There are a lot of questions about what went down yesterday that will not be answered soon. I'm sure that some wished that he'd died at the scene, but I think it's best that he survived. For one, it didn't make him some sort of martyr. For another, we will get a chance to answer a lot of those questions. It's easier to get answers from a live person than a dead body.
Hasan's crime opens up some related questions and concerns. Obviously, the first question is What did the Army know and when did they know it. There are some reports (and I'll call them "unverified" for now) that says he was becoming increasingly radical. Another is if they did know, why didn't they do something about it?
My main concern is the fallout within the military community itself. This is not the first incident where a Muslim soldier decided to kill his fellow soldiers. One can imagine that a Muslim soldier in a unit right now would be looked at with a healthy dose of suspicion. It's human nature. Indeed, I can imagine he would be sleeping with one eye open.
Obviously, I don't condone someone taking vigilante action against anyone, but human nature being what it is, I believe some of these guys might be in real danger. This is their reality.
Profiling people by law enforcement is not always a bad thing. When you have statistics and specific actions to look at, you need to profile. You need to get ahead of the game or you will see people getting killed. Unfortunately, profiling is an inexact science and care must be taken, but we need to start looking at who we have in our armed forces.
I know that not all Muslims are evil or bad. Most are pretty ordinary folks. I met some fine Muslim people when I was recently in Qatar. People I am now proud to call my friends. However, when you have some bad apples, you need to inspect the barrel and in this case, the specific barrel is the Armed Forces.
God bless the families of the killed and wounded. May he comfort those who grieve. As for Hasan, let justice be done.
VW
Very well said, VW. Those concerns must be addressed and those questions must be asked and we should strive to honestly answer those questions.
More should have been done by the Army as well as the Department of Defense in recognizing and identifying the potential risk posed by Hasan. You and I, as well as others with extensive military service, can easily recognize that some measure was taken by the Army to preclude him from furthering much longer his professional military career as a commisioned officer. The poor rating he received on his most recent OER (Officer Evaluation Report) was essentially a career ender. But it my professional opinion, it was not enough and it was not soon enough. It's already become apparent that the red flag was raised on this human time bomb before now and more than once.
There are specific cases over the past several years which should have provided the learning points and the precedence by which, if an appropriate degree of attention and scrutiny had taken place, this might have been prevented.
Did we not learn anything from SGT Asan Akbar who lobbed grenades and fired his M4 automatic rifle into three tents filled with sleeping commanding officers at the 101st Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade operations center in Kuwait, killing and maiming his fellow soldiers?
Posted by: John Hampton | Friday, November 06, 2009 at 10:39
As I continue to think about this, I suddenly find myself unable to avoid conflicting thoughts. This Muslim madman was scheduled to deploy to Afghanistan in three weeks. If he had actually deployed there he might have been working in the same medical facility where my son is currently deployed as a medical laboratory specialist. Oh my god…
Posted by: John Hampton | Friday, November 06, 2009 at 13:56