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.

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.

~ “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

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.

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.

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.

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.

Enjoyed your #47 lots. You can really cut a rug!

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.