Two Views, Pages 30-31

The Shootings at Fort Hood

Muslims and Mass Murder: Understanding the Fort Hood Attack

By Steve Chapman

MASS MURDERS are usually a mystery. When Maj. Nidal Hasan allegedly committed one at Fort Hood Nov. 5, though, there was no time wasted in solving the mystery by blaming the massacre on his religion, which is Islam.

Maybe Hasan is just a homicidal lunatic set to work by fevered demons inside his brain. But post-9/11, you can’t be a killer who happens to be a Muslim. If you’re a killer, it has to be because you’re a Muslim.

In this case, the claim of a religious motive has some evidentiary basis. Hasan had contacts with an extremist imam. The Army psychiatrist had been known to rail against the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and to argue that Muslims should be allowed to leave the military rather than fight against other Muslims. He reportedly shouted, “Allahu Akbar!”—Arabic for “God is great!”—as he began his rampage.

In spite of his views and e-mail buddies, neither the Army nor the FBI (which monitored his correspondence with the cleric) found enough grounds to take action against him. Maybe they were blinded by “political correctness” not to do anything that might offend Muslims. Or maybe his past comments are being exaggerated with the benefit of hindsight. Or maybe those who noticed simply concluded he posed no more danger than other cranks.

It’s also possible, as so many insist, that the slaughter was a direct product of a violent brand of Islam that encouraged and sanctioned his deed. But even if that’s the case, it doesn’t tell us what to do about it.

Is the Pentagon supposed to refuse induction to Muslims? Do extensive vetting before accepting them? Continuously monitor their Internet use? Generally treat them as suspect, which almost none of them is? Blustering about “political correctness” doesn’t offer practical solutions to a malady that is about as common as a two-headed cow.

The Defense Department says there are 3,572 Muslims in the American military. The American Muslim Armed Forces and Veterans Affairs Council puts the number at more than 15,000. Either way, the overwhelming majority must be loyal and true, or the Fort Hood massacre would not be unusual.

Obviously, a soldier who expresses a radical anti-American ideology demands intervention. But if all military authorities have to worry about is getting rid of every service member who applauds suicide attacks, they will not have much to do. No one thinks “political correctness” obligates the Army to treat Muslims more leniently than anyone else. But it’s just as simple-minded to think they deserve to be treated worse.

Hasan’s views are way outside the mainstream of American Muslims. A 2007 poll by the Pew Research Center found that very few of them hold radical beliefs. Eight percent think suicide bombings can sometimes be justified, which means 92 percent do not. Only 5 percent said they had a favorable opinion of al-Qaeda.

Does that sound like a lot? Keep in mind that 13 percent of Americans have a favorable view of North Korea. That’s right: North Korea.

Some commentators insist that Islam is inherently aggressive, intolerant, or bent on taking over the world by force. But contemporary terrorism, which is supposed to prove that, doesn’t. As University of Chicago scholar Robert Pape has documented in his research on suicide attackers, most are motivated mainly by non-religious concerns.

Of 41 people who carried out suicide attacks in Lebanon between 1982 and 1986, he noted in his 2005 book Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism, 30 were affiliated with groups opposed to Islamic fundamentalism, including secular communist, socialist, and Ba’ath organizations. Three of the attackers were Christians. What the perpetrators shared was not a religion but an intense resentment of an occupation by foreign powers (the United States, France, and Israel).

This motive, Pape says, is characteristic of suicide attackers wherever they emerge, including Iraq and Afghanistan. The terrorists’ quarrel with the U.S. is not that it is an infidel society but that it’s seen as occupying Muslim countries.

Osama bin Laden has made the point himself. Dismissing President Bush’s assertion that “we hate freedom,” he once said, “Let him tell us why we did not strike Sweden.”

The al-Qaeda leader likes nothing better than to portray the United States as waging a crusade against Muslims. We would be doing ourselves no favor to confirm the accusation.

13 vs. 2,000,000: Fort Hood Shootings a Shocker…Why Not U.S. War Crimes?

13 vs. 2,000,000: Fort Hood Shootings a Shocker…Why Not U.S. War Crimes?

By Ted Rall

American lives are worth a lot. So when Americans get killed, it’s a big story. There are lots of editorials. Congressmen call for investigations. We want to find out what happened, why it happened, and how to make sure it never happens again.

The lives of foreigners, on the other hand, are pretty much worthless. Even when they die because Americans killed them, news accounts marking their deaths are short, sweet, and short-lived. Congressional investigations? No way. To the contrary! If anyone is inconsiderate enough to mention the killings of people overseas in a public forum, they get shouted down or simply ignored.

The massacre of 13 soldiers at an Army post in Texas earlier this week places this dichotomy in sharp relief.

The FBI is already helping Army investigators. In addition, Sen. Joe Lieberman has announced that his Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will launch a full investigation into “every angle” of the shooting, including the motives of the suspect and whether or not government eavesdroppers could have prevented it by notifying Army officials of his contacts with a radical Muslim cleric. Over in the House, Rep. Silvestre Reyes, a Texas Democrat, has summoned national intelligence director Dennis Blair to answer questions about Fort Hood before the Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.

But wait—there’s more. “Other committees may also launch investigations into how the Army missed warning signs about the accused,” reports The Politico.

All sorts of hands are being wrung.

Major Hasan, an army psychiatrist, ministered to victims of post-traumatic stress syndrome who told him terrible stories about combat in Afghanistan and Iraq. Should someone have helped him cope too?

Ordered to deploy to the war zone, he asked not to go—and was refused. Should the Army be more flexible?

Is it reasonable to ask a religious Muslim to deploy to Afghanistan or Iraq, wars where he would be asked to kill his coreligionists?

Then there are the phone taps. “U.S. military officials said intelligence agencies intercepted communications between Hasan and Anwar al-Awlaki, a former imam at the Dar Al-Hijrah Islamic Center in Falls Church, Virginia, a Washington suburb,” reported CNN. “Al-Awlaki, who left the United States in 2002 and is believed to be living in Yemen, was the subject of several federal investigations dating back to the late 1990s, but was never charged.” As jihadis do at the start of an attack, Hasan reportedly cried “Allahu Akbar” before opening fire. Shouldn’t someone have noticed that the nice shrink with the dopey smile had become a radical Islamist?

The shock, grief and soul-searching are all reasonable reactions to a brutal and tragic event. But it’s not hard to imagine how it looks to the outside world. While the media and public obsess over the deaths of 13 fellow Americans, they ignore the deaths of hundreds of thousands of foreigners.

The American military has killed roughly two million people in Afghanistan and Iraq since 2001. Those attacks were illegal—no declaration of war, no U.N. mandate—and are largely recognized as such by the American public. Many of the victims were killed with chemical and radioactive weapons, and some while under torture. In other words, these are crimes—some of the biggest mass murders in human history.

There are no angry editorials. The illegal wars, instead of being brought to an end, are being ramped up. The crimes—yes, including the torture—continues. But it’s OK—as long as it doesn’t happen here in the United States. It’s OK to rain death on Pakistanis using drone planes...gotta spare those precious American lives!

Mass murder is shocking when the victims are Americans; it’s doubly shocking when it happens in America.

Thirteen soldiers die in Texas and it’s all we talk about. Two million die in Afghanistan and Iraq and we don’t notice and we don’t even want to hear about it. Only 12 percent of Americans aged 18 to 24 can find Afghanistan on a map.

The punk band T.S.O.L. wrote the soundtrack to this attitude a quarter-century ago: “We live in the American zone/Free of fear in our American home/Swimming pool and digital phone.”

Still wondering why they hate us?

Ted Rall is an author and editorial cartoonist whose books include the 2002 graphic travelogue To Afghanistan and Back. This commentary was first posted on <www.uExpress.com>, 11/12/2009. Copyright ©2009 UCLICK, LLC.

SIDEBAR

War Is Hell—Whatever One’s Religion

Other Instances of Soldier-on-Soldier Killings

August 2009: SPC Jared Lee Bottorff, 21, was charged with the murder of Dan Richard Smith Jr., 36, of Killeen, Texas at a party near the Texas army post.

July 2009: Fort Hood SPC Armano Baca was charged with murdering fellow soldier Ryan Richard Schlack from Wisconsin, after the two had returned from tours in Iraq.

May 2009: Sgt. John Russell with the 54th Engineer Battalion, who had done three tours of duty in Iraq, was charged with the fatal shooting of five colleagues at a clinic in Baghdad. Russell, from Sherman, Texas, had previously been sent for combat stress counseling at the clinic and had had his weapon taken away a week earlier.

September 2008: Sgt. Joseph Bozicevich, 39, of Minneapolis was detained after allegedly killing two members of his unit south of Baghdad. The case remains under investigation.

April 2008: Cpl. Timothy Ayers pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in the fatal 2007 shooting of his platoon sergeant in Iraq

February 2007: SPC Chris Rolan, 23, an army medic, was sentenced to 33 years in prison for killing a fellow soldier after a night of heavy drinking in Iraq.

April 2005: Sgt. Hasan Akbar was sentenced to death for a 2003 grenade attack in Kuwait that killed two other soldiers on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Akbar lobbed grenades into three tents while members of the brigade slept, then fired shots at those who emerged from the tents.

Source: “When Soldier Turns on Soldier” by David Batty, The Guardian, Nov. 6, 2009