Eugene Robinson: When A Time Bomb Is Ticking

[babylonsister]

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20091109_when_a_time_bomb_is_ticking/

When a Time Bomb Is Ticking
Posted on Nov 9, 2009

By Eugene Robinson


There’s a difference between sensitivity and stupidity. If there were indeed signs that Maj. Nidal Hasan, the alleged Fort Hood mass murderer, was becoming radicalized in his opposition to the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Army had a duty to act—before he did.

Gen. George Casey, the Army chief of staff, said Sunday he was concerned that “this increased speculation” about Hasan’s evolving political and religious views “could cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.” Casey is right to worry about the lunatics and bigots who now will think of all Muslims in the military as potential enemies. But it only feeds such paranoia to ignore alarm bells that an unstable individual, Muslim or not, is about to blow.

According to published reports, Hasan told people of his serious doubts about the U.S. military campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan. Hasan, a psychiatrist who had evaluated returning soldiers for stress-related disorders, made no secret of his reluctance to serve in the Afghan theater, where he was to be sent within weeks. According to ABC News, fellow Army doctors told superiors of their concern that Hasan felt divided allegiance—both to the Muslims whom he felt were under attack and the country he had volunteered to serve.

All this should have been enough to prompt an urgent intervention by Army brass, regardless of Hasan’s religion. That it did not is unfair to the thousands of Muslims who have served in the military, and continue to do so, with honor and distinction.

“The system is not doing what it’s supposed to do,” Army doctor Val Finnell told The Associated Press. Finnell, who studied with Hasan, complained to higher-ups about Hasan’s “anti-American” rants and his stated view that the United States was conducting a war against Islam. “He at least should have been confronted about these beliefs, told to cease and desist, and to shape up or ship out.”

Indeed he should have been. In the Army, there’s a rich tradition of grousing about idiotic higher-ups and their ridiculous orders. But it sounds as if Hasan’s complaints went far beyond the ordinary, especially in the notion that he might be unsure of his own loyalty and duty.

snip//

How is the Pentagon supposed to tell the difference between reasonable caution and blatant discrimination? There are thousands of Muslims in uniform, serving their country at home and abroad. Ask them.

[Demeter]

1. There are Two Timebombs

The first is the cult of the Army that brooks no deviation from muscular Christianity.

The second is the Army being so dysfunctional due to ridiculous demands of two wars that it cannot deal with the results of the first, let alone the existence of it.

[Barack_America]

2. Hasan himself tried to ship out.

Offered to pay back his tuition.

Hired a lawyer.

The army wouldn't let him.

They were dead set on extracting their pound of flesh, much to the dismay of Hasan and those surrounding him.

[freebrew]

3. Wasn't it *

Wasn't it the * administration that started this 'war on Islam' Shit?
These deaths lie at *'s feet. He is responsible. He should face the consequences.
I hope I get to piss on his grave...

[JohnnyLib2]

4. Psychiatrists in most settings have minimal to no accountability.

Perhaps less in the Army, where they are few and far between.

I'll be surprised if this horror story changes anything, other than perhaps scrutiny in the internship/residency stages of training.

[Lancer]

5. I wonder

if Dr. Hasan had been a civilian and had shot up the break room in the city or private hospital where he worked if the pundits would have been so quick to brand him a terrorist? The following day a man named Rodriguez shot up the offices of the company that had let him go two years ago. No one raced breathlessly forward to say that he was perhaps an illegal, or that he had harbored paranoid delusions that he was denied housing or employment based on his ethnicity, or that he had been involved in protracted battles with immigration officials.

Robinson is right; the Army had a duty to act on Dr. Hasan's increasingly fevered religious extremism and rage -- not to mention his poor performance evaluations -- before he took it out on innocent people duly going through procedures at the Soldier Readiness Center. Regardless of whether it's religious fanaticism or paranoid delusions and odd behavior of more mundane origins that an individual harbors, no one ever just "snaps." In the private sector as well as in the government or military, warning signs that an employee is mentally or emotional disturbed are always present, and they are often misinterpreted, ignored or waved away. Background checks of potential employees are often cursory; former employers and personal references are not always contacted. Immediate supervisors often hesitate to take their concerns about an employee who appears to be coming unglued up the ladder for fear that their ability to manage the personnel in their own department will be questioned.

Once the bloodbath is over, fanatical rantings and predictions of the coming apocalypse posted by the shooter are often found all over the internet within hours. Dr. Hasan even made a PowerPoint presentation in 2007 that made clear his belief in a coming jihad, and that he just might be the man to step forward and fire the first shots across the bow. Sometimes the killers leave manifestos on the front seat of their cars, or, as was the case with the Va. Tech shooter, mail them to news organizations. The man who shot up the fitness center in Pennsylvania earlier this year posted a YouTube video in which he recounted the thousands of rejections he had received from women he wanted to go out with over the years. His recitation was calm and he kept his simmering rage in check, but it was there. How many times do these scenarios have to play out before employers, co-workers, family members and neighbors recognize that they have an EDP (emotionally disturbed person) in their midst, and take a calculated risk in attempting to secure mental help for his own protection and that of others to whom he presents a potential or imminent danger?

Medical doctors die of heart failure; computer experts sometimes lose everything on their hard drives to computer viruses. Why is it so hard to understand that a psychiatrist could have mental problems of his own?

The day before the massacre, Dr. Hasan was passing out copies of the Qu'ran and giving away everything he owned to neighbors, down to and including the frozen broccoli in his refrigerator. He did not expect to come back alive -- not from Afghanistan -- but from the Soldier Readiness Center. Hello? This is what's known as "putting one's affairs in order." It's almost always the last item on a list of known pre-incident indicators that suggest suicide, homicide, or both, is imminent.

Dr. Hasan may be a religious extremist, but it doesn't always follow that such a man (and it is almost invariably a man) will go on a shooting spree. David Berkowitz's God was a dog. Mark David Chapman, as did Arthur Bremer before him, carried copies of The Catcher in the Rye, not the Old Testament, to the scenes of their crimes.