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Fort Hood comments
In this large entry are some (there are many more) previously unposted comments from the last few days on the Fort Hood massacre, George Casey, suicidal liberalism, the state of the Army, Islam, the execution of John Muhammad, and related issues.
Larry T. writes:
Ralph Peters has an article on Hasan in today’s NY Post. Excerpt:
It gets worse: On Sunday evening, a ranking officer in Hasan’s medical chain of command raced to cover her butt. Asked why the killer was promoted to major after receiving career-killer performance reviews at Walter Reed, the officer claimed that Hasan faced the same promotion board requirements as everyone else.
Liar, liar, uniform on fire: A dirty big secret in our Army has been that officers’ promotion boards have quotas for minorities. We don’t call them quotas, of course. But if a board doesn’t hit the floor numbers, its results are held up until the list has been corrected. It’s almost impossible for the Army’s politically correct promotion system to pass over a Muslim physician.
Sen. Joe Lieberman, one of the few lawmakers willing to whisper the word “terrorism,” needs to call the officers who sat on Hasan’s promotion board before the Senate, put them under oath, then ask if Hasan made major because of minority-quota requirements.
This corrupt (and now deadly) affirmative-action system does a severe disservice to the bulk of minority officers, who make the grade on quality and professionalism. It leaves other officers wondering if the new guy who just showed up in the unit is a “real” officer or an affirmative-action baby.
Edward writes:
Israel exempts all Moslem Arabs from military service on the grounds that they cannot be expected to fight other Moslem Arabs. A few Arabs volunteer for military service and are never placed in fighting units but in support units e.g. kitchen work, truck driving etc. Israel is forced to be more realistic because of it’s position in the middle east.
Bruce B. writes:
Subject: The army ain’t what it used to be: Homo-erotic hazing at VMI
A buddy here says that at VMI they have a hazing prank that everybody has to endure where they burst into your room, rip off your clothes, tie you to your bed, and drag it out into the courtyard. He said that it’s a “tradition.” I asked him how old he thought this “tradition” was and he said he thought his dad’s (also a VMI alumnus) generation was the first to do this.
Maybe I’m naïve, can you imagine, say General Patton’s Granddad (a VMI alumnus) doing this?
A reader writes:
This is what the bottom of the slippery slope looks like. Ask anyone who served with draftees in Vietnam about how race relations were in our integrated Army.
A major I worked for told me the story of a white Captain who was gunned down in a motor pool in Vietnam after trying to instill order among black draftees. A white NCO turned a machine gun on the blacks. Later, in the 1980’s, a friend and I were watching a signal battalion march by and I remarked: “Do you see any whites?” This friend, now a colonel saw my point and was stunned. We both discussed how few whites there were in certain specialties and units in the Army. When I commanded a recruiting detachment I learned that blacks seek out skill training and so they concentrate in Service Support branches, while whites are more prone to look for combat specialties. Integration in the military is not the success many people think it is. It works only because service members submit to ferocious discipline.
In Germany, I was a battalion adjutant and got a call one day that said a mistake had been made. A unit was deploying to a very rough area in the north for a two month period and the medics that had been sent over were all female. I was horrified (How quaint!), and called up to Division headquarters and was informed that no mistake had been made, the medics would go. Later I learned that it is common after units rotate back from the National Training Center at Fort Irwin for some of the women to use the money they’ve made selling themselves to buy up the stereo equipment at the Post Exchange. While in the recruiting business, my recruiting station got a nice letter from a female we had recruited. She cheerily reported that she had made it through boot camp and was at her new assignment. She was just promoted and was now the First Sergeant’s driver. She ended the letter saying the First Sergeant was very good in bed and thanked the recruiters for their help. The recruiters roared with laughter.
Now we have a Major, an Army trained psychologist, a Muslim go on a shooting spree on an Army base. It used to be that promotion from Captain to Major was the first big step of winnowing officers. Making it to Major was a sign of some success. That this guy made it through that hurdle is disgraceful. That no one in his chain of command stopped him is disgraceful. That the Chief of Staff of the Army would express more concern about Muslim soldiers than for the wounded and dead harmed in the rampage is loathsome. Can he not comprehend that the lives of 13 families have been completed shattered? That the wounded are forever scarred?
But now we know. Our military is hollow. The Hollow men that command it will squander the lives of volunteer soldiers for the pursuit of ideology. Up and down the chain of command, the military is helpless to see the threat, let alone act on it. We are undefended in the most important and basic way. The highest echelon of leadership in the nation is unable to comprehend threats to the nation. The lesson is pathetically clear. Young men and women should NOT join the military. There is no honor serving these people and the likelihood that your service will be in vain is extremely large.
How can we begin to defend ourselves again? What is happening?
Gintas writes:
You wrote:
“The media cannot say, on one hand, that the Army was at fault for making Hasan go to Iraq and so driving him to commit mass murder; AND say, on the other hand, that Muslims have any business being in the armed forces.”
You are talking about the liberal media. Remember Orwell’s “doublethink”, holding two contradictory ideas at the same time? Leftists have perfected that when it comes to destroying the West. These two notions work beautifully together to wreck our army. The logical consistency is in “destroy the West.”
A reader writes:
As you may recall, amidst your thousands of emails, I have had the occasional disagreement with you. So let me say this now.
YOU ARE ABSOLUTELY CORRECT about the nature of liberalism (the contemporary thing that travels under that name). It is not liberalism as I understand the term: free trade, personal responsibility, parliamentary representative government. No, this thing is a mutating cancer of self abnegation before every form of barbarism.
I find your analysis of Fort Hood, General Casey, and media reaction to same to be entirely congruent with my own. But you are out there in public waging this fight and I am on different sidelines, waging different and much more specialized battles.
I have plenty of conservative bloggers bookmarked. I keep turning to yours because it is a benchmark, the gold standard, of a kind of thought that we all need to read and consider deeply. Often heed and act upon, to the extent we can.
Keep it up, please.
Dan S. writes:
As usual when the media does bother at all to mention the Islamic faith of Nidal Malik Hasan they are always quick to add that he was an “extremist” and that his understanding of Islam was far from the orthodox mainstream. (Even many neo-conservatives mouth this PC talking point.) Blogger Timothy Furnish shows that too the contrary Hasan’s beliefs and actions are well within the bounds of traditional Islamic theology (as presented in the Quran):
Hasan, as we now know, made numerous comments and presentations on Islam in which he cited the Quran in support of his violent, jihadist views. To add to this, the assorted pious “American” Muslims that have spoken in support of Hasan and his actions have utilized the Quran and traditional, orthodox Islamic theology and jurisprudence. We know why the liberal-left wishes to mislead people about the Islamic religion, but why won’t conservatives, who love to hawk themselves as anti-jihad warriors, talk about this? And why won’t these same conservatives make the obvious connection between domestic jihad terrorism and mass Muslim immigration?
Mike writes (Nov 11):
I don’t know if you watched Special Report on Fox tonight, or if there’s any way you could watch it at this point. I happened to leave it on and was amazed by their segment on Fort Hood:
1. The term “Political Correctness” was bandied about 20+ times to criticize the military’s impotence in rooting out this obvious threat.
2. The term “Jihadism” was mentioned a dozen times, linking Hasan to a broader phenomenon.
3. One of the panel participants made the exact same analogy between the response to Fort Hood and a hypothetical response to Lincoln’s assassination
I know that Fox and neocons in general are less PC about Muslims than they are about every other group, but I was stunned by just how bold and frank they were about this event. Just judging by today’s programming, it seems like Fox is starting to push the envelope on heretical thinking.
Andrea writes:
Enjoy the refreshment of St John of Damascus on the subject of Islam.
Palahalli S. writes:
Namaste Shri Auster,
I hope this note finds you in good health.
The Fort Hood killings and the insane responses this massacre has attracted from liberals in the US provoked me to comment about the situation in Hindusthan’s own armed forces.
The pulls and pressures from our liberals and communists is not different from what your society faces. However the Hindu Army brass here seem to be much more realistic about Muslims in the forces.
My deepest condolences to the families of those murdered.
May God give you and your colleagues the strength and endurance to win this war against liberalism without more such terrible tragedies.
Ray G. writes:
Mass immigration has brought jihad, beheadings and the honor killings of daughters by fathers to our shores. Why have we felt so compelled to invite the world, even those cultures ill-suited, to immigrate here?
Mosques are the political centers of power to the Muslims. The more mosques we allow to be built in our homeland, the more jihad we will have. Once again, it all comes down to immigration. We didn’t have this in 1960, or 1970 or 1980 or 1990. Why? Because they were not here in the high numbers they are today.
Our political elite in Washington are prepared to accept the killing of a certain number of native born Americans, for the purpose of looking more “diverse” and welcoming to foreigners and foreign cultures, religions, ideologies, etc. Namely, Muslims.
TT writes:
If the military can’t even deal straight with the issue of Islam as in the case of the Fort Hood shooter, a single individual, how in the world are they ever going to deal with the issue of Islam and how it affects any solution or analysis of the situations in Afghanistan or Iraq?
LA replies:
Excellent point.
They bifurcate it in their mind. When they’re fighting Muslim extremists “out there,” that’s one thing. But any Muslim extremists “in here” must be denied, as that threatens diversity. So externally we fight against Muslim extremists, while internally we practice non-discrimination against Muslim extremists.
TT replies:
I was actually referring to the failure of the military to even face the reality of what we are fighting in Afghanistan. Along the lines of Diana West’s critiques of General McCrystal’s 66 page report requesting 44,000 more troops which did not mention Islam or Jihad once. We are never going to win the war in Iraq or Afghanistan if we don’t incorporate the role that Islam is playing not only in the so-called extremists but in the populations where Islam controls nearly everything. A policy that does not account for Islam has zero chance of success. Our military is still functioning under the false premise that Islam is just another religion, just another way to God. It is absurd and something that the response from Casey about diversity being paramount, even more important than soldier’s lives, only brings into more stark reality. They are utterly clueless about Islam and have no chance of winning a war with it. It is just hard to grasp that in the entire massive pentagon with all the money and resources at their disposal the continued failure to evaluate the doctrines and history of Islam and its warlord founder and his tactics could possibly continue to be.
Jake Jacobsen writes:
First up: Black supremacist assassinates white cop media uninterested in racial angle …
Iranian immigrant …
Re: The officers who hid from Major Hasan
Mark Jaws writes:
You and your readers need to understand one important fact about today’s military—the tooth to tail ratio is very low. In other words, there are far more combat supporters out there than combat warriors. I know, I spent 20 years in the Army as an intelligence officer and my combat skills are minimal. Oh, I could ruck a sack, and shoot a weapon and jump from an airplane, but I could no more EFFEECTIVELY lead men in combat than I could hit a major league fastball. Please however, do not think our combat units are pussified. They are not. Furthermore, women and blacks are heavily concentrated in combat service support—you know, supply, finance, admin. The fighting capability of these units is a joke. On the other hand, the best units—the Rangers, the Special Forces, the Seals, the Airborne Infantry—are exclusively male and overwhelmingly white. Same could be said for our superb air combat warriors, among whose few numbers I can proudly count my son in-law.
COMMENTS ON GEORGE CASEY
(The discussion, “Clothes make the Eloi,” on the outfits worn by today’s top brass, continues in its original entry.)
Re: Suicidal liberalism is in charge: America is lost
Jonathan L. writes:
I caught General Casey’s appearance on “Meet the Press” this weekend.
I had remembered him saying something along the lines of “The WORST thing that could come from this tragedy would be if diversity became a casualty”, but thought that was only my own paraphrase, as I couldn’t quite believe a general would say something so blatantly stupid.
Well, it turns out that is EXACTLY what Casey said!
CASEY: Our diversity not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.
Note that, unlike in his other Sunday interviews, Casey is not saying it would be a tragedy if diversity became a casualty of the massacre. He is saying that it would be a GREATER tragedy than then massacre itself! Towards the end of the interview, the host broached the topic of granting deferrals to Muslim soldiers in cases where they’d be called upon to fight coreligionists. The general left that open as a possibility:
GREGORY: Do you have any reason to believe that having Muslims in the Army puts them in a very difficult position and makes them more conflicted fighting a war against Muslims in Afghanistan or Iraq?
CASEY: I think that’s something that they have to look at on an individual basis. But I think we as an Army have to be broad enough to bring in people from all walks of life.
Though such blatant displays of the liberal double standard at work are like mana to conservatives, instead of fulminating I would like to instead use this occasion as a springboard for an extended philosophical discussion, if I may. What we have just witnessed as a result of the Ft. Hood massacre is the amazing spectacle of liberalism touting one proposition while suppressing another despite their having near-identical logical content! While liberalism punishes anyone for saying: “Islam explains the Ft. Hood massacre. Muslims should therefore be prevented from serving in the armed forces.”, it apparently tolerates someone saying: “Islam explains the Ft. Hood massacre. Muslims should therefore be allowed to opt out of the armed forces.”
A more perfect example of this phenomenon, though, can be seen in discussions of America’s demographic transformation. While it is racist and bigoted for Republicans to point out that mass Third World immigration harms their electoral prospects, it is perfectly acceptable for Bill Clinton to crow that the same immigration has weakened the “vast right-wing conspiracy”, or for a CNN panel to point out that Obama would have never been elected without it and that Republicans should take note or become extinct. In each case one and the same logical proposition is being either suppressed or touted based on nothing more than whether it appears in a pro-liberal or anti-liberal “frame”, and by “frame” I mean the attitudes and likely reactions of the speaker and his audience. Pointing out that America is quickly becoming a non-white, non-European country is fine if it is done triumphantly, or with the intent of demoralizing conservatives, or else with the intent of convincing conservatives to become liberals out of political expediency. Pointing out the exact same fact is evil and bigoted, however, if it is done to energize conservatives, or if it is done to rally them to immigration restriction, or even if it is done with anything but unalloyed enthusiasm on the speaker’s part.
Similarly for pointing out that some “minority” has a certain innate characteristic. It is OK to say that women are naturally more cautious and prudent than men and so could have prevented our financial crisis if they had been in charge of the banks, but God help you if you use a logically identical proposition to suggest that women would therefore make poor combat officers.
What this demonstrates, then, is that liberalism is tyrannical, and in a sense worse than totalitarianism. For at least totalitarian regimes still demonstrate a basic respect for a transcendent, external reality by the mere fact that they bother to create or suppress facts about it (e.g. “We have always been at war with Oceania”) as well as make sure those facts have a basic logical consistency (if we have always been at war with Oceania, then there can be no evidence of our former alliance with it). Liberalism of course lacks and nominally eschews those instruments of coercion available to totalitarianism, but it compensates for such apparent weaknesses by simply demanding allegiance to itself out-of-hand. And so while totalitarian regimes still maintain a basic respect for the transcendent true and good by bothering to base (if even falsely) their own legitimacy according to their adherence to those same principles (for example, by claiming to bring justice and prosperity to their own people, or denying they ever wage war except for purposes of self-defense) liberalism replaces the true and good with itself and then demands unconditional allegiance.
Jihad Watch’s Hugh Fitzgerald, noticing the same phenomenon at play, could only come up with the term “private sector Orwellianism” to describe it. I await something more pithy from you. What about “epistemological anarcho-tyranny”, or simply “epistemological gangsterism”?
Hoping this does not exhaust my welcome ;-)
LA replies:
Well, I’ve mentioned many times how it’s fine to point out a fact like demographic change, if you put a positive construction on it,, and forbidden if you either disapprove of the same fact or even just state it neutrally. I don’t have a term for this at the moment, but the suggested terms are too abstract and technical sounding. I agree it would be good to have a term.
Alan Roebuck writes:
Jonathan L. asks if we could come up with a name for the phenomenon of liberalism being tyrannical in a way that totalitarian regimes never were. Here’s my take:
Under ordinary totalitarianism, people who want to have any standing in society are required to swear allegiance to an explicitly articulated system of thought (e.g., Communism, Nazism.) Liberalism is precisely the opposite. Under liberalism, you are required not to believe in a definite and explicitly articulated creed; that would be “discriminatory.” Instead, you are required to subscribe to a small set of anti-creeds: don’t discriminate, God cannot be known so don’t be a fundamentalist, don’t show off your position in the hierarchy, etc. In other words, mindlessness is the supreme virtue. So call it “enforced mindlessness.”
Re: The Liberal religion
Brent L. writes:
I, for one, applaud Gen. Casey’s comments. At long last someone in authority has articulated the liberal position on this nation’s fundamental domestic policy since 1965: namely, that the benefits of demographic changes set in motion by the drastic revision of immigration laws far outweigh the inevitable negative consequences.
To put it in military terms, in the ongoing campaign being fought to increase military diversity, the dead and wounded at Ft. Hood are within the range of acceptable casualties. Likewise, the 3000+ who died as a result of the September 11th ‘tragedy’ also fall in line with our casualty tolerance for maintaining demographic change through increased immigration from Muslim nations.
Essentially Gen. Casey is arguing that it’s worth putting up with the occasional Maj. Hasan in order to enjoy the contributions of the thousands of other “good Muslims” in the armed forces. I think he should take the opportunity to deliver the eulogy for each and every one of the unfortunate victims of this ‘senseless act’ and repeat that very point to their families and loved ones, so that they may come to understand the noble sacrifice they made in the great cause of non-discrimination, and can thank our great leaders for making that principle the linchpin of the policies that shape our nation’s future.
More Casey
Kilroy M. writes:
I never understood why the military is even speaking to the media at all. The Ministry of Defence should have a PR department, but having officers explain themselves to journalists is extremely degrading. We don’t vote for the military. Its obligation is to listen and obey the Executive. That’s all and that’s it. I don’t need to listen to a General, I’m not dating the guy, he isn’t my girlfriend. I need to listen to the guy who is putting together defence and homeland security policy, the guy who is elected.
Regarding the incessant outpouring of emotion (grief, sadness, reflection etc) that liberal society seems to encourage after such terrorist attacks: I haven’t yet heard anybody point out that they are directly complicit in the terrorists’ objectives. The Islamists desire to cause terror and pain, the liberals say we should feel pain and sorrow. These people are two sides of the same stick.
David B. writes:
The quote by General Casey in which according to Brandon F., “he is effectively saying that it is worth the occasional mass murder of soldiers in order to maintain this diversity,” reminded me of my ex-friend Professor F.
My ex-friend used to say things like this all the time. I used to write you about many of his comments. Early this year, you will remember the Atlanta woman who showed her apartment to a young black man who claimed to be a prospective buyer. He killed her.
Before taking him up, she told a friend that it would be racist to be afraid of him. When I told Professor F. of this, he said, “Her heart was in the right place.” In other words, it was better to be murdered than to show common sense about the danger of being alone with a strange black man.
My ex-friend, the liberal Professor F., has the exact same attitude as General Casey. The liberal religion counts above everything else, including life itself.
Carol Iannone writes:
If an Army officer thinks that a perhaps temporary questioning of “diversity” or a diminution of belief in “diversity” is WORSE than the deaths of a dozen soldiers, he is simply not fit to lead in the United States Army and does not deserve the honor due his rank. Casey should be told to resign.
Carol Iannone writes:
General Casey is saying, in effect, that we will have to endure attacks like that at Fort Hood, and even other 911s, because diversity is more important than our safety. That it is worth it to lose some soldiers and citizens rather than to lose our focus on diversity.
Carol Iannone continues:
General Casey paraphrases General Patton:
Patriotism is not dying for your country. Patriotism is dying for DIVERSITY. And making sure the other son of a bitch gets a fair trial, preferably in a civilian court.
John Muhammad
Dan S. writes:
In light of the jihad attack at Fort Hood, I think it important to take a moment to recall another domestic jihad attack against Americans some seven years ago by the black Muslim sniper John Allen Muhammad. Mr. Muhammad is set to be executed tonight (and it has been a long time coming). For those of us who still remember the 2002 sniper jihad in the Washington DC area, we will recall that many of the same liberal excuses that are now being wielded on behalf of Malik Hasan were once used to brushed off the anti-white, anti-American jihad of John Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo. Mr. Muhammad, a man notorious for his pro-bin Laden sentiments, violent anti-Americanism, and mixture of Islamic and black nationalist beliefs never had his obvious jihadist intentions examined by the dhimmi liberal-left media. Instead we are told that he went on jihad shooting rampage due to problems with his ex-wife, the he was “crazy”, a gun enthusiast, etc. Anything but the fact that he saw himself as a pious Muslim fighting against infidels. (We should also recall that law enforcement authorities refused to consider any suspect but a white male while the shootings were going on.) That was 2002 and this is 2009. What lessons did Americans learn from the sniper jihad of John Allen Muhammad and what lessons will be learned from the jihad attack of Nidal Malik Hasan?
Michelle Malkin detailing the evidence proving the jihadist motivation of John Allen Muhammad and Lee Boyd Malvo:
Paul Nachman writes:
John Allen Muhammad’s shyster:
Muhammad’s attorney, Jonathan Sheldon, says “Virginia will execute a severely mentally ill man who also suffered from Gulf War Syndrome the day before Veterans Day.”
If I can find his phone number, I’m going to call and tell him that I agree, it should have been at least three days in advance of, or after, Veterans’ Day.
A. Zarkov writes:
Leon Czolgosz shot president McKinley on September 6, 1901. His trial on September 23 lasted a mere 8 hours from jury selection to verdict. While Czolgosz pleaded guilty, the trial judge over ruled him and entered a plea of innocent. He was executed on October 29, 1901. Thus it took a mere 53 days from the time of the crime to his ultimate punishment. Compare and contrast to John Allen Muhammad who killed Dean Harold Meyers on October 9, 2002 and was executed on November 10, 2009 for a total of 2,589 days between the crime and the execution. Thus after about 100 years it takes us 72 times longer to do justice in a capital crime, and in comparison to many other cases, the John Allen Muhammad case was positively speedy.
Why are we so dilatory? Is it a greater reverence for life? I think the very opposite holds: we no longer believe in ourselves, so we delay and delay—paralyzed by doubt. We will see the same thing, only worse with the Fort Hood murderer.
Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 13, 2009 02:27 PM | Send
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