[Reader-list] 'Going Muslim' - America after Fort Hood.

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Dear Anupam
 
It is not possible to answer your question. Your offered either/or options have no connection. One addresses "what was it that caused Hasan to snap (victamisation)". The other addresses "whether it was possible to recognise that Hasan had snapped and thus prevent the massacre (PC discarded)".
 
That Hasan snapped of that there is no doubt.
 
Your suggestion is that it was because of "constant victimisation by his colleagues in the US Army"
 
There has been mention of "victamisation" of Hasan, but that it was "constant" seems to be information that you are privy to.
 
But it could well be that Hasan 'snapped' because of the "victamisation".
 
MacAskill (who's Guardian article you referred to) has a different take, from you, on Hasan's snapping. The conclusion offered by him is:

"""""   But someone listening day after day to troops describing the tension and carnage in Iraq and Afghanistan could end up as damaged as those facing combat at first hand. """""""
That could also be a or the reason.
 
My opinion sides with the innovative phrase used by Vardarajan - 'Going Muslim', as being the cause for Hasan snapping. That culminated in his "Allah hu Akbar" cry as he opened fire. (presuming that is correctly reported)
 
Vardarajan explains it well in qualifying the "snapping":

"""" The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis """"""""
I do not see much wrong in Vardarajan saying that "The U.S. Army has to be a PC-free zone." He explains well why he says so (you have quoted his words). Connectedly he says:

""""" So, first, it should be part of the mandatory duty of every member of the armed forces to report any remarks or behavior of fellow service members that could be construed as indicating unfitness for duty for any reason. """""
Perfectly reasonable, I would say.
 
Could this  massacre have been avoided if there was no overly Political Correctness (PC) at play? Difficult to be certain. 
 
Various sources (including Macaskill and Vardarajan) have quoted views expressed by Hasan indicating that his Muslimness was more important to him than his being an American. Hasan indicates so in a variety of situations.
 
If those have been correctly reported then Hasan should have been discharged from the US Army much before his scheduled deployment in Iraq and much before he himself (reportedly) sought to leave the US Army. 
 
If this was not done because warning signs  were ignored due to Political Correctness (PC), then certainly such PC should be discarded. 
 
Kshmendra


--- On Wed, 11/11/09, anupam chakravartty <c.anupam at gmail.com> wrote:


From: anupam chakravartty <c.anupam at gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [Reader-list] 'Going Muslim' - America after Fort Hood.
To: "sarai list" <reader-list at sarai.net>, "Kshmendra Kaul" <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com>
Date: Wednesday, November 11, 2009, 4:48 PM


Dear Kshmendra,

Varadarajan offers a conclusion that almost take me back to the times
Bush era: "The U.S. Army has to be a PC-free zone. Our democracy and
our way of life depend on it."  While Hasan's act is heinous, but I do
not understand what makes Varadarajan say: "The Army had a
self-identified Islamic fundamentalist in its midst, blogging about
suicide bombings and telling everyone he hated the Army's mission; and
yet, they did, or could do, nothing about it. In effect, the
"don't-jump-to-conclusions" mentality was underway long before this
man killed his colleagues." Is it really this
'dont-jump-to-conclusions" mentality responsible for this? Or is it
constant victimisation by his colleagues in the US Army
(http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/nov/06/nidal-malik-hasan-fort-hood-shooting1)?

-anupam

On Wed, Nov 11, 2009 at 4:23 PM, Kshmendra Kaul <kshmendra2005 at yahoo.com> wrote:
> 'Going Muslim'
>
> Tunku Varadarajan, 11.09.09
>
> America after Fort Hood.
>
> "Going postal" is a piquant American phrase that describes the phenomenon of violent rage in which a worker--archetypically a postal worker--"snaps" and guns down his colleagues.
>
> As the enormity of the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan sinks in, we must ask whether we are confronting a new phenomenon of violent rage, one we might dub--disconcertingly--"Going Muslim." This phrase would describe the turn of events where a seemingly integrated Muslim-American--a friendly donut vendor in New York, say, or an officer in the U.S. Army at Fort Hood--discards his apparent integration into American society and elects to vindicate his religion in an act of messianic violence against his fellow Americans. This would appear to be what happened in the case of Maj. Hasan.
>
> The difference between "going postal," in the conventional sense, and "going Muslim," in the sense that I suggest, is that there would not necessarily be a psychological "snapping" point in the case of the imminently violent Muslim; instead, there could be a calculated discarding of camouflage--the camouflage of integration--in an act of revelatory catharsis. In spite of suggestions by some who know him that he had a history of "harassment" as a Muslim in the army, Maj. Hasan did not "snap" in the "postal" manner. He gave away his possessions on the morning of his day of murder. He even gave away--to a neighbor--a packet of frozen broccoli that he did not wish to see go to waste, even as he mapped in his mind the laying waste of lives at Fort Hood. His was a meticulous, even punctilious "departure."
>
> We are a civilized society. One of our cardinal rules of coexistence is that we (try always to) judge people only by their actions and not by their identity, whether racial, religious or sexual. This is our great strength as a society, and also, in the present circumstances, our great weakness: How to address the threat posed by the fact that, of the hundreds of thousands of Muslims in our midst, there are a few (perhaps many more than a few) who are so radicalized that they would kill their fellow Americans? Must we continue to be neutral in handling all people from different groups even though we know that there are differential risks posed by people of one group? The problem here is a heightened version of the airport security problem, where we check all people--including Chinese grandmothers--regardless of risk profiles. But can we afford that on a grand, national scale? (And I mean that question not merely in a financial sense, but also in terms
 of
>  the price we'd pay in failing to detect a threat in time.)
>
> This being America, we will insist on going a long way to preserve the appearance of equality, and that is no bad thing in terms of moral principle. But like all values, the appearance of equality is not infinite in its appeal--especially if it flies in the face of common sense and self-preservation. A short time after the shootings at Fort Hood, President Obama asked us not to jump to conclusions. To many Americans, this was a grating request, of a piece with the political correctness that was responsible--it has emerged--for the hands-off treatment by the Army of Maj. Hasan. How else could he have been left in the position of treating U.S. troops, given the stories we've now heard about his incendiary statements and apparent incompetence?
>
> This is the same mindset that led the FBI to deny the possibility that the Fort Hood massacre was linked to terrorism even before they could have had any idea that was the case. We don't have to be paranoid about Arab males; we just have to avoid the opposite: Being fearful of coming across as Islamophobic, and thereby failing to look straight at a situation.
>
> This is part of a larger--and too-hot-to-touch--American problem, which is the privileging of religion, and its frequent exemption from rules of normal discourse. Muslims may be more extreme because their religion is founded on bellicose conquest, a contempt for infidels and an obligation for piety that is more extensive than in other schemes. President Obama was as craven as a community college diversity vice-president when he said that no one should jump to conclusions. Everyone did, and he lost credibility with people who cannot stand civic piety in the face of the murderous kind.
>
> Muslims are the most difficult "incomers" in the ongoing integration challenge, which America has always handled with pride--and a kind of swagger. We're the salad bowl/melting pot. Drive through Queens to see how we do this.
>
> America differentiates itself on integration from Western European countries, which are far more cringing and guilt-driven in their approach. But can the American swagger persist if many Americans come genuinely to view Muslims as Fifth Columnists? The integration compact depends on a broad trust that the immigrant's desire to be American can happily co-exist with his other forms of racial/cultural/religious identity. Once that trust doesn't exist, America faces a problem in need of urgent resolution.
>
> Have we reached that point of breakdown in trust? Not yet, I think, and not by some distance; but a few more murderous incidents of the Maj. Hasan variety--a few more shouts of "Allahu Akbar" as Americans are shot dead--will push many Americans on to a dangerous cusp.
>
> I will end on a practical note. The PC--political correctness--problem is an obvious and thorny issue that the U.S. Army, at least, has to tackle. The Army had a self-identified Islamic fundamentalist in its midst, blogging about suicide bombings and telling everyone he hated the Army's mission; and yet, they did, or could do, nothing about it. In effect, the "don't-jump-to-conclusions" mentality was underway long before this man killed his colleagues.
>
> So, first, it should be part of the mandatory duty of every member of the armed forces to report any remarks or behavior of fellow service members that could be construed as indicating unfitness for duty for any reason.
>
> Second, there should be a duty to report such data up the chain of command, regardless of the assessment of the local commander.
>
> Third, there should be a single high-level Pentagon or army department that follows all such cases in real time, whether the potential ground for alarm is sympathy with white supremacism, radical Islamism, endorsement of suicide bombing or simple mental unfitness.
>
> Let the first lesson of the Hasan atrocity be this: The U.S. Army has to be a PC-free zone. Our democracy and our way of life depend on it.
>
> (Tunku Varadarajan, a professor at NYU's Stern Business School and a fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institution, is executive editor for opinions at Forbes. He writes a weekly column for Forbes. (Follow him on Twitter, here.)
>
> http://www.forbes.com/2009/11/08/fort-hood-nidal-malik-hasan-muslims-opinions-columnists-tunku-varadarajan.html
>
>
>
>
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