Victor Davis Hanson: Is Fort Hood Really a "Tragedy?"
[Victor Davis Hanson is the Martin and Illie Anderson Senior Fellow in Residence in Classics and Military History at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University, a professor of Classics Emeritus at California State University, Fresno, and a nationally syndicated columnist for Tribune Media Services. He is also the Wayne & Marcia Buske Distinguished Fellow in History, Hillsdale College, where he teaches each fall semester courses in military history and classical culture.]
Something has gone terribly wrong in the entire reaction to the Ft. Hood massacres, as evidenced by the media, the administration, the military authorities, and perhaps the public at large. There seems almost a dreamy disconnect from the terrible fate of the slain — as if we are innately impotent to stop such mayhem, or are above the fray and so like Platonic Guardians must remain deep in contemplation about how in theory we can persuade the Hasans to cease and desist — as if our therapeutic stance in the first place did not encourage and embolden such monsters to act...
... Bottom Line
Hasan’s cause is a vicious war to promote a 7th-century vision, ours is seen as not much of a defense of a hallowed tradition of 2,500 years under dire assault.
Something more than moral lectures?
Can we hear something more from the President than assurances that we will not rush to judgment or that Hasan will not please his god?
Is that not an insult to the American people, to suggest hours after the killings that we have to be careful, as if not to give into our innate national tendencies to form posses of vigilantes roaming the country to kill Muslims — Americans being incapable of distinguishing a Major Hasan boasting about killing infidels from a Muslim neighbor talking over the fence about the dangers of crabgrass?
How about some passion, or at least promises of a gargantuan hearing, a federal inquiry, Tailhook- or 9/11-style, to investigate how this extremist passed all sorts of red lines — starting with the promotion process and ending with questions of firearm security and use on bases, touching on immigration policy from the Middle East, FBI policies, and political correctness?
Something is needed from our military and civilian leaders other than platitudes and warnings not to blame “all Muslims” and be shock at “unimaginable” crimes — as if red-neck Americans in retaliation after September 11 had killed hundreds of Muslims in the fashion that Islamic radicals in the last 98 months have frequently targeted the innocent, or as if Major Hasan flew in from Mars and without warning shot the innocent. (How strange, given the elite rhetoric — once butchered Americans did not in mob-like fashion hunt down innocent Muslims to take out their rage, but were often sermonized to as if they were on the verge of doing just that, while after 9/11, on dozens of occasions young Muslims were caught trying to trump the 9/11 death toll, even as they were assured they were safe and protected from a possible mob-like Neanderthal America.)
So What’s Next?
Are we to be sacrificed in dribbles of twos and thirteens? The present status quo alternative of complacence is rather frightening and amoral in typically postmodern fashion. About every three months since 9/11 we have witnessed another foiled plot (23-4 by now), or a lone-wolf sort of attack on a shopping mall, Jewish center, military installation, or university campus (20 plus), whether a shooting or a run-over.
The apparent logic is that the plots will continue to be foiled (while we caricature the Bush illiberal Homeland Security policies that allow us to be so vigilant), and the lone wolves will kill someone far distant and in twos and threes, or as in the Maryland Sniper and Fort Hood cases, tens and thirteens — until another 9/11 comes around and for two to three years shocks us out of our pretensions...
Read entire article at Private Papers (website of Victor David Hanson)
Something has gone terribly wrong in the entire reaction to the Ft. Hood massacres, as evidenced by the media, the administration, the military authorities, and perhaps the public at large. There seems almost a dreamy disconnect from the terrible fate of the slain — as if we are innately impotent to stop such mayhem, or are above the fray and so like Platonic Guardians must remain deep in contemplation about how in theory we can persuade the Hasans to cease and desist — as if our therapeutic stance in the first place did not encourage and embolden such monsters to act...
... Bottom Line
Hasan’s cause is a vicious war to promote a 7th-century vision, ours is seen as not much of a defense of a hallowed tradition of 2,500 years under dire assault.
Something more than moral lectures?
Can we hear something more from the President than assurances that we will not rush to judgment or that Hasan will not please his god?
Is that not an insult to the American people, to suggest hours after the killings that we have to be careful, as if not to give into our innate national tendencies to form posses of vigilantes roaming the country to kill Muslims — Americans being incapable of distinguishing a Major Hasan boasting about killing infidels from a Muslim neighbor talking over the fence about the dangers of crabgrass?
How about some passion, or at least promises of a gargantuan hearing, a federal inquiry, Tailhook- or 9/11-style, to investigate how this extremist passed all sorts of red lines — starting with the promotion process and ending with questions of firearm security and use on bases, touching on immigration policy from the Middle East, FBI policies, and political correctness?
Something is needed from our military and civilian leaders other than platitudes and warnings not to blame “all Muslims” and be shock at “unimaginable” crimes — as if red-neck Americans in retaliation after September 11 had killed hundreds of Muslims in the fashion that Islamic radicals in the last 98 months have frequently targeted the innocent, or as if Major Hasan flew in from Mars and without warning shot the innocent. (How strange, given the elite rhetoric — once butchered Americans did not in mob-like fashion hunt down innocent Muslims to take out their rage, but were often sermonized to as if they were on the verge of doing just that, while after 9/11, on dozens of occasions young Muslims were caught trying to trump the 9/11 death toll, even as they were assured they were safe and protected from a possible mob-like Neanderthal America.)
So What’s Next?
Are we to be sacrificed in dribbles of twos and thirteens? The present status quo alternative of complacence is rather frightening and amoral in typically postmodern fashion. About every three months since 9/11 we have witnessed another foiled plot (23-4 by now), or a lone-wolf sort of attack on a shopping mall, Jewish center, military installation, or university campus (20 plus), whether a shooting or a run-over.
The apparent logic is that the plots will continue to be foiled (while we caricature the Bush illiberal Homeland Security policies that allow us to be so vigilant), and the lone wolves will kill someone far distant and in twos and threes, or as in the Maryland Sniper and Fort Hood cases, tens and thirteens — until another 9/11 comes around and for two to three years shocks us out of our pretensions...