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Editorial See other Editorial Articles Title: Ft. Hood: Just the beginning For those who can still put two and two together, the Ft. Hood killings look like the beginning of a long term bloodletting in our country, an unnecessary travail we will be forced to suffer unless we reverse US foreign policy blunders. That no end is now in sight is made clear with the contorted spin placed on the Ft. Hood murders by the administration and both liberal and neo-conservative policy makers. On the one hand, Hasan is explained away as disturbed individual, a loner having professional problems acting out of personal distress. End of story. On the other, he is an 'Islamo-fascist' who, like all extremist Muslims, "attack us for who we are". Both explanations are self-serving and miss the mark completely. As neither account for the real, and obvious, reasons the Ft., Hood attack is likely to be only the beginning of our troubles at home. We expect leadership from Washington but instead get double-talk, couched in high language yes, but nonetheless vapid explanations. Like Bush before him President Obama cynically avoids the truth about this cultural, religious and territorial conflict. Instead, he was "baffled as the rest of the country by the bloody burst of violence", saying "[w]e cannot fully know what leads a man to do such a thing," (ABC news, Nov. 8). Oh really? Can the President not know that in matters of culture and religion Islam and Western secular society are at immutable loggerheads? Our own divisive social issues revolving around gender, sex and family are completely condemned in Islamic societies and there is outright rejection of our attempt to force our idea of women’s rights, abortion, homosexuality and the like down their throats. And, to boot, it is our armies which have invaded their countries. With the situation reversed who would not expect that Americans would attack enemy forces, even in their home countries, if the opportunity existed? Murderous yes, but under such conditions to say that Hassan’s act was one of “twisted logic” is ludicrous. . Taking correct stock of why a crime is committed is the first important step in solving a mystery and in resolving a conflict. Our current leadership, however, not only avoids taking a hard look in the mirror to ask why we are hated and why our military should be sent abroad but fabricates either politically correct nonsense or myopic hysteria. Who can doubt the outcome when Obama ignores the underlying cause of the conflicts? Whose death has more value? This includes the more than 700,000 people who have been killed in Iraq and Afghanistan since Sept 11, 2001 (http://www.unknownnews.net/casualties.html ), surely fair recompense in blood lust for the 3000 Americans murdered that day should one want to barter lives in such fashion. And though the American public was shocked that 13 fellow Americans were killed at Ft. Hood the deaths do not match the tragedy of the many more Muslims killed in our imperial war. Of course Muslims know this and, to our disadvantage, that knowledge is more than sufficient catalyst and reason, even absent religous fervor, for many to try and strike back. To say that the Ft. Hood attack is inexplicable and that such acts will not deter us from the job that needs to be done in foreign countries, as Obama says, only supplies political strychnine to the US public. It encourages us to continue to view the US dead, small in number by comparison, as having more value than the dead Muslims and fosters the idea that the ‘enemy’ must pay even more. In practical terms, unless we fully lose our souls and turn full score to a war of genocidal annihilation, it is a losing proposition in a world with a Muslim population of 1.4 billion. Our media, political and many military leaders are complicit in this façade. Ready to explain away the acts of Hasan, and others to come, on personal trauma and psychosis this reasoning is as fallacious and dangerous as Bush’s pronouncement that we were hated for our lifestyle. In a world governed largely by US and western military and cultural imperialism such statements can be likened to driving a car off a winding mountain road all the while declaring it's clear sailing straight ahead. In plain fact, our foreign policy is both harmful to our interests and morally repugnant. At times a glimmer of truth is seen amongst this verbal debris. "Rather, they have come to believe that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist accused in the shootings, acted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures, according to interviews with federal officials who have been briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have not ruled out the possibility that Major Hasan believed he was carrying out an extremist’s suicide attack.” Of course he was. And some analysts do get it. "Clearly I think it was a terrorist act, whether he was connected to another group or not or a formal group is question we'll find out over the next couple of days," said Michael Scheuer, the former head of the CIA's Bin Laden unit. (Fox News 11/7). Such voices as Scheuer’s, however, are few in number. The fantasy world of neo-conservatives Instead, we see more of the equally fallacious counter-arguments that crazed Islamo-facists are acting without reason, an idea propounded by Dorothy Rabanowitz (WSJ 11/10) who rightly took Dr. Phil to task for his psycho-babble explanations: "A shocked Dr. Phil, appalled that the guest had publicly mentioned Maj. Hasan's Islamic identity, went on to present what was, in essence, the case for Maj. Hasan as victim. Victim of deployment, of the Army, of the stresses of a new kind of terrible war unlike any other we have known. Unlike, can he have meant, the kind endured by those lucky Americans who fought and died at Iwo Jima, say, or the Ardennes?" Mocking Dr. Phil for his puffery was justified but neo-conservatives accept, even applaud, worldwide US meddling in other countries’ affairs and expect, foolishly, such acts to be accepted by the people there. Theirs is hubris on a grand scale with all trace of self-examination, replaced by self-delusion, absent. It is telling that Rabanowitz and others in that madhouse never expound on what we would do if our religion, people and country were under an imperial boot. And there is the argument of many like Major Coughlin, a defense department analyst and cause-celeb of those who want all out war against 'Islamo-fascists', recently removed from his position because he pointed out the obligatory requirement in Islamic Law to wage jihad when non-Muslim forces enter Muslim lands. His reasoning is sound, up to a point, that jihad is required to expel the invaders. But why does he neglect to mention that all patriots, no matter the nation, are expected expel foreign invaders? Instead, he promotes the false argument of our right to an American empire and, as such, the need to confront a 'global jihad'. Michael Scheuer, in his book Imperial Hubris, made mincemeat of such ideas, explaining that something much simpler is at work in the Islamic world- a defensive Jihad against our imperialism. One can look at recent statements by the Taliban in Afghanistan or, as distasteful as it may be, the statements by some US-based Muslims to find confirmation of this view. Following recent public discussion in the US about the wisdom of keeping our troops in Afghanistan the Taliban quickly stated their goal was only to expel the invaders from their country and they had no designs to export their struggle beyond the border. The statement was just as quickly ignored by the US. And sympathetic Muslims in the US who applauded the Hood attacks as a way to stop the US from sending troops abroad said nothing about forcing Islam on the US. The same can obviously not be said of our foreign policy. The solution: Stop our hubristic and bloody meddling in other countries. We will soon see whether Obama has both the sense and the courage to make the right decision. As beneficial as it is to our country it also has serious pitfalls. In ancient Rome, Caesar made sure his legions were well paid to ensure their loyalty. Similarly, it is uncertain what the repercussions will be to the economy overall and within a military industry that has come to rely on generous government largess should Obama begin a drawdown of troops and reduce expenditures The results of that unlikely action, not phantom Islamic invaders, will be our most pressing domestic concern.
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#1. To: christine (#0)
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