Fort Hood Tragedy

Updated Below

I try not to bring up current events unless I have something unique to add.  In this case, I do have something to add, but you’ll have to trust my word.  People join the military for any number of reasons.  Many of them do not join to go to war.  When time comes for them, they and people that have had a change of heart try to avoid it.  One case I know was a man that threw himself down a staircase in an attempt to induce an injury and therefore not get deployed.  I would hate to overgeneralize and claim that attempted self-mutilation was common, but it wasn’t grossly exceptional; in other words, my sources were no longer surprised at hearing stories as deployment dates closed for Gulf War II.  I don’t know the numbers around suicides, but I do know they also happen as deployment dates approach.

Hearing the news last night and hearing the details, some of my first thoughts were that this was an extreme case of what I just described.  The killer had been attempting to get out of his deployment for two years.  He had go so far as to secure a lawyer to attempt to get out of his deployment.  (See NY Times coverage.)  This isn’t what is being discussed today.  Today there is endless fascination that this killer was a Muslim.  He was a Muslim that in his previous years of service had served our members’ mental health needs and hadn’t gone on a killing spree.   Yes, he had voiced opposition, quite loudly, over our wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, but that wasn’t an exceptionally Muslim position.

Now and in the days that follow, people are going to ask Muslims to apologize for the acts of a man that embraced their flag in his rampage.  This demand is unreasonable.  Similar demands that Christians be made to call account for and apologize for the death George Tiller were similarly unreasonable.  Ideologues like the ideas of cosmic clashes of civilizations.   Life is much easier when the enemies are them and not among and within us.  May the dead rest in peace.

Update:

An excerpt from one of the finer pieces I’ve seen:

But if he was an Al Qaeda sleeper-cell suicide bomber himself, it makes no sense why he’d a) argue with fellow soldiers that the wars are wrong and we should withdraw; and b) that he tried to get out of being deployed to Iraq. The 9/11 terrorists did their best to “blend in” and pretend like they were as American as apple pie, because the point is not to draw any attention to yourself if you’re a terrorist planning to suicide bomb a military base. Moreover, the timing of his shooting, the day before he was to be sent off, shows that his desperation had reached the limit. What this suggests is that the massacre could have been avoided if Maj. Hasan’s objections were taken into account.