For reasons that are well known to the regular readers of this blog, I'm following the ongoing situation at Fort Hood closely right now. There's a lot of scattered information coming out right now, and absolutely no way to know how much - if any - of it is real. About all that is clear at this point is that a number of people have been killed and wounded.
It's undoubtedly going to be quite some time before the situation is going to be fully confirmed to be over. Fort Hood is the size - and has the population - of a fairly large city. It's going to take a lot of time to search through the post and ensure that the immediate threat is over. It's going to take still longer to ensure that everyone has been accounted for.
No matter what the details turn out to be, this is a tragic, devastating situation.
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At about 5 pm, Charlie Gibson shifted his newscast to our "president" for more information on the Ft Hood shooting. So what does obama do, spend the first five minutes or so talking about the "progress" made in his talks today and patting himself on the back, when we just had American heros killed. Does he care at all about out Armed forces?
Of course, CNN immediately ties it in to "high suicide rates for soldiers and veterans"....
Enough of the sniping at Obama... some of you take any chance you get no matter how petty. If he didn't say anything, you'd be after him for that too. There's a tragedy at hand, don't you have anything else to say. Good grief.
Umm, ABC is reporting that the name of one of the 3 (?) shooters is Malik Nadal Hasan. Wonder what part of Texas he's from?
@Peter Carroll:
According to reports, he's originally from Virginia.
http://jimmyk01.typepad.com/but_thats_just_my_opinion/
Yeah, but "Bomb Virginia! Save us from the terrorists!" doesn't have quite the appeal of "Bomb (insert random country with a name ending in -stan here) into the Stone Age!" to the paranoid.
Gee, Kate (from Iowa), thanks for that thought-provoking post. Instead of "Bomb Randomcountrystan!" can we say "Ban the promotion of salafist islam in the United States funded by the Saudis!" ? Would that be OK? Doesn't involve bombing anyone. Shouldn't hurt anyone's feelings.
Unless, of course, you think that the Constitution is more than a piece of paper.
My brother was working about a mile away and got in touch with some people. Basically, I think the news has it about right, but I dunno for certain.
I watched the live Obama remarks also. He walked up on stage after spending most of the day at that conference on issues facing Native Americans and was most likely in a totally different mindset. He said what he had to to finish that train of thought, and then dealt with the Ft. Hood issue. I think he did just fine, even if he really needs to work on his habit of saying "um" and "uh" in-between every other phrase.
As soon as I heard of the shooting I said this isn't a Major Joe Smith just wait and learn his name. That says it all!!!!
We better wise up in this country, they are after us and they have infiltrated this country!!!!
'
Mike: Is that comment directed to me? I'm not a scholar or a lawyer. What's the constitutional law on upholding the free speech and religious rights of those who advocate adopting sharia law in place of that constitution - - and also engage in murder and mayhem to achieve their ends? Didn't some guy once say that the Constitution isn't a suicide pact?
Oh fuck, the racist batshits have infiltrated ScienceBlogs.
You don't have to be a "racist batshit" to jump to Kathy's conclusion. And she was right, wasn't she? This is just the first one. Muslim radicals have infiltrated this society with no problem, due to our now even more open borders, and the pacifist attitudes of this administration.
Talk to them? Hell, no. Round them up and get them out of our country!
Kathy- your comment is way out of line. I don't think think it is fair to judge a whole group by the actions of a few .
@Peter Carroll:
Yes, it was.
The Constitution is very clear about the issue:
Nothing in there about restricting the rights of any group for any reason.
And, personally, I think that once we start to take away people's rights to speech and religion, we're on a much more certain - and rapid - path to national suicide.
Mindy: Kathy- your comment is way out of line. I don't think think it is fair to judge a whole group by the actions of a few.
Yeah thats what the excuse is everytime. Its the thoughts and wishes of the "whole group" which can be judged by the actions of a few.
The silent majority give their message of approval loud and clear.
I'll go out on a limb here and suggest that the "whole group" to whom Mindy sees Kathy referring is not "muslims" but "radical muslims". Think about it: she's saying "When I heard people were shooting and killing soldiers at a US Army base, I had a hunch we'd end up hearing they were radical muslims", not "I hate muslims". If I'm right about what Kathy meant, then her comment is only 'way out of line' to the terminally politically correct.
The greater the wailing and gnashing of teeth of the batshit insane racists, the easier it is for the next Timothy McVeigh.
OK, Mike, how do you see that working in practice for the free exercise of a religion that routinely and explicitly calls for murder? Incidentally, I assume the idea of such a 'religion' never occurred to the Founders and would have been inconceivable to them - - and so they therefore made no explicit provision for it in the Constitution. What now, then?
Peter @ 17
I think Kathy's comment "wait and learn his name. That says it all!!!" Doesn't mean she meant only radical Muslims and not Muslims in general. Unless she has some uncanny power to know how radical someone is by their name, I think it's clear that she did mean "I hate Muslims."
Praise Allah... Praise Allah... Praise Allah
@Peter Carroll (#19):
I'm fairly sure that the Founders, many of whom came from families who emigrated to the Colonies in order to escape religious persecution, were more than aware of the potential for members of one religion to become homicidally violent toward members of other religions.
@13 Hell yeah! First thing, let's get the membership lists for of all mosques in the USA, round those bastards up and kick 'em out. But actually a lot of the real terrorists may not go to public mosques, so we better kick out everyone with the name Muhammed or "al"-anything just to be safe. And while we're at it, those leftist commies are explicitely calling for murder with all their pro-abortion speak, so let's get rid of them too. We need to keep America safe! From now on anyone who speaks ill of our great country and wants to impose their own ideas of law on us will get the boot! Those homos who want to destroy marriage and all those Democrats helping them are out! All the Mexicans and Asians who can't even speak English and defacing our cities with their foreign-speak signs up all over the place, they are gone!
But we can't just go out and say this, no, 'cause all those anti-American assholes will rise up against us! No, we need to do this carefully, in secret. I propose we get us some white sheets that we can disguise ourselves with...
Man, how far up in the Google results is your blog that the wackos who generalize from one batshit dude who probably just went nuts because he didn't want to be deployed to a whole ethnicity are coming to your blog?
No, seriously - Kathy, Pat, go fuck yourselves, you immature morons, with your own gray-matter-lacking brains. Try thinking.
Peter @ 19
"How do you see that working in practice for the free exercise of a religion that routinely and explicitly calls for murder?"
Have you ever read the Old Testament? So far, no Muslim has murdered an abortion provider in this country. There were no Muslims in the Klan during the peak of the lynching era. If we want to start restricting religions based on their propensity to violence, we'll end up with no regions at all in this country.
"If we want to start restricting religions based on their propensity to violence, we'll end up with no regions at all in this country."
On second though... peter might have a good idea.
This sounds like terrorism. I think that the name is just the tip of the ice berg. This is bazaar that he's a psychiatrist. wtf. How the hell did he pass the psych evaluation, which I would imagine he'd have to do. To say it isn't terrorist related makes no sense, it's not like this sort of thing happens everyday in the USA.
@peter 19
"OK, Mike, how do you see that working in practice for the free exercise of a religion that routinely and explicitly calls for murder?"
Better start preparing the FEMA concentration camps for all the reactionary christians who call for the murder of gays, democrats, liberals, doctors and people who disagree with them.
Oh wait you meant the scary brown skinned people whose churches look funny.
This would have been a perfect excuse for 'w' to have invaded Mexico.
Who better to pass the psych eval? No reason at all to suspect him, if he knows all the signs of suspicion.
Actually, that works whether or not he was actively planning something. I have a psych background, and whether or not I intended to be dishonest it would be difficult *not* to answer the questions as I know I am wanted to. He *could* simply not want to be deployed.
Of course it could be more than that. My point is simply that this is much, much too early for any "experts" to be drawing any conclusions. Far too much still unknown.
Anon @ 30
But we're blog commenters. It's our duty to make categorical statements about things of which we know next to nothing based on little or no evidence. Read the job description. It's right after the potty break policy.
It sounds like he was already being investigated for posting violent posts on radical Muslim websites. The feds couldn't establish that he was actually the one posting, however, so they were getting a warrant to grab his computer. Peter, Kathy, it's OK to go after someone who is demonstrably dangerous, but we can't do it based on a name. I'm pretty worried about Sarah Palin and the Dominionist crowd she hangs out with, but we can't arrest her simply on *potential criminal behavior; we have to wait for someone to actually do wrong. On a good day that would be *before they actually start shooting.
Please note that he has created a lot of pain here, but Christians have done their share recently, too, and likely some atheists and Pagans and what not. I see a lot of people who actually think Obama is not the legal president of the US. That's weapons grade crazy, and what are *they capable of? Let's keep it civilized people. If we don't, we've lost.
John McKay, "The Old Testament" is not a religion.
Random loons who threaten to murder abortionists are in breach of the law and should be treated as the criminals they are.
Christianity does *not* preach murder and whether you like it or not, modern civilisation is a direct product of christian culture, reformed and improved by the awareness of many centuries of religious warfare.
Islam on the other hand is a religion as yet unreformed from its fundamental preaching of violent extermination of any opposition. Islam belongs in the dark ages. It is incompatible with the freedoms and rights our civilisation holds dear.
It is astounding that modern civilised society puts so much effort into pretending to misunderstand the nature of Islam. I guess the alternative is WW3 - but we should learn the lessons of history: appeasement in the 1930s did not prevent WW2, it only made it far deadlier than it otherwise need have been.
The sooner we nuke the entire middle-east & Pakistan, the better. *They* will gladly do it to us just as soon as they can.
Maybe the new usa army propaganda slogan should be"If you are so retarded to join the usa army come to Fort Hood Texas Army Base where our Officer/Medical will kill you in cold blood...
Shorter Vince @ 30:
Our Christian civilization has outgrown the murderous ways of its youth. "Islam on the other hand is a religion as yet unreformed from its fundamental preaching of violent extermination of any opposition." The sooner we violently exterminate their opposition, the better.
Your Christian What? Well christian join the usa army and get murdered by a Christian Doctor at Fort Hood Army Base where they hand out King James Bibles and condoms...
Maybe that doctor had enough bullshit from the usa Christian army troops that raped and killed millions of innocent muslims in the MIddle East?
All the details I've heard so far would seem to indicate that Islam really isn't the issue here. From what I can see, this looks less like a terrorist act in the commonly understood sense of the term (i.e. political bullying through violence) and more like a school/workplace shooting like Columbine, VATech, or Edgewater -- Islam only seems to have come into it as the focus for one lonely man's disaffection. Couple that with the fact that mental health professionals are often among the least able to heed the advice "physician, heal thyself" and that Hasan dealt with some of the most broken and traumatized patients any counselor is ever likely to see, this seems more a case of someone who cracked a long time ago and decided, as such people do, to go out in a blaze of glory and take as many people as possible with him. Except he's one of the rare ones that never made it to the suicide stage, and will live to be held accountable.
If he wasn't a Muslim, he'd have found some other focus for his rage, like Lee Harvey Oswald's communism or Harris and Klebold's nihilism. In all three of those cases, the philosophies they associated with really had little to do with their actions; they just provided a convenient excuse for their killing.
The Bush/Obama Global Terrorist Crime Cartel,aka denfence contractor war profiteers is the issue praise ALLAH the scumbag Americans are killing each other for their jewish bosses
I hate Americans that rape and murder innocent Muslims in the middle east then come back to the USA and become cops like the usa vietnam babty killers did lol kill each other killers
The USA army Doctor KIlling his baby raping patients Bush/Obama Global Terrorist Crime Cartel aka defence contractor war profiteers
Go to iraq come home in a body sack oh wait go to fort hood texas its closer
@#19-you talking about Rushhannibeckism? Yeah that's a dangerous antiAmerican wackaloon cult, I'll grant you. Bt the Constitution says we must tolerate those hateful arsenards so whatcha gonna do?
"...when we just had American heros killed..."
When everyone is automatically defined as "a hero" it cheapens the term and ensures that there's no possibility of anyone being a real hero. Just being on a military base doesn't automatically make one a hero, as Hasan proved quite conclusively yesterday.
bless the souls of the dead. comfort the hearts of the living.
is every belief system compatible with ours?
Yeah, there hasn't been a shooting in the USA since... Oh, I don't know. It must be decades, at least.
There has never been any violence in the USA unitl the Bush/Obama Global Terrorist Crime Cartel blew up nthe twin towers and building 7
Well, it's difficult when members of a religion regularly call for someone's death. And then of course, when someone assassinates someone who's just going about their daily business, all the other Christians scream, "He was just one crazed" and "I never called him Dr. Killer."
Are you going to round up all those who or invoke imprecatory prayer against the President?
From the sound of things, this Hasan was a difficult loner who had trouble with just about everyone. That does not excuse his actions in the slightest.