Getty Images President Obama didn't wait long after Tuesday's devastating elections to give critics another reason to question his leadership, but this time the subject matter was more grim than a pair of governorships.
After news broke out of the shooting at the Fort Hood Army post in Texas, the nation watched in horror as the toll of dead and injured climbed. The White House was notified immediately and by late afternoon, word went out that the president would speak about the incident prior to a previously scheduled appearance. At about 5 p.m., cable stations went to the president. The situation called for not only his trademark eloquence, but also grace and perspective.
But instead of a somber chief executive offering reassuring words and expressions of sympathy and compassion, viewers saw a wildly disconnected and inappropriately light president making introductory remarks. At the event, a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian affairs, the president thanked various staffers and offered a "shout-out" to "Dr. Joe Medicine Crow -- that Congressional Medal of Honor winner." Three minutes in, the president spoke about the shooting, in measured and appropriate terms. Who is advising him?
Anyone at home aware of the major news story of the previous hours had to have been stunned. An incident like this requires a scrapping of the early light banter. The president should apologize for the tone of his remarks, explain what has happened, express sympathy for those slain and appeal for calm and patience until all the facts are in. That's the least that should occur.
There's more - read on:
Remember how Bush was criticized for not jumping up from reading to the school children when he was informed about 9/11. Where are those people now?
__________________ "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping he will eat him last"
Winston Churchill
Last edited by CrimsonNan; November 6th, 2009 at 02:17 PM.
Restraint and reserving judgement or comment is probably the wise thing to do, until all the facts are known. No doubt the Army will handle this in the most prudent and expeditious manner possible.
That said, there's a lot of information emerging at this time that points to some very troubling facts. This Army major was reassigned to Fort Hood after having received an unsatisfactory performance review. Understanding the Army has some facets of social experimentation imposed on it, it's unlike private business in that a "problem" is not solved by transferring that problem for someone else to handle. It appears that may have happened here.
The major also apparently authored, or had his name attached to some very troubling internet comments regarding U.S. foreign policy and the fact we had troops in the Middle East. He was known to frequently argue with other soldiers over our missions. Days before the shooting, he cleaned out his apartment, offering to give most of his belongings away.
These things point to, and again this is me speculating, that the murders he committed were premeditated. I am partcularly troubled by the fact that, if he felt so strongly against his pending deployment, why did he not commit suicide? Why did he take another 40 with him? That in itself pushes one to believe he was seriously under the influence of the very element we are trying to defeat. Additional news reports have soldiers at the scene claiming he was shouting "Allahu Akbar" before the shooting began. Note as of yet, this has not been confirmed, but I doubt he was singing Hannah Montana tunes.
Those are my thoughts. And causes me to wonder when we are going to drop the political correctness, and begin a common sense approach to what the hell we are doing.
Last edited by ValuJet; November 6th, 2009 at 02:23 PM.
In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan's aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and he wanted to get out of the Army.
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So he was harassed - poor baby. People are harassed all the time and they don't go out and murder people because of it.
Some of you seem willing to give him a pass. I'm not! He made a choice to do what he did. It's his own fault. He chose to enlist to get a free education, etc. In other words get all the perks possible. If he didn't approve of our mid-east policies, he should have chosen another profession. Oh, I forgot - but then he'd have had to pay for it himself.
__________________ "An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile hoping he will eat him last"
I've been harassed for being a Christian many times in my lifetime. Especially in high school and college. However, killing somebody has yet to cross my mind.
Quote:
CrimsonNan
In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan's aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and he wanted to get out of the Army.
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So he was harassed - poor baby. People are harassed all the time and they don't go out and murder people because of it.
Some of you seem willing to give him a pass. I'm not! He made a choice to do what he did. It's his own fault. He chose to enlist to get a free education, etc. In other words get all the perks possible. If he didn't approve of our mid-east policies, he should have chosen another profession. Oh, I forgot - but then he'd have had to pay for it himself.
__________________ The existence of God isn't determined in the thoughts of man. God exists, no matter what man thinks.
"Just because you love what you're doing doesn't mean you can do it forever."-John Madden.
It's better to ask for forgiveness than for permission.- A Married man's motto
In an interview with The Washington Post, Hasan's aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, Va., said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and he wanted to get out of the Army.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
So he was harassed - poor baby. People are harassed all the time and they don't go out and murder people because of it.
Some of you seem willing to give him a pass. I'm not! He made a choice to do what he did. It's his own fault. He chose to enlist to get a free education, etc. In other words get all the perks possible. If he didn't approve of our mid-east policies, he should have chosen another profession. Oh, I forgot - but then he'd have had to pay for it himself.
I don't know that I've seen anyone give him a pass. Several of us are not jumping to conclusions based on what little info is available, which is much different imo.
VJ - have they verified the message board stuff? Any early report I saw said it was someone with the same name, but they weren't sure it was the same guy yet. The FBI found the postings several months ago I believe it said.
Nooo, after volunteering to join the Marines for 4 years I don't do a whole lot of volunteering anymore. Besides you wouldn't want to waste your time with me, I wouldn't make you famous.
Restraint and reserving judgement or comment is probably the wise thing to do, until all the facts are known. No doubt the Army will handle this in the most prudent and expeditious manner possible.
That said, there's a lot of information emerging at this time that points to some very troubling facts. This Army major was reassigned to Fort Hood after having received an unsatisfactory performance review. Understanding the Army has some facets of social experimentation imposed on it, it's unlike private business in that a "problem" is not solved by transferring that problem for someone else to handle. It appears that may have happened here.
The major also apparently authored, or had his name attached to some very troubling internet comments regarding U.S. foreign policy and the fact we had troops in the Middle East. He was known to frequently argue with other soldiers over our missions. Days before the shooting, he cleaned out his apartment, offering to give most of his belongings away.
These things point to, and again this is me speculating, that the murders he committed were premeditated. I am partcularly troubled by the fact that, if he felt so strongly against his pending deployment, why did he not commit suicide? Why did he take another 40 with him? That in itself pushes one to believe he was seriously under the influence of the very element we are trying to defeat. Additional news reports have soldiers at the scene claiming he was shouting "Allahu Akbar" before the shooting began. Note as of yet, this has not been confirmed, but I doubt he was singing Hannah Montana tunes.
Those are my thoughts. And causes me to wonder when we are going to drop the political correctness, and begin a common sense approach to what the hell we are doing.
Good post VJ and even though alot of the media seem to be pushing this in another direction, I can't help but believe that his beliefs in Islam had alot to do with this. The Army should have let him out but they invest alot of time and money in officers and if you start letting every crybaby out just because they want to cry then you won't have many people in the Army. Hindsight being what it is, it's easy to say what they should have done but they hear alot of excuses all the time as to why so and so should be let out of his/her contract. There's noway to know for sure that he would do something like this.
There is nothing that we know now to point to this being an act of terrorism.
Of course not. Just because he is under investigation for internet postings absolving suicide bombers means nothing. Just because he shouted out the rallying cry "Allahu Akbar!" before shooting his victims is really irrelevant as well. Let's see, who else commonly shouts out such things before attacking infidels? "Voicing his dissent"? Actively speaking out against a war that we are involved in? Shooting soldiers that are preparing to ship out to fight in said war? Making references about us being aggressors? Jihadist calling for the Islam nation to spark individual acts just like this?
Mere coincidences. No signs of terrorism here. We need to look at this man's inner feelings and figure out how we may have caused this unforeseen outburst.
Main Entry: ter·ror·ism
Pronunciation: 'ter-&r-"i-z&m
Function: noun
1 : the unlawful use or threat of violence esp. against the state or the public as a politically motivated means of attack or coercion
Quote:
SavannahDare
Listen, I have lots of experience with these types of situations. I saw it all the time. Usually, it is an enlisted man or woman who is attempting to get out of deployment and making them go away is FAR easier than getting rid of an officer. It's an entirely different animal. There's no feasible way for him to "pay back" the government for his education and training. That amount would FAR EXCEED $500,000 (I'm being conservative even quoting that amount) and the military would expect their pound of flesh from this guy in terms of service. The mentality is "we have invested far too much in you to let you walk away; we need your service not your money."
So, I would imagine what happened is he began voicing his dissent at some point openly in the past year or so, after having already had adjustment problems in the '03-'04 time period. I'm sure he was evaluated, repeatedly, by his superiors, who were also psychiatrists. I'm certain they felt they were doing everything they could do to support this guy, one of their own, so he could in turn support the troops. The problem is this: It looks like they allowed their judgment to be clouded by the need to keep him in. Rather than looking at him and saying "here's a middle aged man with religious convictions that lead him to object to the very occupation he has chosen. He is not married. He has no children. He has no one to be responsible for other than himself in his personal life. We are pushing him into a corner he doesn't want to be pushed into, no matter what contract he signed. We need to cut our losses with this one and encourage the Bureau of Medicine to let him go" they instead sided with the "we can train him up" mentality.
Looks like they made a huge mistake. This man had nothing to lose. Not a thing. He fits the profile of a man capable of this perfectly. His narcissism and sociopathy, which he apparently hid reasonably well behind his uniform and his religion, would not allow him to "suck it up" and fulfill his duty. He eventually got to the point, three weeks prior to deployment, where he was unwilling to let someone else control him. Oh, no, he was going to show them ALL how much they should've listened to him (this is his thinking, not mine). He was going to prove to the Army that his way was the only way, and if that meant innocents were going to die, so be it.
Somehow, I do not know if it would have been the best thing to release this guy out into the public. There is no telling what damage he could have done out in the public where he would have undoubtably connected with people that thought more on the level he did. He may have decided to point his anger at a less protected target like a mall or a school. It is unknown what influences he may have had in the professional sense as well.
He would have been more suited for a military psych ward.
If the military were to set an example of releasing everyone who wanted out after achieving their educational goals, then they would be releasing a lot of people before they fulfilled their service.
Still, I find it odd that this guy was not processed out when they first detected his state of mind and started having problems with him. Undoubtably, it had something to do with his ethnic background and the "politically correct" enviroment that we live in today. When I served in the Navy, they told us that it cost over a $1 million/each to train us. Because we dealt with highly sensive data, we had to have regular psych evals and had several processed out as a result. Is it just a different day or did he really fall through the cracks.
__________________
"The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of 'liberalism' they will adopt every fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened." Norman Thomas
Last edited by TRUTIDE; November 6th, 2009 at 03:49 PM.
...Some of you seem willing to give him a pass. I'm not! ...
I would shoot him myself. No pass here. Just not sure that Islam should be blamed. You said it yourself. He needs to be held accountable. To blame this on Islam is to shift the blame away from him...
The biggest question I have is why did he not just shoot himself and let it go at that? Why did he have to go on a rampage and kill others, making his own death inevitable? Of course, that's what I ask about most people who decide to kill other innocents before taking their own lives. Such a waste.....
You don't get the virgins unless you kill a few infidels.
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