Seashell,

How do we know this is indeed the same person who wrote this that is the shooter at Fort Hood?

Thanks.

Although the cited passage has not yet been unequivocally linked to Hasan, corrobative evidence indicates it reflected his views -

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamran-pasha/a-muslim-soldiers-view-fr_b_348973.html

Murderers rarely attribute their acts to their own hatreds, but often justify them on the basis of hatred they claim others feel toward them. It works both psychologically and politically, and Bin Laden is not unaware of this. However, although Hasan may have seen his actions as a noble effort in the service of his own religion, American Muslims, in and outside of the military, have been quick, vigorous, and almost unanimous in announcing that they are not about to let him get away with that rationalization, that his act of evil can't be justified by Islam or any other philosophy they share, and that they see it as a betrayal of his country and their faith.

They hope to distinguish Islam as practiced by the vast majority of Muslims from its perversion by a violent few. That distinction will grow increasingly important in the coming days as more evidence emerges, particularly if it reinforces current evidence linking Hasan's actions in part to his belief systems, and as a necessary antidote to attempts by others to stereotype all Muslims based on the criminal acts of a violent minority.

It is wrong to over-analyse Hasan's motives; and to expect that any rational analysis will enable understanding the causes that drove him to kill at Ft. Hood. Simply, he is/was insane. Logic and sensibility are not two qualities likely to be found investigating Hasan's state of mind.

It is right however to attempt and separate this from any religious, or any ideological underpinnings. Hasan is a broken human being, not operating under paradigms of rationality. Attempting to make sense from his actions, and the motivations which impelled the murderous spree is itself an act of futility.

This comes down to how our system of values is prioritized.

Two main features are at issue here.

One is human life.

And the second is a belief in a religious doctrine.

Each of us is faced with having to decide which is superior.

The first choice makes our path simple.

The second may require following a doctrine which is harmful to life.

The two have dramatically conflicting outcomes. Proposing that they are comparable in some way invites little debate. But here we are in the midst of the ultimate debate. We term this insanity.

It may be instructive to read about the previous such incident, which occurred this May( http://www.armytimes.com/news/2009/05/army_shooting_update4_051309w/ ). In this case, the shooter was not a Muslim. The incident got much less press. Granted, fewer people were killed and the killing occurred in Iraq not on American soil, but the story passed relatively unnoticed. And of course, most people assumed the killing was motivated by stress. As Admiral Mullen said:

“It [the killing] does speak to me for the need for us to redouble our efforts in terms of dealing with the stress [of combat],” Mullen said. “It also speaks to the issues of multiple deployments [and] increasing dwell time.”

Hasan may have been influenced to some degree by Jihadism, but most likely, the primary factor leading to his crime was the same as that which led to Sgt. Russell's similar crime.

I agree with you, seashell, that Hasan was caught in a dilemma. Crushed, you might say, between two irreconcilable forces. One, he was stuck in the military. Obviously he'd been there for some time. And he began his medical training before 9/11. Indeed he'd been working with PTSD victims of two wars for 6 years prior to his orders to go to Afghanistan. Thus he could never have known that his medical training, provided by the military and requiring a long stint before he could leave, would place him in a situation where (Two) he would end up in a war zone where the "enemy" would be "brothers" of his own faith.

Other than speaking out - he may have felt he was in a vise from which he could not extricate himself. This can indeed drive someone close to madness, and his behavior seems to have been his "speaking out" (just as 9/11 was also a kind of "speaking out"). This is not to excuse either event. But it behooves us, I would argue, to try and comprehend the message that is being sent - no matter how much we may disagree with or disapprove of the manner of sending the message. For if we fail to heed (and reflect on) the message, as I believe we failed to do after 9/11, we do so at our peril.

"We" are part of the system that placed Hasan in an impossible situation. "We" are part of the system that angered OBL as well. We may disagree with the morality of their actions. But aside from that, we need to examine "our" role (as a society, as an imperialist power) as well.

Thank you for starting just such a conversation, seashell! I commend you for that.

Well, imagine the US starting its war on terror earlier. Suppose we'd decided to come to the aid of our closest ally, the British, in their war on terror? Why didn't we? Well, they were fighting terrorism in Ireland and the US has a great number of voting Americans of Irish heritage. But then again, I am wrong. We did come to their aid. We just didn't do it by invading Ireland. We used diplomacy. Hmm...

Sacrificing one's life for a cause or companions has a long history. Some examples would include Leonidas at Thermopylae and Travis at the Alamo.

Sacrificing one's life for a religous cause is perhaps more understandable than doing it because one's honor as a officer and a gentleman demands it, something that defies common sense.

However, religious motivation does not seem to be necessary for terrorist suicide attacks. The explosive belt was developed by the Tamil Tigers and first used to assasinate Indira Ghandi.

I truly wish to extricate the religious views from the act. I believe we are dealing with a psychic illness whose overtones have a mystical character. The mystical character assumes the likeness of the perpetrator's culture in retrograde. So, one can focus on the Islamist nature of the act but in so doing confuse ideology with culture.

Disclaimer: here comes Godwin!

Nazi Germany embraced a teutonic mythology emboldened by eugenics. Deep down, Nazi mysticism was a rehash of Wotan eschatology. We can say that there is something wrong with the mythology, but in my opinion that misses the point. Germany was in a crisis owed to a loss of empire and economy. Nazis appealed to their nation's desire for revenge and reclamation. While imdividual Germans had their own unique psychology and character, collectively they fell sway to a national collective identity in order to not only get back what was lost but ultimately triumph over the entire planet.

These fantasies are irrational but seductive. In my opinion, it is a lot easier to displace individual problems with collective struggle. Perhaps Major Nidal's inadequacies as a psychologist (an inability to relate with and heal soldiers) were projected onto the American wars on his religion. Who knows the litany of personal setbacks and crises he endured? No matter what, however, it appears he was seduced by the kulturkampf (jihad) aspect of his religion.

This problem is only exacerbated by the heirarchical, authoritarian and collective nature of the military itself. The military ethos lends itself to these kulturkampf ideologies... The military is rooted in them. We soldiers protect YOUR freedoms from all enemies, foreign and domestic. We are trained to kill
and sacrifice ourselves in the name of a nation and its founding document. Finally, we are all traines to believe that our personal struggles are failures to adapt to the military ethos. This is a recipe for individual identification with mystical-authoritarian strains of belief.

That is why I insist that it is the wars and our military culture that has given rise to Major Nidal. Islam just happened to be the flavor. The problem is systemic and statistically more likely to impact the armed forces more than any other demographic.

No seashell, No quinn, No Thera P - this is not the place to discuss American foreign policy. Not this post, not this discussion, not here, not now. There is much room for that elsewhere on TPM, and no-one would deny any person the right to present his or her views on the subject. Just not as an attempt to balance that which cannot be balanced.

A murderer has shot 45 people, killing 13, out of a misguided mix of personal turmoil and ideological and religious fanaticism. Some of the wounded will be disabled for life. Some may yet die. The families of the thirteen victims who are already among the dead are grieving. They are asking questions. They are trying to understand. But they are not trying to understand why we are in Afghanistan or Iraq. They want to know why someone chose to rob them of a son, a daughter, a wife, a husband.

To their enormous credit, the American Muslim community also understood this sense of priority and proportion. It is why they so quickly and passionately denounced the heinous act as despicable and beyond justification. They did not "disapprove" or "disagree" (to quote tepid euphemisms from a comment above) - they condemned, as did President Obama who told us it exhibited the "worst" of our natures.

We can legitimately discuss reasons, motives, beliefs, philosophies, but not as a means of lessening the sense of evil that pervades this single act. In the few days immediately following 9/11, we saw something similar in reports from college campuses of students claiming that America "had it coming". Fortunately, those voices were quickly silenced by almost universal condemnation from others across the entire political spectrum. We should not here risk the same condemnation through insensitivity to the grief and suffering of the victims of this atrocity. Let our differences on our military efforts argue themselves out elsewhere.

"'Tout comprendre, c'est tout pardonner' is the devil's sentimentality" (George Bernard Shaw). We can continue our attempts to understand. To exonerate, excuse, ameliorate, mitigate? I hope not.