s a bit like treating the symptoms and ignoring the disease. And the symptoms of some diseases are lousy enough to divert attention from the underlying problem. It remains a problem nonetheless.
The discussion here is concerned with coming to grips with a growing Muslim population that appears ambivalent at best about Islamic terrorism. Obviously everyone here is not of the same mind about what to do, but at least we recognize there’s a problem and we’re talking about it. If we as a nation continue to look the other way and ignore the elephant in the room (what Obama and the MSM are calling “jumping to conclusions”) then the extreme scenarios you fear become all the more likely. And if history is any guide, it will be a left/liberal government that enacts them.