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Younghusband
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Younghusband

Date

November 16th, 2009

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Kaplan on Fort Hood

Robert D. Kaplan hopes that the actions of one radicalized Muslim in the US military does not result in a backlash against all Muslims in the US military:

The ultimate strategic goal of al-Qaeda is to turn our struggle with it into a “clash of civilizations.” If potential Muslim recruits to the U.S. military quietly decide not to enlist for fear of retribution or prejudice inside the barracks, that would be a victory for al-Qaeda.

Still, trust but verify:

That’s why, while we improve our security procedures behind the scenes, we should deal with the massacre at Fort Hood in as low key a manner as possible. More Maj. Hasans may lurk in the barracks and public squares. The way to find them out is not in a shrill witch hunt, but quietly, methodically, and legally, even as we open up our military to a wider spectrum of recruits.

Comments to this entry

The Sanity Inspector
November 17, 2009
1:44 am
It's always rankled me how the liberal press has been banging on for the past eight years about the completely non-existent "anti-Muslim backlash". Columnist John Leo satirized it when he said that there had been 100,000 hate crimes against Muslims since 9/11: one shooting, two bricks heaved through windows, and 99,997 limp handshakes and insincere hellos.
Curzon
November 17, 2009
9:30 am
Everything I read about Hasan suggests mental illness, and it's hard to imagine there being others like him. Add to that the horrendously flawed internal review process -- his work perfomance was rated as unacceptable, he gave a presentation on trying to understand suicide bombers, was known to be in contact with a radical cleric... but you can't easily fire federally protected workers so he was basically ignored.
Younghusband
November 17, 2009
10:20 am
Hitchens lays out seven salient facts about Hasan. His thoughts on Hasan's mental state:

What about the emphasis on Hasan's supposedly knife-edge mental state? Well, even supposing it to have been precarious, it can hardly have been improved by immersion in the rantings of Anwar al-Awlaki. I do not say that all practitioners of woman-hating, anti-Semitic, sadomasochistic suicide immolations are themselves insane, but I do say that the teaching itself is demented. In the same way, I do not say that all Muslims are terrorists, but I have noticed that an alarmingly high proportion of terrorists are Muslim. A paranoid or depressive person—of whom we have many millions in our midst—does not have to end up screaming religious slogans while butchering his fellow creatures. But a paranoid or depressive person who is in regular touch with a jihadist "spiritual leader" is presented with a ready-made script that offers him paradise in exchange for homicide.
Roy Berman
November 19, 2009
3:45 am
An awful tragedy and an awful crime, but it strikes me as FAR more similar to the Columbine school shooting than an act of terrorism. Cracking down on Muslims in response would make about as much sense as the turn of the century crackdown on trenchcoats and Marilyn Manson albums in American schools. I think it should instead serve more as yet another object lesson that mental health is still not taken sufficiently seriously. There are far too many people out there who dismiss psychology/psychiatry as pampering to people who just need to get over their bullshit personal problems, without realizing that leaving mental illness untreated has consequences far more serious than just moping.