(UPDATED BELOW)

I.
Seventy-one years ago, almost to the very day, a member of a religious minority fatally shot a government official – an act by a troubled individual that was seized upon by hateful minds to set off an orgy of blood and destruction against his co-religionists.

While the Ft. Hood shootings will not spark a rerun of Kristallnacht – the anti-semitic pogrom launched by the Nazis after 17-year-old Herschel Grynszpan shot German diplomat Ernst Vom Rath in Paris on Nov. 7, 1938, in retaliation for Nazi depradations against the Jews – the upswelling of racial, ethnic and religious hatred against Muslims and Arabs we will now see in many quarters will ring with ugly echoes.

The entire lexicon of Islamophobia is already filled to bursting with Nazi tropes – "the enemy within," the dark, monolithic mass of "prodigious breeders" threatening to overwhelm Western Civilization, the "maniacal extremists" who will not rest until they destroy the sacred Homeland, the sinister, secret worldwide conspiracy which bribes and suborns Western leaders into doing its bidding, etc. etc. This sinister discourse is accepted, and used, among the highest circles of power – senators, representatives, "serious" commentators, academics, think-tank apparatchiks. And all of this is being constantly regurgitated even while the armed forces and covert operators of the United States are in the midst of an apparently endless campaign of death and violence that has killed, so far, well in excess of a million innocent people – the vast majority of them Muslims, or of Muslim heritage – while planting great, bristling fortresses of domination and excess in the midst of wretchedly poor lands.

In this too, our modern Islamophobes mimic their German forbears. It was the Nazis who held – and exercised – violent, overwhelming sway over the Jews within their reach, even as they bleated constantly about the "Jewish threat" to "destroy the German people."  Perhaps many of them, at some level, believed this fantastical projection of their own murderous desires and unquenchable anxieties; certainly, we know that top Nazis like Hitler and Himmler "justified" their extermination programs as "pre-emptive defense" against an existential threat from the "Judeo-Bolshevik" conspiracy. (For in this disordered mindset, every Jew was considered a Bolshevik -- and even rich, capitalist Jews were seen as part of the same overarching conspiracy -- just as our Islamophobes consider every Muslim a terrorist or an extremist.) In a similar manner, all of our Terror Warriors – not just the strident Islamophobes, but the entire bipartisan political establishment, including the "progressive" president – paint the "Long War" as a strictly defensive measure against dark forces who irrationally "hate us for our freedoms" and seek to "destroy our way of life."

Comparisons are not equivalencies, and history does not repeat itself -- but it often rings with disturbing assonances.

II.

At this stage, with so much about the Ft. Hood case still unknown, there is little point in commenting on the substance of the case. But all kinds of rumors and conjectures and second-hand reports about the alleged shooter are richoceting around the media echo chamber.

For example, the New York Times, the nation's most "serious" newspaper, filled some of its early reports with pro-terrorist comments culled from the internet, left there by people who have the same or similar names as the accused. (This just days after the media had been burned by numerous "false positives" in the White House guest list.)  The fact that it is unlikely that an Army officer on active duty would post such comments in his own name was obviously no bar to getting the most the most inflammatory factoids into circulation as soon as possible.

This might be considered irresponsible, if it didn't come from a paper that has been instrumental in selling the Terror War, with its ever-mounting toll of civilians deaths (three more children, and other civilians working in a field, were killed by a NATO missile on the same day of the Ft. Hood shooting), and all the despair and suffering and hatred it is engendering.  In any case, at this point, I think the only relevant thing one can say about this particular case appeared on the website of the Iraq Veterans Against the War on Thursday: "The shootings that happened today are a tragic reminder of the hidden costs of war."

***

UPDATE: Playwright Wajahat Ali has some pertinent observations in the Guardian:

...Sadly, although yesterday's violent outburst against fellow soldiers was the most deadly in US history, it was not the first of its kind. In May this year, five soldiers were shot dead at Camp Liberty in Baghdad by Sergeant John Russell. In February 2008, an Air Force sergeant diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) upon returning from Iraq fatally shot his son and daughter after a domestic argument with his ex-wife. Religion was not the common link between these soldiers; it was mental instability. Even if such individuals purported to be religious, their wanton acts of barbarism reflect rather their tenuous grasp on sanity.

A cousin of Hasan, interviewed by reporters, has suggested an alternative motivation, not necessarily influenced by religious conviction. "He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy," said Nader Hasan. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there [in Iraq and Afghanistan]."... Hasan's aunt told the Washington Post that her nephew had consulted an attorney to see if he could leave the army before his contract expired due to harassment he had received from colleagues because he was Muslim.

Whatever the FBI investigation and any subsequent prosecution following the terrible shootings at Fort Hood may finally reveal, incidents such as these warrant a re-examination of how to treat and discharge or excuse those soldiers who are troubled or conflicted psychologically, politically or religiously over our foreign policy and, in particular, the current war in Afghanistan and occupation of Iraq.

No mere factual, evidential explanation could ever justify or excuse in any way Hasan's alleged actions. But it ought to broaden the horizon of those in the media who seem infatuated with the need to pin the blame for this perverse tragedy solely on a man's religious faith and Arabic last name, rather than exploring the possibility of a more complicated truth involving some combination of mental state, divided loyalty or conscientious objection.

Comments (22)

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EJK said:

Being Careful Great piece, Chris. Yet too careful. I won't be. We don't know Hasan's motive, 'though I hope we can hear the reasons from Hasan himself. ("Lone gunmen" tend not to last too long in the state of Texas.) Perhaps his motive was as mad and greedy and perverted and selfish -- the only terms possible in the context of current American "values" -- as it is being portrayed. On the other hand, if his conscious motive was to kill -- knowing he too would be killed, and he will be soon enough -- to stop his personal participation in further Iraqi or Afghani bloodshed: well, I'm sorry, but imho THAT IS AN HONORABLE MOTIVE. And this is an honorable act. Of course, it all depends on whose ox is being gored, doesn't it? Let's say: A Major in the Revolutionary Guard of Iran -- in a self-immolating protest against the evil of the Iranian regime -- takes down a dozen or so Revolutionary Guard soldiers: how would that be played here?

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November 06, 2009 | url
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Jimmy Montague said:

Story I read -- The story I read had it that this Hasan creature had his medical degree from some second-tier school. He worked for a year as a psychiatrist at Walter Reed before he was let go on grounds of unsatisfactory performance. In other words, the guy who wasn't good enough to shrink the heads of traumatic stress cases at Walter Reed was set loose to shrink the heads of traumatically stressed combat soldiers at Ft. Hood. What that says about Army medicine, I leave for the rest of you to ponder. For my part I'm glad I'm an off-duty Marine because the whole episode just points up the difference between Marine grunts and Army "war fighters": In the Army, pissed-off psychiatrists shoot conscience-stricken war fighters. In the Marines, pissed-off grunts shoot conscience-stricken psychiatrists. Us Jarheads have got our priorities straight. They can blow the whole thing off as a mercy killing: If the psychiatrist hadn't shot those guys, the food in Army mess halls would have killed them eventually.

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November 06, 2009
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Sean O'Neil said:

... there's always the deeper question -- what does "soldiering" in service to a bunch of economic and resource pirates do to one's soul? you sign up thinking you're going to "make the world safe for democracy" and you end up killing innocents, destroying their culture, and protecting construction and engineering "contractors" who are building profit-centers for robber barons. sounds like a recipe for a very misanthropic end-product of cognitive dissonance. not surprising that the sociopathic end-product would result in soldiers killing each other. does the name Pat Tillman ring any bells?

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November 06, 2009
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yankee 30 said:

	HOLY SHEITE HASAN BIN CHEMICAL MUSLIM LADEN... ALI HUSSEIN SADDAM BROTHERHOOD... ALLAHU JIHAD AKBAR! Reeling in the rubes.
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November 06, 2009
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woody said:

	If nothing else this will provide evidence to rebuke the absurd assertions that a well-armed society is a safe society if, as I heard reported earlier, perhaps on NPR, that some of the victims had been shot by folks shooting at the shooter... a perverse visitation of collateral damage, nest paw?
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Jimmy Montague said:

Anti gunners get a grip -- The number of soldiers carrying loaded weapons around a base like Ft. Hood is extremely small. Every grunt has a rifle and you'll see a lot of soldiers carrying rifles on any given day. But probably none of those weapons are loaded. The ammo for those rifles is locked away somewhere safe and it's only brought out when ammo is needed, say, at the rifle range. When the ammo comes out, each man involved in the exercise gets a specific number of rounds and SHOOTS that many rounds under supervision of his superiors. If fewer rounds are required than were issued, each man turns his extra ammo in to the armory, again, under the supervision of his superiors. There are NOT tens of thousands of GIs with loaded weapons stalking the streets of Ft. Hood -- or any other military base. In my day, a great many of us had personal sidearms but even those were kept in the battalion armory. Any man caught with a sidearm in his personal locker was looking at a court martial and brig time. There are some very scary people in my Marine Corps (or in any other army) but their mates all know who they are and anyone seen packing a rod would have been ratted out quickly. This psychiatrist fellow was an officer. Officers have special privileges. Accounts I've read tell that he killed his victims by shooting them with handguns -- at least one of them a semiautomatic -- from close range. Because he was an officer, those were probably personal sidearms that he kept in his home or his office and were not under the control of his superiors. In other words, the same thing could have happened in any hospital ward anywhere in the United States. Noise will be made because the thing happened at a military base but truth is it was no more likely to happen there than any other place.

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November 07, 2009
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Chris Dowd said:

Exactly One of my first thoughts upon hearing of this attack was of that Jewish kid who assassinated a German diplomat. I'm frankly at a loss to understand the level of hate in this country for Muslims. It isn't like Muslims have a deep presence in this country either historically or numerically. They are few in numbers and have little political clout. Other than a few enclaves they don't even seem to congregate together in distinct neighborhoods. Statistically they have lower levels of crime than whites. The vast majority of Americans have no significant contact with Muslims whatsoever that would justify the levels of hate for them. And this is even more true of Red State America. I read the anti Muslim screeds on the right in the wake of this attack- an attack that was entirely predictable given the posture of the United States in the Islamic world- and I simply don't get it. I mean- I reserve the sort of hate these people express for people with whom they have no contact whatsoever and from whom they will never suffer any harm whatsoever for someone who hits me in the jaw unprovoked. These people act as if Muslims have done something to them- personally. Are their lives that pathetically empty? Are they such cowards that they only hate those whom they know are no threat to them? And they do know this. The average reich winger in Red State land- sitting in his split level ranch with a double mortgage and 50 grand in credit card debt who is up in a lather over this attack KNOWS that his hate for muslims is costless. He knows he doesn't have any grievance with these people. It is bizarre.

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Sean O'Neil said:

... to Chris Dowd -- I agree with a lot of what you said, but the one-sided nature of where you see hatred of Muslims misses some other guilty parties. plenty of Democrats hate Muslims too. their excuses may be more refined, doing a better job of hiding the pale hatred, but they're still just excuses. As a group, Muslims don't threaten anyone here in the USA, but you'd never believe that if you listened to anyone in any position of federal power in DC these days. Obama and his cabinet are fine examples of this. Obama had the temerity to lecture all of the Islamic people very early on in his tenure. He spoke to them as if he were their superior, with words of instruction for a bunch of mushminds and juvenile disruptors. Hillary Clinton breathes fire in their direction. So does Susan Rice. You want to know why so many hate Muslims? Because even the supposedly noble, pure, liberal, progressive Democrats keep saying such negative things about Islam and Muslims. I can still recall when Glenn Greenwald argued from a position that blamed 9/11/2001's events on Islamic terrorists.

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November 07, 2009
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Truth Excavator said:

If nothing else this will provide evidence that a well-armed society is a safe society. As Jimmy said, soldiers very rarely carry guns with them on base, so they are prime meat for any crazed gun lord who wants to kill. If Officer Hasan knew that his victims had loaded sidearms and that they might strike back in an instant second, then he wouldn't had killed so many lives, or, who knows, maybe he would never have gone through with this whole mess. Anti-gunners need to look at the facts before they make a stupid judgment. This has nothing to do with gun culture, this guy Hasan didn't even go to a firing range. The people who go to a firing range let off steam and don't need to go on a rampage, so if anything, this suggests that a gun culture is healthy for men to blow of some stress, to gain camaraderie, and just shoot paper..instead of real flesh.

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Sean O'Neil said:

	... correlation is not causation
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November 07, 2009
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yankee 30 said:

	... "If nothing else this will provide evidence that a well-armed society is a safe society." There are at least 10,000 homicides a year in the USA. The majority of these are committed using handguns. Doesn't sound too safe to me.
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November 07, 2009
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yankee 30 said:

	... ...and the USA is by far the most well-armed nation on the planet. Is that making the world a safer place?
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November 07, 2009
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Magmak1 said:

... Me? I've applied to that new "Manhunters" agency under Panetta. Got me a GlobalHawkPredator firing Hellfire rounds on one hip, an M1A1 firing depleted uranium rounds on the other, a TASER in my backpocket, and an F-22 parked in my driveway in case I need it. Heck, my gun's so much bigger'n your'n that I give the Viagra away to the local warlords. After the shooting's over, me and my buddies go find sumthin' young and sweet to dispose of. Yessir, I pledge allegiance to the corporate logo of the plutocracy of AmerKa....

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yankee 30 said:

	Manhunters Well, looks like if you have 'em, and I think the statistics for domestic bloodshed and international carnage bare me out, you're gonna use 'em.
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November 07, 2009
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Jimmy Montague said:

firearms are for stupid, rich people The Rwandan genocide was for the most part carried out with spears and machetes. They didn't have any handguns, you see, and there weren't nearly enough Kalashnikovs to go around. So they just went door-to-door and hacked their minority bretheren to pieces. Thus it is indeed as you said, yankee 30: "If you have 'em, you're gonna use 'em." A hammer is a lethal weapon. A screwdriver is a lethal weapon. A ballbat is a lethal weapon. A heavy wrench, a paring knife, a nail gun, an ice pick, a fist-sized rock, three feet of baling twine, three feet of piano wire, a guitar string, a chainsaw, an axe, a sharp pencil, a BIC pen -- there are literally hundreds of objects in the average home that you or anyone else could use to kill with. The fact that so many Americans choose to do it with a handgun isn't a measure of the handgun's utility but rather indicates the Americans' lack of imagination. They kill with handguns because they watch too much TV -- where EVERYONE kills with handguns. Anti-gunners like yourself are as unimaginative as the rest. For my part, I think the most deadly and effective tool for killing is the hatchet that your teen-aged son can get for less than $10 at your local hardware store. Simply step up behind the person you don't like and whack 'em once in the head with that little hatchet, and the job is done. No noise, no stray bullets, no hassle with paperwork and permits, nothing to disturb the neighborhood. A truly good handgun costs $800 to $1,000 by itself. Bullets are expensive -- about $50 for a box of 50 .44 magnum hollowpoints these days -- and you need to fire thousands of practice rounds before you get proficient with the weapon. But a hatchet -- just spend the ten dollars and put the thing to use. You don't even need to sharpen it. If it's dull, just hit 'em a little harder....

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November 08, 2009
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Trevor Headrick said:

	"Honey...I'm home!" Nice Jimmy. ;)
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winston smith said:

I don't hate the Muslims it's their religion i hate. they believe that god's telling them to amputate limbs off of robbers, that their women shouldn't bare nothing but they're eyes, that christians and jews are nothing but apes and pigs. it like christianity was 2000 years ago. it's all saudi arabia fault and our governments fault. saudi arabia has funneled untold billions of dollars to have Wahhabi mosques built in the west. these are the worst mosques to have built in the west. there are good version of islam. but they don't have the money or the backing of saudi arabia. as a matter of fact, the are called heretics by the Wahhabi clerics and anybody who kills them gets a free pass into heaven.

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yankee 30 said:

	... "firearms are for stupid, rich people" ...but they work just as well for motivated poor people. I don't understand your predjudice. Guns are particularly efficient if you want a quick body count. It has little to do with imagination. Anyone out there thinking of knocking off the local 7-11 with a sharp pencil? Take care, the proprietor just might respond with a shot of miracle whip.
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Jimmy Montague said:

yankee 30 You wrote "...but they work just as well for motivated poor people. I don't understand your predjudice. Guns are particularly efficient if you want a quick body count. It has little to do with imagination." It has everything to do with imagination. Vietnamese fighters killed many thousands of American soldiers without firing a shot. They did it with pieces of bamboo and old tin cans and string and manure and all kinds of stuff that their heavily-armed American opponents never recognized until it was too late. For your feeble mind, a better demonstration might be to watch a Jackie Chan film. Chan's fight scenes are typically comedic but it's instructive to watch them all the same. When Chan gets going every object in the room becomes a weapon: a chair, a paper tray, a broom, a ladder, a piece of rope, a yardstick, a wastebasket, etc. Anything he can pick up and swing he WILL pick up and use in any number of ways until all possibilities inherent in that object are exhausted. Then he throws the object at his opponent, grabs something else, and exhausts the possibilities offered by the new object. You can smart-mouth me all you want. You can throw all kinds of curves into it but it's all just a lot of window. The way you talk about firearms makes it clear to people who know firearms that when you talk about firearms, you simply don't know what you're talking about. And I tell you once again: firearms are for stupid, rich people. People who are poor (and smart) find ways to work without them.

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Sean O'Neil said:

	... "winston smith" wins the thread's Liar Award for spreading the fattest lies with the worst "straight face." pure Abe Foxman stuff.
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November 08, 2009
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yankee 30 said:

... My feeble mind always found the Jackie Chan enterprise to be a vulgar, money-making circus. I like Bruce Lee, though. But I'm talking about guns and gun culture in America, not karate chops and sharpened bamboo along the Ho Chi Minh trail. Obviously, people without guns who are motivated to violence will quickly learn(yes, imaginatively)to work with other means(though they'll have to work a lot harder to rack up that kind of carnage). I know a little about them, but could really give a shit. I have no need for them. Have you? I'm just suggesting that we learn to live without them, you know, along with trans-fat foods. Or at least without so many of them. And at least stop worshipping them. What is your point? That Americans are stupid, rich people?

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November 08, 2009
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Jimmy Montague said:

My point is -- My point is simply that you know NOTHING about firearms or any other weapon. Proof of it is that you think weapons kill. The truth is, firearms do not kill. People use them as instruments, tools with which to kill, but firearms and other weapons by themselves kill nothing. It is the hard heart that kills. A motive is insufficient. The intent to kill will not turn the trick. It takes a hard heart to kill. The angry, wannabe killer who lacks a hard heart is unarmed no matter what he holds in his hand.

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