I'm not sure if the society is prepared to make these comparisons for too long, without crossing over into examining whether our wars are making people crazy (creating perpetual violent and terrorist reaction). The mainstream will want to bypass these thoughts, if the flow of the quo is to be protected.
For the same reason that Clinton and Gore didn't go to Somalia or Kosovo. The same reason that LBJ didn't go to Vietnam. The same reason that Truman didn't go to Korea. So on and so forth. Politicians start the wars and soldiers fight them.
It doesn't seem that way any more to me. Most modern countries are capable of fighting elective wars for longer than they care to. Who have been the winners in our latest wars?
We already know you support jihad. Moderator Note from: ______hypewaders________________. This (what you are reading) is a warning. If you are unsure why you have received this warning, please PM Hypewaders and / or review the sticky threads at the head of this subforum, especially the one rather rakishly titled "Zero Tolerance". Thank you, and have a great day.
It's going too be some time before many of us know with any certainty to us just how last Thursday (and his inner life before) went for Major Hassan. For the first few days, we might as well read about it at supermarket checkouts.
Care to elaborate? I'll contribute this: He may have been failing professionally- some reports are saying that he was "sent to the Eastern Front" (so to speak); some recent social downfall, too- they say he couldn't find a nice durka-durka orthodox wife; he wasn't One of US; couldn't be. See, the trouble is the President can't tidy all this up by saying "OK, you folks in the military- from now on, don't deploy anybody who doubts the mission". It could become problematic in terms of combat readiness.
There is the part, at least from preliminary reports, where he was shouting "Allahu Akbar". That's a telling point. ~String
Good God. I mean "Allahu Akbar!" (ah, never mind) Avoiding the issue is going to require that Major Malfunction's motives be ultimately declared to originate from beyond our realm, from out where we Meet the Enemy. Not here. The random-insanity angle is already buried in the muck of islamophobia it seems. This is why this tragedy is a compounding one: The war effort must de-sanitize Major Asshole, and draw associations that will not conflict with the war effort (which is becoming a serious psychological effort in the USA). So ironic that a loony psychologist has shot up one of our graduation parties. The US audience is also going to have to deal with the jarring thought that the Ft. Hood victims were combat casualties. Our government is supposed to be able to control where conflict happens: "We're fighting them over there, so we don't have to over here".[/b] We're all waiting for it to come over here, and we all know that what happened in Ft. Hood isn't what we were expecting at all. Don't our wars protect us? Isn't that what they are about?
They may well be legitimate targets, but that doesn't stop it from being a terrorist act if (and this is a big if) it turns out that he was intentionally trying to terrorize them. How should we proceed in this area? Hide the fact that he's a Muslim? ~String
No, if the facts lead us to believe that Major Flipflop went over to the Other Side (& I'm not coming along until the facts really show that) it doesn't mean that the nation's thinking (once there, if that's where it goes) should snap to a militarizing-lemming halt. The US public will in such a frame of reference be more squarely presented with questions we're still avoiding about what the Other Side / our Enemy is- less dodo, more pogo. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Questions about what it means if even One of Us can be warred and terrorized into adding, before our networked eyes, to the war-on-terror cycle. Or we awaken to find ourselves furiously peddling our war-on-terra-cycle. Something nonsensical like that will soon confront us in this.
Obviously, but his religion and motivations, in this case, are relevant. Just as relevant, as I stated, is what he was subjected to as a Muslim officer in the US military. Who knows, in this case, a good soldier may have gone bad. I don't know. But I'm not discounting anything. ~String edit note: all edits undone, with apology -h
