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Plaid Adder Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 01:42 PM
Original message
Ft. Hood
Edited on Fri Nov-06-09 02:18 PM by Plaid Adder
I heard about Fort Hood this morning on the radio. One thinks first, of course, about how horrible this is for the victims, for the families of the shooter and the killed and wounded alike. I know there are people here who have family in the military who might be at Fort Hood right now and I am hoping for your sake that they are all OK.

Initially the thing that most surprised me about the story was that the shooter was a psychiatrist. I know it's a cliche that psychiatrists are themselves supposed to be kind of messed up. Nevertheless, one would think--one would hope--that a psychiatrist might recognize the early signs of a 'snap' coming on and seek help before it got to this point.

After that, the thing that surprised me most was that a bunch of American Muslim groups were releasing statements distancing themselves from the shooter and protesting their loyalty to America and how much they love this country, etc. And just as I was thinking, "What a shame that they feel they have to do that," the third thing that surprised me was getting onto the computer and seeing that this shooting was already being represented in the media as a potential terrorist attack.

I guess I may as well say it, since someone's going to: If Hasan had been a white Christian people wouldn't be asking these questions. He'd just be one more American guy who one day 'snapped' and, since he had access to weapons, decided that as long as he was going to commit suicide he would take a couple dozen people with him. The fact that it happened at an army base would fit right into the dominant narrative about this kind of shooting. The search for the motive typically uncovers some sort of frustration or humiliation or other catastrophe--often it's the loss of a job, sometimes it's a divorce, sometimes it's a paranoid fantasy about why the shooter *doesn't* have something he wants and who's at fault for that--which is cited as the cause for the shooter's "snapping" and unleashing this kind of violence. I figure knowing you're about to be sent to Iraq would cause a lot of people to snap. My partner said this morning that she had heard that 3-4 people in the armed forces were committing suicide *per day* these days. But you don't, of course, hear much about suicides--unless they incorporate homicide.

But for the American media, when it's a Muslim shooter, the meaning of "suicide" shifts. I believe we will eventually find out that Hasan's confessional status has inspired the media to make too much of the analogical similarities between suicide-by-shooting-spree and a "suicide bombing." What the two scenarios have in common is an individual at the center of it who has chosen to commit suicide via a method which will deliberately take the lives of an unknown number of other people. The difference is in the explanatory narrative. The shooting spree scenario is typically attributed to an individual psyche under stress. The suicide bombing is typically attributed to an individual's participation in a larger ideological/ethnic/religious war. To me, Occam's Razor says to read the Fort Hood shooting as part of the first narrative rather than the second.

Every time a thing like this happens there's the scramble for a motive. Every time, I feel like no matter what they come up with, it's insufficient. Every time I something like this happens I feel like the same shadowy evil thing has once again poked its head up above the surface of the water and it will soon subside back under before we can see what it really was. But I have to say that my gut is not expecting that this is going to turn out to be anything other than the action of one highly disturbed and highly desperate individual who really, really, really fucking didn't want to go to Iraq.

Why desperation translates into homicide for some people and not others--and why those people are pretty much always men*--I do not know. I will never know, and I am abotu ready to give up trying to figure it out. It just mainly makes me sad for everyone touched by this tragedy--which will probably include a lot of Muslim-Americans who had nothing to do with it but will take shit from other people about it nonetheless.

The Plaid Adder

*On edit, it occurred to me that the only exception that springs to mind is that of women who kill their children before killing themselves. I guess the distinctive thing about the mass-shooting suicide/homicide, apart from the involvement of guns, is that the other victims are strangers.
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stray cat Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 01:45 PM
Response to Original message
1. DU would be worse if it was a conservative christian or just a conservative
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gaspee Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:37 PM
Response to Reply #1
5. Uhm
How do you know he isn't a conservative?
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CaliforniaPeggy Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:05 PM
Response to Original message
2. Your gut feeling is, I suspect, right on.
It's a very sad situation, one which was probably fueled by his rage, and the availability of guns.



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paulsby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:46 PM
Response to Reply #2
8. the myopia here is astounding
the guy reportedly screamed "allahu akbar" before opening fire.

he reportedly had posted on the internet supporting suicide bombers.

he gave his neighbors copies of the koran hours before the shooting

if equivalent pointers towards his conservative fundamentalist christian religion were present, people would be all over it.

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nadinbrzezinski Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 05:50 PM
Response to Reply #8
12. Timothy McVeigh did similar things
and he did it to avenge Ruby Ridge and Waco.

To me BOTH have the markers of a terrorist attack... and damn it I don't care if the religion is Islam, Christianity (insert flavor here), Judaism, Hindu, Shinto or none whatsoever.
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paulsby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 10:45 PM
Response to Reply #12
13. exactly
i get really tired of how we are just supposed to ignore his religious influences BECAUSE he's muslim. we don't ignore them when religious fanatics kill abortion doctors in the name of their god, because they are christian. and i sure as hell am not ignoring the fact that this guy CLEARLY was heavily influenced by his religious beliefs.

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Violet_Crumble Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Nov-07-09 12:44 AM
Response to Reply #13
17. Most people aren't saying to ignore his religious influence....
What I'm worried about, and I'm sure it's the worry of many others, is that American Muslims will be judged on this murderer's actions. I've already seen one or two Islamaphobic types appearing in threads and going to town about the sheer Muslimness of it all, so there are grounds to those concerns...

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Sezu Donating Member (920 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Nov-07-09 12:09 AM
Response to Reply #8
14. And nothing will change any of that.
Most revealing is that he chose suicide as a way to end his "suffering," for surely he knew he would be killed. He wasn't by the luck of it but that doesn't change the fact that he believed as a Muslim that suicide/murder was ok if in defense of Islam according to published accounts.

So no doubt he did what he thought was truly Islamic as taught to him by others who believed similiar things. Tons and tons of other Muslims would call bullshit on him and his ilk and we have and will hear from them and we need to listen to them.

Those of us who question the fundy involvement in the military by Christians need to make sure that discussion includes ALL fundies of all religions.
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TorchTheWitch Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Nov-07-09 12:43 AM
Response to Reply #8
16. some here made that assumption before finding out he's Muslim
Automatically trashed him for probably being a Chistian fundy whacko based on nothing more than Ft. Hood being located in Texas and its proximitey to Waco. Now that it's discovered he's a Muslim fundy whacko all manner of excuses and covering up of that is going on here. Certainly the guy has serious mental issues that were not properly addressed, but there really is no question that his fundy whacko beliefs played a part in why he did what he did. People with serious mental issues do often embrace the worst aspects of one religion or another perhaps to fool themselves into believing there's nothing wrong with their minds. What is so disturbing here is that if he was a Christian fundy whacko he'd be trounced up one side and down the other, but when it's discovered that his particular choice of fundy whackoism is Muslim it's everyone else's fault but his.

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Violet_Crumble Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Nov-07-09 12:49 AM
Response to Reply #16
18. I didn't see anyone do that here...
Edited on Sat Nov-07-09 12:50 AM by Violet_Crumble
I've also seen no-one 'covering up' as you claim. I'm getting a bit sick of the constant chorus of 'yeah, well, if he was a Christian fundy, we'd be all over that too coz like no-one else would at DU coz they're all a big bunch of Muslim-lovers!!!'. Christians in the US aren't a minority that's suffered from discrimination over the past few years, and people are going to be sensitive when it comes to groups that have been or are still being discriminated against. Christians aren't in that category...
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lapfog_1 Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:06 PM
Response to Original message
3. Always good to read your thoughts.
You are one of the primary reasons that I joined DU, now years past.

Thank you for your post and your exceptional writing skill.

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la_chupa Donating Member (357 posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:07 PM
Response to Original message
4. yea pretty much
If he were a white boy from a middle class midwestern town, this whole thing would be entirely different.
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malaise Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:39 PM
Response to Original message
6. Nice post
Send it to thst moron Lester Holt.
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AspenRose Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 02:41 PM
Response to Original message
7. It is *so* good to see you here....this place has gone to hell lately
Speak up more often - we miss you, and it'll help balance out teh crazy.

:hi:
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DearAbby Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 03:21 PM
Response to Original message
9. Kick
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Karenina Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 05:13 PM
Response to Original message
10. Thank you PA, as ever, for your clarity.
"But I have to say that my gut is not expecting that this is going to turn out to be anything other than the action of one highly disturbed and highly desperate individual who really, really, really fucking didn't want to go to Iraq."
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SeattleGirl Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Fri Nov-06-09 05:46 PM
Response to Original message
11. PA, I had many of the same thoughts about the Ft. Hood shooting.
Especially after hearing clips of what some on the lunatic fringe of the right were saying about the shooter because he was Muslim.

I would tend to agree with you and your point about Occam's Razor; sometimes the simplest explanation is the correct one in the end.

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MisterP Donating Member (1000+ posts) Send PM | Profile | Ignore Sat Nov-07-09 12:26 AM
Response to Original message
15. since 9-11 there's been a constant din demanding that Muslims denounce
Edited on Sat Nov-07-09 12:30 AM by MisterP
any and all terrorist or "militant" incidents involving Muslims: this demand is blatantly rested on the notion of collective guilt, that all members of a (non-WASP) group are answerable for the action of any member of that group, and all are punishable for the actions of a few

this has been driven by culture warriors, from Malkin to Sam Harris, who keep insisting that 1) Muslim militants and terrorists are irrational and "pure evil," and can't be negotiated with or have rationales, and 2) moderate Muslims are "fronting" for them, providing them with cover and acting as a fifth column--unwillingly or otherwise

US minorities--before the 60s--were expected to "prove themselves," and demonstrate that they "deserved" inclusion and citizenship

guess it doesn't change all that much
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