Getting The Fort Hood Murders Right
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
America: Stop The Bloodthirsty Killing!
Posted by John Grant
This ran in the Philadelphia Daily News yesterday, and so far it has received the usual array of lunatic and blood-thirsty responses about “all you liberals” who want to coddle terrorists. Sorry, but America and Americans can handle the truth and it’s time reasonable citizens stood up and demanded it be given to them directly and in full. The issue is not fear of Muslims; the issue is our misguided and wasteful wars.
JG
Getting the Fort Hood murders right
By John Grant
Op-ed, Philadelphia Daily News, November 18, 2009
REFERRING to post-9/11 anti-Muslim reaction and the Bush administration’s rush to war, Susan Sontag said: “By all means, let’s mourn together. But let’s not be stupid together.” The 13 murders by Major Nidal Malik Hasan at Fort Hood, Texas, seem to be provoking a similar strain of stupidity in American politics.
Once the shooting occurred, theories began whipping around like confetti in the wind. At this point, only Hasan really knows why he went postal. But some incendiary clues are flying around in this storm.
Sen. Joe Lieberman (D-Conn.) made news by wasting no time to declare on Fox News that the murders were “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11.” This was after he said, “It’s premature to reach conclusions about what motivated Hasan.”
Then there’s Justin Raimondo, editorial director of Antiwar.com, upset at the “touchy-feely” talk about Hasan’s job counseling soldiers for post-traumatic stress syndrome. “There was nothing wrong, psychologically” with Hasan – his act was “rational” and due to his anti-war attitudes as a Muslim. “It is perfectly possible,” Raimondo wrote, “Hasan was recruited into al Qaeda, a ’sleeper’ to be awakened at the right moment.”
These men were both pouring gasoline on the embers of 9/11, when we should be tamping down the madness. Instead of whipping up another Muslim demonization cycle or misguided support for armed anti-war resistance, we should take a deep breath and, with Sontag’s words in mind, ask ourselves how the nation got bogged down in an endless War on Terror and two counterinsurgency wars of occupation.
This time, let’s try something new and try to understand the thing rather than acting like a bull pawing the dust in front of a red cape. Let’s put Hasan on trial, and let’s be as open as possible and share information with the American people as we do it. The obsession for secrecy established by the Bush administration is something Americans have the strength to back away from. To paraphrase a famous quote, Americans can handle the truth.
If Hasan exchanged e-mails with someone connected to al Qaeda, fine. But let’s finally have the courage to honestly assess just what the heck the al Qaeda boogeyman really is.
Many very smart people have for a long time seen it as an overblown network of dangerous people – angry at things the U.S. and its western allies have done in their lands.
Let’s try something new and take people like Osama bin Laden at their word. For instance, bin Laden has written that his goal is to make us spend ourselves into bankruptcy. If that’s true, then let’s suck it up and not escalate our war in Afghanistan.
Let’s remove our troops and help facilitate a stable relationship between India and Pakistan, a bitter rivalry that contributes hugely to Afghanistan’s instability. This would advance regional stability much better than more troops and predator drones. Being a military provocateur in the region aggravates the India-Pakistan problem and does nothing to lessen the grotesque corruption that plagues Pakistan.
As for Hasan, for our own good, let’s ask how an otherwise reportedly decent man who at least initially seemed eager to serve his country was put in a bind that led to mass murder. And let’s do it even if he exchanged e-mails with people who Lieberman calls “Islamic extremists.”
Belief is not illegal here. Acts are. It does no reasonable American any good to turn Hasan’s crime into a witch hunt that provokes more hatred.
Co-workers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center reportedly thought Hasan was “psychotic,” suggesting the military was remiss in not discharging him. In hindsight, it’s clear he should’ve been dealt with.
But if we’re going to purge soldiers for psychotic behavior, let’s not focus only on those opposed to our wars. Considering Abu Ghraib and other atrocities, it’s clear there are plenty of psychotics in our ranks friendly to wars in Muslim countries.
Beyond all the reaction, there’s a profound lesson in the narrative of Hasan. We need to be coolheaded, fair-minded and smart enough to recognize it.
Why was there no apparent avenue for someone like Hasan with such a clear and pronounced moral conflict vis-a-vis U.S. war policy to be classified as a conscientious objector? His government-paid skills could have been used somewhere other than a war zone in a Muslim country.
The fact of heinous murder is easy to grasp in Hasan’s case, and he’ll pay dearly. The more difficult but possibly more useful lesson may be in how and why U.S. war policy is able to turn an apparently decent man into a bloodthirsty killer.
John Grant is a Vietnam vet and member of Veterans for Peace. E-mail: grantphoto@comcast.net
