I’m guessing I’m not the only one of us whose thoughts are circling around today’s dreadful events and what they may portend.
I’m clearly not the only one wondering how much should and will be made of this:
As for the events themselves, the first reports, as always, were wrong in critical respects. Many first and second reactions will be amended or reversed or forgotten.
I don’t mind observing the 24-hour rule before I decide for my own part whether to comment further.
Comments 42
Followed the trackback from Hot Air.
Best. Blog name. EVAR!
November 5th, 2009 at 10:36 pm
Hilarious. We’ve been in the midst of trying to come up with a new name (partly at my urging)! You’ve probably just given a big boost to the conservative/if-it-ain’t-broke faction.
November 5th, 2009 at 10:53 pm
Of course, 0bama’s comments made it all about him.
LOL if he were not our President!
November 6th, 2009 at 4:36 am
The left’s way over the top reactions re the President Bush My Pet Goat scene were deeply wrong. And the reactions of many of AllahPundit’s commenters to this President Obama scene were way over the top and deeply wrong.
The important issue is how the investigation and repair of vulnerabilities are handled, not how the president performs in his first impromptu event or hastily cobbled speech before anyone has a good handle on what’s happened.
My reaction after watching the video of the speech is that his script was reasonably structured and he read it fairly well. He fumbles on camera when he hasn’t had time to practice what he’s going to parrot in private so it can be refined to fit his natural cadences.
That he was at that event to promote the “native americans are helpless victim group dependent children” shtick and wants to turn us all into begging bowl reservation indians are much bigger issues than the emphasis or lack thereof he devoted to the Fort Hood victims in that speech.
November 6th, 2009 at 5:55 am
I am concerned that the reports mention his jihad yell if you will as he opened fire.
The danger here is that we tend to be monolithic on these points. I am sure there are a great many, if not most all, Muslims who both serve with distinction and feel jihadists are wrong. At what point do we feel the need to dig more closely into their individual beliefs? In WWII we moved the Japanese off the west coast. In response to 9/11 everyone worried about the potential backlash to Muslims which never materialized; in fact some would suggest our desire to be non-confrontational was over-done.
I tend to treat this as just an outlier – the price of freedoms that we must bear.
As for Obama, yes, it would be nice to think he could see anything outside the prism of aren’t I great, but that isn’t his personality. People overly uptight about his performance here probably need to just chill out.
November 6th, 2009 at 7:19 am
This has nothing to do with targeting Muslims in general. The Army, for whatever reason, ignored the signs that this officer was dangerous. I’m sure there are mechanisms in place for dealing with cases like this one, and they weren’t used.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:03 am
We don’t yet know the motives for the Fort Hood massacre, and perhaps we never will. But it seems to bear similarities with 9/11–risking one’s life in order to kill people one doesn’t know without any possible political or strategic gain from the action. The 9/11 terrorists were selfless. Their cause had nothing to gain from their acts. The acts were simply committed because they were considered beautiful and virtuous.
Perhaps Iran’s nuclear ambitions are also pursued because they are beautiful rather than practical. Iran is not getting stronger as a result. On the contrary, Iran is provoking sanctions and may even be invaded. Iran is being selfless and virtuous–as the 9/11 bombers were virtuous–in trying to get an atom bomb.
Maybe Fort Hood was another attempt at achieving virtue. Be that as it may, jihadism is not simply violence, it is also insanity.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:03 am
George, I agree with much of what you say, but I don’t understand your saying that we don’t yet know the motives. The man made his motives clear enough, and you yourself have described them pretty well.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:08 am
If men run at me yelling “Banzai” and “Die Yankee dogs,” I don’t need to analyze their motives. I need to concentrate on killing them and those who taught them to hate me as quickly and efficiently as possible.
That they’re gripped with insanity, even temporary, has nothing to do with the matter except to future historians possessed of the twin luxuries of time and safety in which to ponder.
The ideology behind that major’s war cry of “Allahu Akbar” must be taken down, however much violence it takes, at the least cost to our pluralistic system.
I vote for starting with properly legal deportation proceedings against any non-citizen mullah or private individual who has ever made so much as a single utterance at variance with our constitutional values, and for the stopping of all immigration by Muslims to this country. Importation of people whose core religious belief is forcible conversion is utter madness.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:28 am
Peter and Sully,
You’re right.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:36 am
That’s a bit much – and I think at variance with our constitutional values.
I’m a bit under the influence of discussion from another thread, but a rationale for stopping all immigration of a group is a rationale for expelling all members of that group – or perhaps for interning them in camps.
Freedom of conscience is fundamental – perhaps our most fundamental value. I’m allowed to believe 1,000 impossible – not to mention ugly and, if acted upon, illegal and dangerous – things about all of y’all and anyone else. So long as I don’t act on those beliefs, it’s none of your business.
I also don’t think it’s accurate to say that “forcible conversion” is the “core belief” of Islam.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:50 am
It’s not that all primates should be expelled from the country, but we should start with any whose family emigrated from a country having an established religion.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:00 am
Naturalization to citizenship and admission to the country are privileges we grant, and have the right not to grant for any reason, to non citizens.
“I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen. . .”
A person who believes in the incorporation of Sharia Law grants sovereignty to the corporal teachings of Muhammad.
And, it is very hard to read The Koran and come away without the belief that Islam holds forcible conversion as a central tenet. I’ve heard all the yada, yada comparing that book to the Old Testament, and if I had been an Elamite, or a Helgramite, or whatever, in 1,000 BC Canaan I would have tried my best to strictly enforce the provisions of my constitution against the infiltrating believers in that book too, just as Israel today enforces its constitution strictly against infiltrators not conducive to its survival.
Freedom of conscience and from fear of expulsion or internment in camps are indeed fundamental rights, for citizens. Guests have the right to leave and to reasonable treatment while they choose to stay.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:15 am
We may have that right, but it still makes a difference what reasons we choose.
Perhaps the oath you quote needs to be amended, or perhaps the interpretation you place on it needs to be emphasized.
We still occasionally decline to grant entry visas to committed, outspoken Communists, even ones who may not belong to an actively revolutionary branch, but we do not, I believe, regularly inquire into the abstract political (or religious) beliefs of visitors and immigrants. Since it’s always possible to lie, a rigorously enforced policy aimed at excluding believing Muslims would require us to rest on geographical and ethnic designations.
The import would be rightly interpreted by Muslim Americans as greatly deleterious to their interests, and it would offend our Muslim allies. It would greatly complicate our ability to work with actual and potential allies in the Islamic world.
Are we also supposed to expel Muslims from the armed forces? The police? The NBA? Doctors and teachers? Politicians? So what if they’re already citizens – by your definition they are a priori a danger to our way of life.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:29 am
Forget the PC media, government and posters like Ed @ Hotair. They are too timid to face the truth. The real issue is we have a corrupted and ineffective immigration system that has allowed an enormous quantity of unknown, illegal or just plain enemies into our country for many generations….the economic effects are very bad but the fact that we have actual enemy cells and no go territory in this country is treasonous. This is the fuse that may well destroy our society.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:39 am
@ CK MacLeod:
I was pretty careful to make clear that nothing I wrote applies to citizens in any way, but I reiterate it. Going further I don’t believe any citizen should be discriminated against for nationality, religious belief, free speech etc. reasons and I would be on that citizen’s side if he or she were.
Deporting NC mafiosi alienated some Italian Americans and probably some Italians. And deporting NC members of the Bund alienated some German Americans and surely a lot of very powerful at the time Germans. So?
Interning Japanese American citizens was wrong, and on a whole different level. That it did not occur in Hawaii where the concentrations of Japanese Americans and no problems resulted is proof both that it was wrong even in practice and that loyal Japanese Americans were able to understand, even if they didn’t like, wrong actions taken on the mainland out of hysteria.
We have allies of convenience in the Muslim world. My own suspicion is that those who really matter in such countries think less of the value of our friendship as a result of our stupidity re immigration, although I suppose it is possible that they fear us more because of what they must see as a sign either of outright insanity or of self confidence and heedlessness so extreme that it passes for insanity.
November 6th, 2009 at 10:42 am
@ Sully:
The country had this argument already Sully, but somehow we managed to absorb all those immigrants whose primary loyalty was to the Church of Rome and its Pope.
November 6th, 2009 at 11:03 am
Which doesn’t change the fact that Muslim Americans and Muslim allies, among others, would rightly interpret your original proposal – “stopping of all immigration by Muslims to this country” – as abhorrent and deeply threatening. It would be an incredible boon to anti-Americans worldwide. It’s also unthinkable except in the context of a build-up to world war and/or a retreat to a massively destructive and impractical Fortress America strategy.
Otherwise, I think it’s a great idea!
November 6th, 2009 at 11:28 am
@ fuster:
You imply that the purpose of this country is to absorb immigrants. It wasn’t then and it isn’t now.
But I’ll answer anyway. If Catholics of that time had carried out a similar string of terrorist acts in the U.S. to those Muslims have, purely out of religious motives, it would have been just as correct to exclude them.
To save time I’ll stipulate that the Aztecs were equally morally correct in trying to prevent invasion from Catholic Spain. And the Iroquois, or whoever, were correct to try to stop the durn Pilgrims from infiltrating. Same with the Comanches trying to stop Americans of all sorts whose ideology countenanced displacement of them from their homeland.
@ CK MacLeod:
Perhaps where we differ is that I’ve thought since observing public and private Muslim world reaction after 9/11 that we’re already in a world war. The George W. Bush concept was and our current concept is that we can temporize and outlast the ideological fire of the enemy. I suspect that is correct; but if it is not our children or grandchildren will be put in a hell of a position on a lot of levels.
We’re fortunate in that we have Europe as a mine canary and it’s twenty or thirty years further down the road but that doesn’t mean it’s logical to go down the road ourselves.
I’m not, by the way a fortress america fellow. I’d like to see us continue importing the brains and talent of the world. And I think a forward strategy makes sense. But if we have to import obvious problem immigrants along with beneficial and benign immigrants then I’m for shutting down all immigration. And if a forward strategy means fiddling around at the cost of lots of lives and treasure trying to change Afghanistan into a democracy we ought to hang that up to.
November 6th, 2009 at 12:49 pm
The world is a complicated place. Ibn Warraq, Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, and Irshad Manji are all Muslims and are all pro-democracy, pro-American and pro-woman.
Let me tell you about Joe. He came to America as a stowaway in 1938 or 1939 and was therefore an illegal immigrant. He married my Aunt Charlotte, an American citizen, and became my Uncle Joe. He volunteered to fight in the army and saw combat in Europe. Like every single member of the Armed Forces at that time, his service was indispensable. After the war he became a citizen, as was possible if one was a veteran. He was a good citizen. Had he been deported, he would have died in the Holocaust.
November 6th, 2009 at 2:50 pm
Paul Mirengoff says:
That was the point of my original comment on this thread, and it seems to me it’s the essential issue here. I wrote that “[t]he Army, for whatever reason, ignored the signs that this officer was dangerous,” but I’m certain the reason was political correctness.
November 6th, 2009 at 4:54 pm
What’s wrong with our chain of command?
The guy should have been 0bama’s “Muslim Outreach Czar.”
November 6th, 2009 at 8:26 pm
@ George Jochnowitz:
George,
I have no doubt there are many muslims who are pro democracy. Perhaps most are. But aside from a very few I don’t hear them vigorously condemning their co-religionists who are not pro democracy. And the current state of our laws makes it very difficult to require and enforce some sort of ideological questioning or screening to separate out fanatics. We can’t even reliably keep out so called Imams whose obvious purpose is outright sedition.
As to your Uncle Joe, I appreciate your thought. My grandparents, both sides, were immigrants also. One side came under a standard immigration quota. I’m glad your uncle Joe was accepted and I’m glad my paternal grandfather and grandmother were accepted; but I don’t think they had a “right” to be accepted. My mother’s father was a different and interesting case. He managed to dodge the Italian draft and get himself to where an artillery unit of the U.S. Army was recruiting during WWI. They needed farm boys familiar with horses. As part of the deal he got a fast track to citizenship and his soon future wife and family became citizens.
November 6th, 2009 at 8:40 pm
I’d say it was a principal objective of AQ to instigate a world war between Crusaders and Muslims. It’s our principal objective to prevent that from happening, and to keep the war between us and terrorists without presuming that they actually represent Muslims, regardless of sentiment on the part of whichever Muslims regarding the US or US policy.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:03 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
Hard to understand that it’s so hard to understand the obvious truth of what you said.
November 6th, 2009 at 9:32 pm
@ CK MacLeod:
When you’re right you’re right – as with the first sentence. Certainly that’s one of AQ’s objectives, although only perhaps the principal one.
But, it doesn’t necessarily follow that our principal objective is its mirror image.
Faced with any one of an enemy’s objectives you are as if in a poker game. Sometimes you fold, sometimes you call, and sometimes you re-raise that particular enemy objective.
November 7th, 2009 at 7:20 am
@ Sully:
and sometimes when you keep raising it costs you a whole lot more than it should.
November 7th, 2009 at 9:14 am
@ CK MacLeod:
OK, ZombiePundits. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it earlier.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:03 am
@ fuster:
Democracies find it easy to go all in for a quick decision; and very hard to play a long checking, folding, bluffing game.
Long games favor true believer autocrats since even losing clashes can be played to recruit a new generation of flunkies as cannon fodder. Witness Ireland, 400 years of the IRA under different names and still counting.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:36 am
@ J.E. Dyer:
J.E.
A column from you on muslims in the military would be very interesting. Is one under construction?
It strikes me that a lot of people in the Pentagon are probably secretly relieved that the Fort Hood killer Major was merely a psychiatrist, although I can imagine a shrink patiently building a whole retinue of agents or bad actors.
Back in the day, the Captain of DD-719 was a Lieutenant Commander, as was the Special Weapons Officer on the Big E. An army major can presumably have access/control over a whole lot more firepower than a semi-automatic pistol, or he could presumably control personnel assignments, intelligence estimates, the nature of tactical plans, etc, for a large unit.
November 7th, 2009 at 10:46 am
@ Sully:
Sully – I take it you missed JED’s piece at NZ Contentions? Though she didn’t launch a full scale intellectual investigation of “Muslims in the military,” she quite directly addressed the subject
November 7th, 2009 at 11:04 am
@ J.E. Dyer:
I think if and when we undertake the Great Change, it should be a clean break with Zombie-ism, or it wouldn’t be worth messing with the best blog name ever.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:07 am
@ CK MacLeod:
I just returned from an outing during which it struck me that the problem is even more scary than I thought. I’ll look for J.E.’s NZ piece.
For the nonce, as a Ltjg I stood inport watches as OOD on the DD and a DE while tied up dockside. Wore a .45 while the messenger of the watch had only a nightstick. Of course, I thought nothing of him walking around behind me with that nightstick. This while the whole rest of the ship was asleep. As Navigator I didn’t know much about the security of the magazines; but the messenger could be a Weapons Department Seaman or PO3 who knew at least some; and the Ensign and JG in the Weaps department, who stood lonely night in port watches like me, almost surely knew all.
But a DD has only tens of tons of ordnance. Why not think big? In Enterprise which also ties up dockside and carries more than a thousands tons of ordnance there are Ensigns and JGs with responsibility for magazines and lots of expertise about what not to do around ordnance.
November 7th, 2009 at 11:57 am
I think saying this is “our principal objective” is an exaggeration. Keeping the war between us and the terrorists is surely important, but winning the war against the terrorists is equally important.
November 7th, 2009 at 12:24 pm
@ Peter Shalen:
Maybe, but I’m not sure that you actually do “win” a war against extremist Jihad itself. There’s no conventional victory against an unconventional enemy – which isn’t the same as saying that there are no “victories” in places like Afghanistan and Iraq, just that victory doesn’t mean the permanent, total, and irreversible eradication of Jihadist sentiment. There will probably always be Jihadis just like there are still Nazis and even Japanese imperialists, not to mention Communists. There is no Nazi or Imperial Way state, and Soviet-style Communism has all but disappeared as a potential peer-level threat – but the Jihadis don’t have a state at all, for now. (Iran’s a different breed of cat.)
What you can attempt to do is prevent them from gaining state power or state sponsors, reduce the level and frequency of violence, make it more difficult for them to recruit and organize effectively, etc. Rigorous anti-Muslim measures would greatly tend to make those objectives more difficult to achieve – and would tend to equate with or lead to the worldwide conflagration that Jihadis dream of. To the extent it would provide them with their clearest path to influence, destabilizing a series of vulnerable regimes, radicalizing sympathizers, denying us allies, etc., it qualifies as the major objective that we need to deny them.
It’s our principal objective in this struggle also because it aligns with our larger strategic objectives.
In other words, winning the unconventional war amounts to the same thing as preventing it from rising to the level of a true threat to our vital interests. I think that qualifies as the principal objective, but I’m open to being convinced otherwise.
November 7th, 2009 at 6:32 pm
I hope that future domestic blood baths like Ft. Hood do not lead to sweeping restrictions on what people say are peaceful, law abiding Muslims.
However all the PC crap has got to cease. Somebody like this bozo should have been drummed out of the military a long time ago. We all need to be more watchful, more careful.
I thought Texas allowed trained marksmen with clean records to carry. Where were they at Ft. Hood a few days back? I think the right to carry should be nationwide, as long as those who carry have clean records and thorough training. It could start with ex military and civilian police officers, FBI, Marshalls, etc, and could then extend to ex military, with clean records of course.
November 7th, 2009 at 8:28 pm
I know it’s been written about before, but imagine if George W. Bush had had a planned speaking engagement and a horror like Ft. Hood occurred and instead of immediately addressing that Bush read through his prepared remarks, including a “shout-out” to someone in the audience, medal of honor or not!
Btw, I don’t know about TGL, but I’m a native American, as were my parents — born and bred on US soil. I believe it was my industry (el-hi publishing) that invented the odious PC construction “Native American” to refer to American Indians.
November 8th, 2009 at 5:41 am
@ Howard Portnoy:
I believe that in Canada the straightforward term “aboriginal” is standard.
November 8th, 2009 at 9:05 am
@ CK MacLeod:
Gaza is a de facto jihadi state. Iran fully supports jihadis. In Saudi Arabia the establishment supports them, although the government officially does not. Countries like Pakistan, Syria, Lebanon and Turkey have been flirting with them in varying degrees while hedging their bets.
I suppose that in any war the ultimate goal has to be to persuade people that it’s not in their interest to support the enemy. If your essential point is that declaring ourselves in opposition to Islam as a religion would be detrimental to that goal, then I agree.
November 8th, 2009 at 9:20 am
@ Peter Shalen:
Not to belabor the point, but I’d say that Gaza is a borderline case – or anyway that Hamas’ definition of Jihad is more narrowly focused, for now, than AQ’s, and that Gaza doesn’t quite qualify as a “state.” And there’s still a huge difference between gaining occasional sponsorship from, or infiltrating, a state apparatus, and controlling a country.
Anyway, I think we agree on the bottom line.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:12 am
When is a door not a door? When it’s ajar.
When is a state not a state? When other states don’t recognize its existence? Perhaps that means Kosovo is not a state. But what about Israel, which is not recognized by some countries but is recognized by others.
What about when a state doesn’t recognize itself as a state? That’s the case with Gaza. Gaza could have agreed to live in peace with Israel. It could have tried to establish diplomatic relations with other states, which would have been overjoyed to recognize it. The world would have showered Gaza with money. But an independent Palestinian state, no matter how tiny, would have been a partial legitimization of Israel’s right to exist. Hamas always chooses what it thinks of as virtue–dying in a battle against Israel–over such practical trivia as life, wealth, or independence.
November 8th, 2009 at 10:42 am
@ George Jochnowitz:
Well, that’s what makes Hamastan a true jihadi state. Death is its raison d’être.
November 8th, 2009 at 11:44 am