How do we understand the mass killing at Ft. Hood? How do we understand the killer? I’m not referring to attempting to find reasons that would excuse the killings, rather 
how does the average person understand a random act of violence intended to the lives of multiple random human beings.
My mind screams for order, even in random happenstance, demands to understand. I’m sure there are smart people who understand what brings a person to the sort of indiscriminate violence Hasan unleashed, but I am not one of them.
I’m sure there are other smart people whose job it is to come to understand the “why” of it. Fortunately, that’s not my job. I don’t really even want to understand, or attempt to arrive at understanding.
What I do want to understand is how the military missed the danger Hasan was. The military is all about “being a round peg in a round hole“. Conformity. Conformity is the one argument used by the military to bulwark their stance against homosexuals serving.
Homosexuals are a supposed danger because of what they might do to occupy their private time and private relationships. This danger is viewed to be so great it earned a military person a dismissal from said military [until very recently when President Obama announced his intent to stop the "Don't ask - don't tell" policy]. If a person is suspected of homosexuality investigations are mounted and hearings held. It is deemed a very serious thing, this “private matter” of sexual orientation is.
Barring homosexuals from service in the military has never made sense to me. It is a private matter. In fairness to the military, they also have regulations against extramarital affairs and one can be court martialed for such.
The military has never been shy about its “interest” in the private lives of those who serve our country. Right, wrong, or indifferent — the military sees nothing “private” in the lives of active duty military personnel. Nothing. Every second of every day is the “military’s business”.
Yet, I find myself asking: did Hasan remain “unmolested” by investigations and hearings because of another “private matter”, his religion? Political correctness has reached its poison tendrils into the very bastions of political incorrectness that is our military. It is the height of political incorrectness to even think that a practicing Muslim could also hate his or her country and act counter to her best interests. After all, everyone knows that Islam is a religion of peace and love.
Islam may be a religion of peace and love, but there are factions of the Islamic faith that are decidedly anything but. Each of the “Three Biggies” of religious faith, Christianity, Islam, and Judaism, have their radical sects. Factions so outside the mainstream that they are a general embarrassment and public relations nightmare to the overwhelming majority of the adherents of the umbrella faith [Christianity, Islam, or Judaism]. And some beliefs are just not compatible with service in the U.S. military, no matter how politically incorrect that may be.
Unlike a sexual act that occurs during “off duty time”, behind the privacy of four walls, and among consenting adults, a belief that murder and mass murder are justified – even demanded – acts in the service of that belief, demands scrutiny, demands excising from the ranks of our military.
A mass murderer walked among us. A mass murderer worked with and along side men and women, many of them barely into legal adulthood, who took their oath seriously, unlike Hasan.
The oath Hasan swore to [the commissioned officer's oath]:
I, ____________, do solemnly swear, or affirm, that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter. So help me God.
The oath states “…I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation…”, “… I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office on which I am about to enter.” “So help me God.” Powerful words. Unambiguous. A sacred vow.
Hasan’s commanding officers failed to uphold their solemn oath, perhaps not willfully, but failed just the same.
Congress and the President failed to uphold their oaths as well, they need to empower the military to ferret out those in uniform who hold radical beliefs, ferret them out with all the cold precision employed to ferret out homosexuals. Innocent and non threatening as sexual orientation is in reality aside, we at least know the military is capable if there is a policy and will to do so.
It is tragic enough when this nation loses a brave son or daughter in uniform to enemy fire or tragic accident in the performance of their duty, it is inexcusable to lose them to religious zealotry coexisting among them. Religious zealotry known to espouse violence and murder, even violence and murder of random innocents.
My sincere sympathies to all of those suffering the loss of a loved one or someone held in the “gentle fondness” of colleague or friend. My thoughts are with those still struggling with the injuries they sustained at the hands [and weapons] of Hasan, my thoughts are with the worried families of the injured.
Nothing anyone can do now will bring the fallen back to us. Nothing we can do now can undo the injuries of the wounded, those will have to wait for time and medicine to heal as best it can. What we can do is do everything within our power and ability to prevent an incident like this from repeating in the future. We can — and must — LEARN from the errors that laid the foundations for the Ft. Hood massacre.
To do less would not only be an insult to the victims of the Ft. Hood massacre, it would be a willful failure to uphold the oath sworn to by each officer of the military, our federal elected officials, up to and including the President of the United States.; a willful act of dereliction of duty.
Rid our military ranks of religious radical zealots and all those who view the United States as the enemy and the problem.
, as long as we’re all losing our perspective at the same time – which, as a generation growing up with social media we are – then we don’t realise that our humanity is leaking away until its too late.
V – We are of Peace
I finally had the opportunity to watch the new ABC show V today. I have to wait for ABC shows to become available on Hulu.com [don't ask] and today was the first day V’s pilot episode was available. A premier I eagerly awaited.
I am a stealth hardcore SciFi fan, something not exactly common for my demographic. Even given my already gleeful anticipation, the political junkie in me began to salivate when I read this piece from the Chicago Tribune:
Please do hop on over and read the entire article, regardless of your political “flavor” it offers some great insight, both into the show – and into our political hearts.
A funny thing though, in that sadly pathetic kind of way, is that there are people who really do believe the earth is infiltrated by “Reptilian aliens”, that they walk among us and are the puppeteers of the “power elite” of the world.
The show inspired a bit of personal discomfort when I realized that I would probably be one of the many who are hoodwinked in our fictitious television drama. I do believe that somewhere out there in the vastness of the universe other intelligent life exists. I believe that life, or some of it anyway, is vastly more advanced than we. And, I hope that they will one day introduce themselves to us – to our benefit.
A hope not unlike that of many religious folk who hope that the God of their understanding will come forth and set the world aright, right as judged by their beliefs that is. I don’t want aliens to come to earth and set us straight, to right all our wrongs, etc. I just think it would be cool in the extreme to know we are not alone and that there is hope that we will evolve past the “let’s kill each other” phase. Highly advanced, beneficent aliens would be affirmation that is possible, even if only remotely so.
A few years ago I asked myself if my wish for confirmation on advanced alien life [of the good kind] was, perhaps, inspired by my suspicions that human beings are genetically incapable of not bringing about our own mass extinction. My answer to myself: Probably. The history of the last few years has done nothing but reinforce that belief. It went from a vague suspicion to a rather well entrenched belief.
As such, as I said, I would no doubt be among the “adoring clueless”. But, I said the same thing to my husband the first time we watched Independence Day. I’d be like that exotic dancer that made a sign and went to a gathering at the top of a tall building to welcome the aliens — then the aliens vaporized the building just as the dancer realized the foolishness of her naivete.
But back to V. When things are tough and unpleasant we want someone to swoop in and make them all better. Who can argue that things are pretty tough and unpleasant for an awful lot of people? That alone was a large part of Obama’s mass appeal. Young, charismatic, attractive, he promised to sweep away all the old detritus and cut away all the dead tissue so healthy tissue [a healthy society, a "fair" society] could grow in its place. I won’t get into the stuff about all the broken promises and incompetence, as those are topics for another post. But, not only has he failed to make things better — he has made them worse, or empowered others to make things worse. Like humanity is scheduled to find out in V – the beneficent problem solvers are really here to eat us. You can’t get much worse than that.
Below is the pilot episode, embedded from Hulu.com just in case you haven’t seen it yet and are unfamiliar with how to navigate Hulu. By the way, Hulu is a wonderful thing indeed. I get to watch the other ABC show I’ve become hooked on this season, FlashForward. Both of these new shows have a lot to say about human psychology in the best traditions of fictional drama, and they’re entertaining to boot.