The Fort Hood shooting *UPDATED*
Bookworm on Nov 05 2009 at 3:03 pm | Filed under: Military, Muslim violence
I just heard about the Fort Hood shooting, and have nothing of my own to say. The New Editor, however, is watching closely and updating constantly.
Ed Driscoll also has running updates, as does Hot Air.
What I learned from a military friend is that, even though it’s a military base, the troops are not armed, leaving them as helpless as college or high school students.
Probably meaningless, but the one shooter who is named (of the three military shooters involved) is Major Malik Nadal Hasan. I’m sure the name is just a coincidence, and could as easily have been, say, Maj. Tom O’Malley, or Maj. Jerome Goldberg, or Maj. Lou Chan. And I’m sure it had nothing to do with anything that Hasan converted to Islam.
UPDATE: At JoshuaPundit, info comes through that it was one shooter, so not a conspiracy. My question for you: if it’s a lone gunman who shoots because his religious ideology dictates that he do so, is it still a Muslim terrorist attack? I say yes, but I’m sure the MSM will play the crazy soldier under stress angle. JoshuaPundit, by the way, using actual facts, asks the same question and, quite thoughtfully, comes up with the same answer.
I’d blog more, but Thursday afternoon and evening are serious carpool and family time.
UPDATE II: I’m hearing some back channel chat which makes this sound much more interesting than just a lone gunman. You’ll probably hear the same stuff before I wake up tomorrow (early, but California time). The one point I can tell you is that an ex-mil friend noted that this whole fear of deployment isn’t straight. The guy is a psychiatrist. Here or there, he’d be sitting on a couch. In other words, he would never be taking up weapons against fellow Muslims — but he was manifestly willing to take up weapons against fellow Americans.
UPDATE III: Since I’m getting links from my trackback at Hot Air, I feel it’s incumbent upon me to say something intelligent and coherent here. Here’s my try: The most dangerous enemy is always the Fifth Columnist, or the enemy within. Hasan wore the same uniform as the men (and women?) he shot. He slept in the same barracks, he had the same military training, he shared their pop culture. There was nothing alien about him. As these pictures hint, and as we know to be the case for all military installations, Ft. Hood is set up to repel the enemy from without. It has no mechanism to protect against the turncoat, the Benedict Arnold who nurses a private or ideological grievance.
I’ve also heard from back channels that people like Hasan have been an ongoing concern within the military. The fear inspired by political correctness, however, has meant that internal enforcement agencies (FBI, military police, etc.) have been afraid to act on their suspicions for fear of being tarred as racists or ideologues. This climate of PC fear must have increased dramatically since Obama’s justice department made it plain that it considered those who acted in defense of the U.S. as potential war criminals. In the topsy turvy world of Obama politics, it’s a worse sin to be politically incorrect than to be a terrorist. Our national security forces have read the tea leaves and, no matter how patriotic I’m sure they are, they’ve concluded that the sure risk to their career for being un-PC is greater than the potential risk of a terrorist attack from some psychiatrist or foot soldier somewhere in the South or the Midwest, or wherever else the next Muslim loony-toonz starts making noise on American soil.
UPDATE IV: The media will undoubtedly paint Hasan as a disaffected, frightened warrior (never mind that psychiatrists don’t go into war). Why do I say this? Because every Muslim attack in America (e.g., the shooter at the Jewish center in the North West, the crazy guy who ran down people in San Francisco, the D.C. sniper, the Home Depo car driver) is, according to the media, just a crazy person in motion. I’ve therefore got a syllogism for you:
All mass murderers are crazy.
All mass murderers who look to Allah and the Koran as their inspiration for mass murder are crazy.
All Muslims are therefore crazy.
It’s an utterly stupid syllogism, and it’s meant to be. I just wanted to highlight the inanity of a media that seeks desperately to avoid the fact that there’s a common denominator to a significant percentage of crazy mass murders in the U.S. Yes, we have random shooters (the Virginia Tech guy, the Amish killer, the Columbine killer), but we also have a collection of killers all of whom share precisely the same ideology: they’re murdering for Allah. That’s not crazy; that’s ideological.
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24 Responses to “The Fort Hood shooting *UPDATED*”
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Yes, weapons are locked up in the armory. But I wouldn’t say they are as helpless as high school students… all of the soldiers on base should have been trained to take cover, move and engage in some form of hand to hand if needed. But, then again, if the suspect is a soldier, as is being reported, he knows how to use a weapon effectively. It would have been a shooting gallery initially. Very bad.
Nine people dead in shooting at Fort Hood base in…
Horrible news from the army base in Texas, where at least 2 gunmen went on a rampage (Hat tip: Wizbang):…
I am sure that it with a name like “Hasan”, he must be a Lutheran viking beserker. Was he wearing horns on his helmet?
The New Editor update:
Update XXII: A reader sends this from the Maryland Board of Physicians: Major Hasan was a graduate of Damascus University or Faculty of Human Medicine, Damascus University. His license was issued May 8, 1995 and expired September 30, 1996.
I am sure you’ll hear/read lots more, but added to the solemnity of the day was POTUS sans teleprompter, after his Pow Wow with the American Indians giving a ‘shout out’ and thanks to blah, blah and blah.
Once again, this doofus, screws up and has no sense of agenda or prioritizing diddly.
Oh wait, I mispoke, he talked about himself first and how he was going to keep his promises to the tribes.
p.s. Mr. President would you like to bow to another Saudi prince, talk to Iran, pressure Israel into submission, dither and wait some more on troop deployment.
Sadie,
Doesn’t this new program for the Indians remind you of Obama’s career: when he fails at one project, he just takes on another. He seems to think he can govern (rule?) by identifying a nice-sounding goal, delegating the actual work, and then going to bed to dream up his next goal. Oh, I forgot to mention, he gives some speeches in between.
I’ve stopped listening to our Teenage Mutant Ninja Potus. He seems more detached, vapid and emotionally constrained every time I hear him.
From The Corner comes word that the shooter was not a convert, but raised a Muslim. The MSM, naturally, is painting this as PTSD. What boobs!
Well, I am sure everyone has the updated information. But, if not, Maj Hasan is an Army Psychiatrist. He has been against our involvement in Afghanistan and Iraq from the beginning; and had fought desperately to avoid deployment to either theater for several years. His objections notwithstanding he was scheduled for deployment by the first of the year. It is reported that he has made increasingly strident statements about the wars.
The Commanding General of Ft Hood held his long delayed press conference. The real news was that the shooter is not dead as was consistently reported. He was wounded and is in custody and in stable condition. It has been emphasized that there was only one shooter.
A personal observation. It is only common sense that weapons are tightly controlled on a base. I once sat on a General Court Martial in which a Marine who was on sentry duty left his post and shot one of his room mates in response to an earlier altercation. He was one of only a handful of people on the base who was armed at the time.
Ironically, Major Hasan is a graduate of Virginia Tech University, which brings to mind the slaughter on that campus.
expat
He’s into ‘ethnic’ symbolism – he’s the man of the people (not regular people, mind you, just the ‘down trodden’). The folks, who have been beaten by the ‘man’ – there will be no European history or lessons applied to governing (insert appropriate word here).
I am thoroughly convinced the only reason that he has Emmanuel and Axelrod as part of his entourage is that they represent 1) a minority 2) he knows how to use people to his advantage – they were his Jewish security vote. If, G-d forbid he wins round two, they will be under the bus.
If he could, he’d be wearing dashikis and dread locks to work.
Zhombre - he is emotionally dettached. This is how he got through the first 20 years and it is his very essence since.
PS
Major Hasan is, in fact, Muslim and has been his entire life. In an interview one of cousins confirmed that he was born in the U.S., and was a “good” American. He was a member of the ROTC at Va Tech, and always wanted to be in the Army. (He just didn’t want to do what the Army has to do). The cousin claims that Hasan had experienced constant harassment about his ethnicity and religion since 9/11. A source who had worked with him, claims that is not true.
Naturally, a lot of what is being reported is speculative at the moment.
“I’ve stopped listening to our Teenage Mutant Ninja Potus.”
Martel adds yet another prose gem to the growing “Book of Worm,” the compendium of memorable comments made here.
There’s no question that Obama is a Jew hater. But since Emmanuel and Axelrod are self-hating Jews, The One has no problem—for now—with them. SADIE is right about what will happen if Obama consolidates his power.
Oldflyer
His specialty was PTSD, but obviously his real calling was jihad – it just didn’t pay the six-figure salary he was getting.
The “Book of Worm”? Certainly we can do better than that…reminds me of a Bram Stoker story or Grim Wormtongue (Lord of the Rings). How about “Tome” or “Torah” of Book? Torah of Tome? Any more ideas?
Obama’s Frightening Insensitivity Following Shooting
I am not the only one who gasped (post #4) This header is from the CHICAGO NBC affiliate.
http://www.nbcchicago.com/news/politics/A-Disconnected-President.html
>>The cousin claims that Hasan had experienced constant harassment about his ethnicity and religion since 9/11. A source who had worked with him, claims that is not true.>>
I doubt it as well. The military is the only social group in the US where the “you will” or “you will not” is strictly applied. The integration of blacks was a phenomenon not possible in the civilian culture, and imo was responsible for much of the progress that was made in racial integration in the next 20-30 years after Truman eliminated the Jim Crow army. Additionally, I heard this morning something about the “soldiers” who came back giving him a hard time….soldiers? giving a _major_ a hard time? What garbage. Now I _do_ think it’s possible that soldiers coming back may have vented about muslims – he _was_ a psychiatrist treating soldiers with mental problems – but that only becomes a problem if he then identifies with the muslims instead of with the soldiers. I suspect _that_ was the problem. He felt harrassed because “his” people were getting dumped on and defeated. He identified with the wrong guys.
I’m guessing here – but I simply don’t believe his cousin’s claim that he was harrassed. He might have _felt_ harrassed, but I don’t believe he _was_ harrassed.
Somebody mentioned a “six figure income”…where did that come from? Far as I know, his pay level would have been the same as any other military doctor’s – and not in the 6 figure range. Makes you wonder why he didn’t get out… He certainly would have known what it took to get a psychological medical discharge…
[...] Bookworm Room – The Fort Hood shooting *UPDATED* [...]
I mentioned the 6 figure range. It was mentioned on Fox and confirmed by another officer, who worked with him.
Never mind his cousin’s comments, it’s the imam at his local mosque, that are questionable. Oh, let’s mention here that he has family (a brother?) living in Abbas-land. He identified himself as a Palestinian on some paperwork, although he was born in Virginia.
Political Correctness kills……
The above picture is one I took on our last year’s pilgrimage to the Holy Land. You see young people like this everywhere in Israel. Maybe, just maybe, Israelis know something about dealing with Muslim terrorists. Hmm? Political Correctness and the F…
<B>Truman eliminated the Jim Crow army.</b>
It was more like WWII ended the Jim Crow army because the army officers themselves demanded that it be so, and once they were promoted in the upcoming years to flag rank, Truman would have been put in a position where most of his high ranking officers were actively lobbying for de-segregation.
It in the interest of Obama and his religious acolytes to ensure many American service members will die. And not just in Afghanistan, either.
[...] mourn the killing of 12 Warriors and a civilian at Fort Hood, along with wounding 30 others. Our thoughts and prayers are with the families, especially, and the [...]
>>I mentioned the 6 figure range. It was mentioned on Fox and confirmed by another officer, who worked with him.>>
Boy…I’d like to see an explanation for that. I know that pilots get extra pay…but doctors?