As a shrink he probably heard all the horror stories from people returning and snapped. that's far more likely than terrorist or religious motived attacks.

Now you're just speculating. Would it be appropriate for someone to speculate that he did it because he's an evil Muslim terrorist? No.

~String

true but you have to admit their is some merit to that line of thought.

Obviously, PJ. There's also merit to the contrasting line of thought. But we don't rule, and thankfully argue, based upon speculation of what may be. Neither of us have a crystal ball.

~String

I do. I think the major media and our trusty government will both be helping hoping the perp and the story both get wrapped up tidily and buried ASAP. Never Forget! The crackpot r*gh**d counselor never woke up, and probably wasn't really ever one of us, he was just too cowardly to go to war. In other news... Go Yankees! God, Support Our Troops!

Hype? What the heck is that supposed to mean?

~String

It means that this attack (like some that came before) leads places that most US citizens (largely thanks to a restricted major-US-media diet of information) aren't going to want to go. Like the Laptop alibi at Northwest/Delta, we're going to buy some bullshit and pretend it's a good investment again. We'll avoid complications/impediments to the Global War on terror Without Name.

Who's this "we" you're talking about?

~String

In this case I was using the pronoun to describe all of us who receive the messages from major media and our politicians at face value, especially in matters pertaining to our expanding cycle of violence with Muslims and people with South Asians connections.

Some may call them hasty, but I am drawing conclusions about the similarity between Major Hassan's going rogue and scarcely-discussed lethal tantrums in those distant countries somewhere (bombings, multiple-shootings etc) that have been happening with great frequency where we get our wars on. The conclusions I am drawing are not helpful to that War Effort, because they reveal a cycle that can only be broken with an unconditional withdrawal of our forces (the only just end to unjust and terror-provoking military intervention).

I hate to say that you're being hasty as well, I don't like eating crow. But I really think that this will be impossible to bury, 'specially since there are so many involved.

~String

Maybe "bury" is a poor descriptor. Like other conspicuous lies of recent history, it's always going to stick up. So I should say we (all who agree to the illusion) will wrap it up carefully in something it's not. Maybe I'm wrong, we'll see...

Speculate, yes. What if it is precisely that? It does occur.

(I have to add provisos for certain dullards here, to ensure they can't possibly (deliberately) take the wrong tack: not all Muslims are terrorists, clearly. I hate to be forced to waste time mentioning it, but fools will out.)

I don't think your scenario is inherently fraught GeoffP. It's what we are likely to discover in examining such a scenario that is shifty ground for America's storytellers, and the whole US and Them schtick.

Unless we can firmly affix the "Not One of US" cultural/ethnic filter to the public examination first, it's going to get problematic in the public discovery of this "terrorist's" (we'll assume) motivation, if that motivation proves identical to the motivations / triggers of psychosis that we are in lop-sided, provocative, madness-inducing battle against in other peoples' countries. US soldiers and civilians wouldn't have to confront our wars very closely if they never came home, or could leave it all behind. But something is coming back from this war that our McMedia is in the militaristic habit of glossing carefully over.

If Major Headache wakes up from his war and the public gets into his twisted head, the War on Terrorism could lose much of its remaining logical justification in a precipitous way, because the comparisons with what is motivating the people we fight will be inevitable. Unless of course attention can be diverted into assurances of spontaneous or imported alien evil. Unless Major Hassan can be conflated with the subhuman and subamerican effigies of islamo-threat we've been taught to fear and despise- He was never really one of us / US Army material. That kind of crazy comes from al-Qaidislamwhatchamacallit, the vast radical Islamic conspiracy against all that is good and American

The vague outline of our war aims (as vaguely understood and expressed in the collective US national psyche, distorted by all sorts of xenophobia and disinformation) includes the notion that we are combatting a phenomenon that is not a product of our runaway military campaigns: That the people attacking in our far-flung battlefields are all interchangable, all in league or at least alignment and implied complicity with our own provocatuers of madness on 9-11-2001.

It will be much in the interests of convention to avoid any widespread public discovery (should that be where forensic and /or psychological evidence leads) that Major Hassan's breakdown was not unlike hundreds of breakdowns regularly resulting in vicious, desperate, and even indescriminate attacks on occupation forces and their partners abroad (and anyone in the way). His madness may not have been induced by an evil priest or prophet. His tantrum may not have had its origin in Palestinian anti-zionism. What if it's our American Wars producing the madness? A heresy.

It will be in the interests of the violent status quo to preserve the notion that our wars are not the triggers of most human breakdowns into rage and violence that we are in the habit of considering as insurgent attacks, connected to the cause of a globally-connected Enemy to be swept up like the holdouts of a bygone Axis power. It will be in the interests of the USA's longest modern war to avoid discovery that the perpetuation (and cessation) of the War on Terrorism is all on us in the USA. It is in the interests of our "national security" projects in Iraq and Afghanistan for most of the US public to persist in assuming that the results would be different and less volatile if we were all experiencing this war everywhere innocent flesh is being torn, all the time and we couldn't say "stop" as people we care most about are offered for the slaughter. We're not in the national mood to say "Stop this, our occupations are the primary motivator of insane attacks on the young people trying to serve our country, on those who associate with the USA in the countries we occupy, and if this goes on the rage will come back upon us even where we pretend to be safest." That's defeatism.

Such conclusions are not in line with the present summation of USAmerican intent about our self-perpetuating wars. They are a serious threat to present popular perception in the USA. If the facts of the Ft. Hood case lead to an exposition of the shared motivations of people attacking Americans everywhere, I don't believe our final answer is going to be "al Qaeda" or "McMartyrdom" or "Ummah-geddon". A realization will become more prevalent that the ongoing US reaction to 9-11 has reached a perpetual level of rage-incitement, that will simply perpetuate (regardless of which nations we may topple and torment) until we've had enough and call the entire great mistake to an end. I'm afraid, if my hunch is correct (that the Ft. Hood attack had a lot in common with many attacks on US forces at war) that we'll never get a close and candid public look at what really set off Major Hassan because it would just be too revealing.

Did anyone else see Obama's remarks on this? The first three minutes or so it was like he didn't know he was on TV supposed to be addressing the Fort Hood shooting. Wierd.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0hiw8iXdMM

The irony here is that those under occupation have a greater understanding of the complexities of this US terror than the Americans with access to all sorts of viewpoints and media.

Imagine the scenario if an American group travelling in any one of the countries where the people are desperately trying to hold on to their sanity in the midst of crushed families and melted children, were to be picked up and lynched all the while crying out "but we didn't support the war! we hated Bush!" while the "Muslim terrorists" avenging the destruction of their home and society looked on them as part of a homogenous American terrorist, whose lives were dedicated to destroying those of all others in the most horrific way possible, all for the sake of a profit margin.

What would it mean for Americans if their victims, like them, did not distinguish between policy and people? Can they ever comprehend the generosity of spirit of the people they massacre and torture?

No different, I suppose, than holding the entire Jewish community of Egypt guilty for a few Israeli spies in the 1950s (as you do), or the Christian communities of Iraq and Pakistan for being complicit in the US invasion...or just for being guilty of Breathing While Infidel.

Some of these are neglected by your vaunted egalitarianism, Sam. I'm sure there's no overriding reason - hypocrisy, say - behind it.

BTW: Americans and Westerners do indeed sometimes get "picked up and lynched" (murdered, anyway) in all kinds of Islamic countries. It's not really a hypothetical. Compare that and the treatment of religious minorities - real persecution - to that of Muslims in the West, if you dare. Further, Hamas - and you - make no distinction between Israeli "policies and people". Do you actually have the gall to declaim on this subject? On what high horse could you possibly sit?

Lastly, you might stop to demonstrate this statement:

You choose Americans here, I note, rather than all Westerners. A generalization interchangeable - when it suits your argument.

I think the Jewish support for zionism is a different parallel than the alleged Muslim support for terrorism. Of the 1.5 billion Muslims in the world, how many really care for or support the less than 10% of them under American occupation?

The blowback from the Lavon Affair was unfortunate but my own discovery of the large majority of Indian Jews leaving India after 2000 years to live in Palestine, has changed my opinion of Jewish investment in Israel and its occupation. What I have seen and heard of Jewish investment in Zionism [even among the Jews in this forum] has not altered that opinion in any way. The Jews opposing Zionism and Palestinian dispossession do exist and I regularly record their activities so there is always an understanding of their position. I have a hope that young Jews in the world will have a better understanding of human rights and will extend their conversation to include people other than Jews in the future. But its no secret that the majority of Jewish conversation is about what is good for the Jews. But, we are straying far from the topic.

Meanwhile, after going to Europe I discovered that American ignorance is not a western society phenomenon. Maybe its a function of *ogger media, but its unique to Americans. Or Europe is closer to the Middle East and its only the uneducated and communally inclined who share the same opinions as the average American gung-ho to avenge 9-11 in Iraq.

I haven't read of any American group being lynched because they were Americans. I would like to some evidence of your claims. Recently, I discovered that the famous photo of the woman being buried in the ground and stoned in Iran is actually a still from a movie. So yeah, I'd like to see evidence from a non-*ogger source.

I was under the impression that it was the Portugese who brought Jews to India around 500 years ago.

Edit: I just read the Wiki article and it clears the matter up.

~String

Why is it that we have only seen this kind of thing in the Army?

Have we even seen this kind of thing in the Army before?

~String