2009 November » Mental Pluff Mud

Against all enemies

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Nov 072009

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.

Election Day 2009

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Nov 032009

No one should be surprised by these predictions. It’s the way of it during tough times, and these are some of the toughest since the late seventies and early eighties.

Republicans Are Poised for Gains in Key Elections .

[Excerpt]

WASHINGTON — Republicans appear positioned for strong results in three hard-fought elections Tuesday. But isolated, off-year contests aren’t always reliable indicators of what will happen in the wider federal and state races held in even-numbered years.

Then there’s this from the New York Times:

In Iowa, Second Thoughts on Obama

[excerpt]

WILLIAMSBURG, Iowa — Pauline McAreavy voted for President Obama. From the moment she first saw him two years ago, she was smitten by his speeches and sold on his promise of change. She switched parties to support him in the Iowa caucuses, donated money and opened her home to a pair of young campaign workers.

But by the time she received a fund-raising letter last month from the Democratic National Committee, a sense of disappointment had set in. She returned the solicitation with a handwritten note, saying, “Until I see some progress and he lives up to his promises in Iowa, we will not give one penny.”

“I’m afraid I wasn’t realistic,” Ms. McAreavy, 76, a retired school nurse, said on a recent morning on the deck of her home here in east-central Iowa.

“I really thought there would be immediate change,” she said. “Sometimes the Republicans are just as bad as Democrats. But it’s politics as usual, and that’s what I voted against.”

Promise the world and people expect actual results. Not fudged results. Not a lack of results. Not backsliding. Real actions that produce real results.

However, just because there were people who thought that by electing Mr. Obama to the office of President of the United States would cure all the world’s evils and make their personal troubles and struggles magically vanish into thin air, doesn’t mean that we should be unduly harsh of President Obama’s failure to produce on those unrealistic expectations. One man, not even the President of the United States can do everything that needs to be done. It takes everyone else to effect change.

We can draw our inspiration and leadership from the President, but the President is extremely limited in what he can do personally. Said another way: He can’t be the only one rowing in the boat that is the United States.

I have disagreed with most of President Obama’s initiatives and agenda, some of them “energetically”. But, I disagreed with a lot of the initiatives and agendas of every previous President as well. It’s not a “party thing”. And just as I’ve said previously elsewhere on the internet, our President may be “the most powerful man on earth”, but he is only one man and cannot do everything alone. He [or that future "she"] is not Constitutionally vested with the authority to do everything.

“The most powerful man on earth” has very little sole authority or power to change things on his [or her] own. It takes a lot of people rowing the boat to get where the majority want it to go. And who can argue that we find ourselves in very turbulent waters?

President Obama could do more in the way of leadership — and could do less golfing while he’s at it.

Snip from Boston Herald‘s Obama Watch

The presidency is a tough job, what with two wars, a health-care crisis, a swine flu pandemic, and a recession. What better way to work out the stress of being president than with a littlegolf ? Well, the Big O set a dubious mark last week when he passed Dubya on the links. According to CBS’s Mark Knoller, the unofficial chronicler of all things Obama, the president has played 24 rounds ofgolf – it took vacation-happy George W. Bush 2 years and 9 months to reach 24 rounds.

It’s a shame really, you would think that the person who chose to run the office of President of the United States would have realized that being a leader, what the President is supposed to be, takes actual leadership. He may need others to row the boat, but he is supposed to be the Captain standing in bow giving direction — and let’s not forget that all important inspiration to keep us rowing.

Remember to cast your vote today if there is an election in your voting district. Our vote is our “voice” and election day is the day we get to use it most effectively. Unless, that is, you happen to be a celebrity or large financial donor.

Weather manipulation

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Nov 022009

I frequently go on about all the technological marvels that await us “just around the corner”. Given that, I have been somewhat surprised by reactions to the news items reporting on China’s manipulation of weather.

Beijing’s first snow of season ‘artificially induced’

[Excerpt]

(AFP) – – Chinese meteorologists covered Beijing in snow Sunday after seeding clouds to bring winter weather to the capital in an effort to combat a lingering drought, state media reported.

The unusually early snow blanketed the capital from Sunday morning and kept falling for half the day, helped by temperatures as low as minus 2 Celsius (29 Fahrenheit) and strong winds from the north, Xinhua news agency reported.

Besides falling in the northeastern provinces of Liaoning and Jilin and the northern province of Hebei, the eastern port city of Tianjin also got its first snow of the autumn, the report said.

“We wont miss any opportunity of artificial precipitation since Beijing is suffering from the lingering drought,” the report quoted Zhang Qiang, head of the Beijing Weather Modification Office, as saying.

Chinese meteorologists have for years sought to make rain by injecting special chemicals into clouds.

As they progress along this front [no pun intended] and refine their capabilities I grow ever more uneasy and queazy.

Is messing about with the weather a good thing? By doing so is there a risk of unintended consequences? Will the ability lead to a potential weapon? What happens if China decides to punish a rebellious province by withholding precipitation… or perhaps bringing on torrential rains that ruin crops quicker than a drought would?

I’m probably being uncharacteristically silly. After all, I find the fear of genetically modified foods to be unrealistic because I view that ability as our best hope to feed an ever growing world population. Is not the ability to cause rain also beneficial, and specifically beneficial to crop production?

Is it the fact that I view one as solidly grounded in science and the other to be “god like powers” of control? Why one and not the other?

I’m genuinely puzzled by my reactions and the thought lines inspired by them.

Ultimately, I fall back on my assumption that anything that relieves human suffering is a good thing, god like or no. Weather manipulation is not the first technological advancement that has pressed the nausea inducing button labeled “Gone too Far”. Nor will it be the last as we stand at the precipice of astounding advancements, most we are not even yet capable of imagining. So I suppose I should just get used to that nausea on occasion.