Dr. Phil and the Fort Hood Killer

NOVEMBER 10, 2009

His terrorist motive is obvious to everyone but the press and the Army brass.

By DOROTHY RABINOWITZ

It can by now come as no surprise that the Fort Hood massacre yielded an instant flow of exculpatory media meditations on the stresses that must have weighed on the killer who mowed down 13 Americans and wounded 29 others. Still, the intense drive to wrap this clear case in a fog of mystery is eminently worthy of notice.

The tide of pronouncements and ruminations pointing to every cause for this event other than the one obvious to everyone in the rational world continues apace. Commentators, reporters, psychologists and, indeed, army spokesmen continue to warn portentously, “We don’t yet know the motive for the shootings.”

What a puzzle this piece of vacuity must be to audiences hearing it, some, no doubt, with outrage. To those not terrorized by fear of offending Muslim sensitivities, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s motive was instantly clear: It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments. All were conspicuous signs of danger his Army superiors chose to ignore.

What is hard to ignore, now, is the growing derangement on all matters involving terrorism and Muslim sensitivities. Its chief symptoms: a palpitating fear of discomfiting facts and a willingness to discard those facts and embrace the richest possible variety of ludicrous theories as to the motives behind an act of Islamic terrorism. All this we have seen before but never in such naked form. The days following the Fort Hood rampage have told us more than we want to know, perhaps, about the depth and reach of this epidemic.

One of the first outbreaks of these fevers, the night of the shootings, featured television’s star psychologist, Dr. Phil, who was outraged when fellow panelist and former JAG officer Tom Kenniff observed that he had been listening to a lot of psychobabble and evasions about Maj. Hasan’s motives.

A shocked Dr. Phil, appalled that the guest had publicly mentioned Maj. Hasan’s Islamic identity, went on to present what was, in essence, the case for Maj. Hasan as victim. Victim of deployment, of the Army, of the stresses of a new kind of terrible war unlike any other we have known. Unlike, can he have meant, the kind endured by those lucky Americans who fought and died at Iwo Jima, say, or the Ardennes?

It was the same case to be presented, in varying forms, by guest psychologists, the media, and a representative or two from the military, for days on end.

The quality and thrust of this argument was best captured by the impassioned Dr. Phil, who asked us to consider, “how far out of touch with reality do you have to be to kill your fellow Americans . . . this is not a well act.” And how far out of touch with reality is such a question, one asks in return—not only of Dr. Phil, but of the legions of commentators like him immersed in the labyrinths of motive hunting even as the details of Maj. Hasan’s proclivities became ever clearer and more ominous.

To kill your fellow Americans—as many as possible, unarmed and in the most helpless of circumstances, while shouting “Allahu Akbar” (God is great), requires, of course, only murderous hatred—the sort of mindset that regularly eludes the Dr. Phils of our world as the motive for mass murder of this kind.

As the meditations on Maj. Hasan’s motives rolled on, “fear of deployment” has served as a major theme—one announced as fact in the headline for the New York Times’s front-page story: “Told of War Horror, Gunman Feared Deployment.” The authority for this intelligence? The perpetrator’s cousin. No story could have better suited that newspaper’s ongoing preoccupation with the theme of madness in our fighting men, and the deadly horrors of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, than this story of a victim of war pressures gone berserk. The one fly in the ointment—Maj. Hasan had of course seen no war, and no combat.

Still, with a bit of stretching, adherents of Maj. Hasan-as-war-victim theme found a substitute of sorts—namely the fears allegedly provoked in him by his exposure, as an army psychiatrist, to the stories of men who had been deployed. The thesis then: Maj. Hasan’s mental stress, provoked by the suffering of Americans who had been in combat, caused him to go out and butcher as many of these soldiers as he could. Let’s try putting that one before a jury.

By Sunday morning, Gen. George Casey Jr., Army chief of staff, confronted questions put to him by ABC’s George Stephanopolous—among them the matter of the complaints about Maj. Hasan’s anti-American tirades that were made by fellow students in military classes, as well as other danger signs ignored by officials when they were reported, apparently for fear of offense to a Muslim member of the military.

These were speculations, Gen. Casey repeatedly cautioned. We need to be very careful, he explained, “We are a very diverse army.” Mr. Stephanopolous then helpfully summarized matters: This case then was either a case of premeditated terror—or the man just snapped.

The general was not about to address such questions. He was there to recite the required pieties, and describe the military priorities . . . which are, it appears, a concern above all for the sensitivities of a diverse army, a concern so great as to render even the mention of salient facts out of order, as “speculation.’” “This terrible event,” Gen. Casey noted, “would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty.”

To hear this, and numerous other such pronouncements of recent days, was to be reminded of all those witnesses to the suspicious behavior of the 9/11 hijackers who held their tongues for fear of being charged with discrimination. It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11.

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The unspeakable horror at Fort Hood must invoke a new paradigm in our approach to the enemies within

November 09, 2009

Fatal Correctness

By Bob Weir

The brutal massacre of thirteen unarmed soldiers and the wounding of dozens more at Fort Hood, Texas is another terrorist act on American soil that could have been prevented if not for an insidious cloud of political correctness that has taken this country hostage.

The victims of this horrific tragedy died at the hands of an enemy masquerading as a friend. Those soldiers had every reason to believe they were safe on an army base, surrounded by their patriotic brothers and sisters. They volunteered to serve their country, knowing full well that they might lose their lives on a battlefield in a foreign land. Could any of them have imagined that the end would come at the hands of a Muslim extremist wearing the uniform of an Army Major?

Evidently, it wasn’t enough of a red flag to read this lunatic’s anti-American bitterness, which he proudly posted on the Internet with no fear or compunction about using his own name.  This is a guy who regularly wore the fundamentalism uniform of the enemy he was supposedly training our troops to defeat. This is a guy who wrote in laudatory terms about suicide bombers as he condemned US policies in the Middle East. This is a guy who reportedly told his military classmates that he was a Muslim first and an American second. Hello? Is there anyone out there with common sense? If this is national security, we are in more trouble than we realize. How many more savage time bombs do we have walking and stalking among us?

The blood of this massacre had hardly stopped flowing before members of the media were cautioning us not to view all Muslims as terrorists. That should go without saying, but what should not go without saying is that we’d better get serious about the obvious danger of excusing Muslims who make it clear that they hate this country. Discriminating against people because of their race or religion is a description of bigotry, but keeping a close eye on people who give every indication that they’re dangerous is more than sensible — it’s a vital cog in the survival instinct.

In Virgil’s epic poem The Aeneid, the great city of Troy was invulnerable until the Greeks devised a strategy in which a huge figure of a horse was left outside Troy’s gates. Naïvely thinking it was a trophy delivered by their vanquished foes, the citizens of Troy (Trojans) pulled the towering figure into their city. They didn’t know it was hollow and contained dozens of enemies who waited until the city slept before creeping out and opening the gates for the Greek army.

Like many great societies before and since, Troy was defeated from within. Greek mythology? Yes, but a lesson to be learned. Have we become naïve enough to believe that people who seem bent on destroying us should be protected, that we should allow them the freedom to carry out their nefarious plots? I don’t care if the guy’s name is Hasan or Henderson; if he evinces hostility toward our country or a propensity to harm us, he should be treated like the enemy he purports to be.

We must rid ourselves of the foolish notion that we’re being broadminded when we ignore vitriolic loathing of our culture and our lifestyle. Refusing to take action against evil for fear of being guilty of stereotyping has resulted in flag-draped coffins for thirteen of America’s finest. What occurred at Fort Hood is even more stunning because it exposes a weak-willed mentality that has become woven into the fabric of the mightiest military force in the history of the world.

When we think of political correctness, we usually view it as confined to the Hollywood crowd and other assorted leftists. The fact that it has invaded the ranks of those who defend our freedom, here and around the world, is more than a bit alarming. We must not let the death of those soldiers count for nothing! If this unspeakable horror invokes a new paradigm in our approach to the enemies within, those who lost their lives will rest in peace, knowing that their sacrifice has taught us a lesson that will save countless other lives in the future. On the other hand, if we don’t view this as a wake-up call and take appropriate action, the date of our destruction can’t be far off.

Bob Weir is a former detective sergeant in the New York City Police Department. He is the executive editor of The News Connection in Highland Village, Texas.  E-mail Bob.
Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/fatal_correctness.html at November 10, 2009 – 06:26:26 PM EST

Great Speech by Barack Obama Honoring the Murdered Soldiers at Fort Hood

Brace yourself for a deficit-growing, job-killing, bureaucracy-creating government takeover of health care

A price tag of $1.3 trillion… and counting

$730 billion in new taxes

$500 billion in cuts to Medicare

118 new office, bureaus, commissions, and programs

5.5 million lost jobs

Coverage for 2.5 million more illegal immigrants

43 entitlement programs created, expanded, or extended

If this shocks you then you are naive about Progressivism.

The public must be manipulated into accepting the premise that only government and not they can provide economic and personal security.

http://www.americanthinker.com/printpage/?url=http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/thde_great_mystery.html

Return to the Article

November 05, 2009

The Great Mystery

By Steve McCann

One of the great mysteries in today’s United States is how a country founded on the principle of individual freedom, having achieved great wealth and world influence, could have developed a political class bent on transforming the nation into a collective dominated by a powerful central government.

The history of man is replete with the rise and fall of major civilizations. The downfall of these societies inevitably stemmed from a prolonged period without adversity, which in turn generated internal strife and political and monetary greed. In due course, these empires were easily conquered or dominated by others.

John Adams wrote in a letter to his wife of his need to study politics and war so his sons could study mathematics and philosophy and his grandchildren could study poetry and music. Surely this grand new experiment known as the United States, based on the rights of the individual and not the state, could avoid the pitfalls that plagued other nations.

The peace, prosperity, and lack of national adversity Adams envisioned came to pass, and future generations were able to study subjects other than war. Unfortunately, destructive modern political philosophies, such as Marxism and socialism, manipulated by the self-absorbed to achieve political power, were matters John Adams and his fellow founding fathers could not have anticipated.

The inherent basis of Marxism and socialism is no different from that of earlier monarchies — the domination of a state by a select class or individual. Today’s believers in these “-isms” are no different from those in the past who believed they were preordained to rule the masses. Modern society will not accept the concept of an authoritarian dictator or monarch; thus, a powerful central government, with its trappings of public legitimacy, serves as a substitute.

In order for this strategy to succeed, the public must be manipulated into accepting the premise that only government and not they can provide economic and personal security.

This can best be done in a country such as the United States not in an era of adversity, but one of prosperity and good fortune.

The last period of what could be called true national adversity was the 1930s and the Great Depression. Franklin Roosevelt and his fellow travelers were unable to fully realize an all-powerful central government despite their best efforts. While he certainly made inroads, the people and circumstances were such that FDR could not achieve his ultimate goal.

However, in the nearly seventy years since, during which the United States became the most powerful economic and military force the world has ever seen, there has been an inexorable march to government domination of the citizenry at all levels. Parallel to this track has been the rise of the socialist Left, the most influential group of all political entities.

The lack of national adversity over these years allowed the adherents of Marxism and socialist philosophies to recruit among the college-aged and the middle class by citing the so-called inequities of American society and the need to remake the country. They fanned the egos of these gullible individuals by convincing them of their individual superiority and ability, not to mention the necessity that they govern and educate the huddled masses.

One need only watch many in the committed American Left make pilgrimages to those second- and third-world countries controlled by Marxist governments and fawn over their

rulers. The diminished standard of living, the loss of liberty, and the bleak future for the people of these nations are ignored while the power achieved by the head of state is

celebrated.

It is that acquisition of power which motivates the self-named “Progressives,” not the welfare of the general public, as they so loudly proclaim.

A strategy was needed on how a faction that represented less than 20% of the citizenry could elicit this endgame with a people overwhelmingly against the concept of powerful central government and within the framework of a written constitution.

Using the backdrop of overwhelming prosperity, the Left seized upon the concept of “fairness” to promote their agenda and intimidate the populace. This “fairness” strategy was further reinforced by the incessant promotion that the United States as a civilization was responsible for all manner of evils throughout its history.

On the surface, it appeared that there was nothing this country did not have the money for, nothing it could not accomplish. To make up for past sins by guaranteeing equal outcomes was the least that could be done. The argument became that with so much wealth, the United States could afford to (fill in the blank).

As a result, much of the citizenry quietly accepted the argument and simply dropped out of active participation in government. They assumed the nation was in reasonably good hands with the two political parties, whose motives or agenda were never questioned. Most did not realize that by the mid 1980’s, the Left had a stranglehold on the Democratic Party, and the Republicans, unable or unwilling to fully warn the population of the future consequences of an all-powerful central government, were only able to slow down the march to socialism — and that only when they were in power. 

This march was not at gunpoint, but rather by the destruction of the economy and self-determination through massive spending programs which were unsustainable but became woven into the fabric of society.

In the 2008 election, the Left, with its ideal stealth candidate for President, actualized the culmination of their grand strategy. We now have the most radical government in our history. These people are unabashedly brazen in their triumph. While still assuming that the general public is asleep, they do not hesitate to openly advocate policies not wanted by the electorate, such as Cap and Trade and Health Care Reform. They do so not as a benefit for the country or its people, but to enhance and make permanent government power, regardless of the long-term consequences to the nation.

It is, however, this same megalomania, and the long-awaited awakening of the American people, that will be the downfall of this political class. The seizure of power for the sake of power is doomed to failure.

It is often claimed that the Left in the United States is simply trying to copy European socialism. However, the grand experiment of Euro-socialism, while now proven unsuccessful, stemmed from the unimaginable devastation of World War II. Victor and vanquished alike suffered a near-total loss of economic and social infrastructure which took nearly twenty years to overcome.

The motivation of the European political class was to promote the general welfare of the population, not self-aggrandizement. The failure of their brand of socialism was due to a determination to never repeat the circumstances which brought about two World Wars in the twentieth century. However, the political class and the populace did not fully appreciate the long-term economic consequences of the many social programs enacted. Many European societies, having realized their error, are moving back from the abyss and adopting more free-market principles.

Here in the United States, there has never been a similar devastating factor to justify a turn to a socialist state and a powerful central government. What is happening now is driven purely by arrogance and manipulation. It has the potential to end in national economic and social disaster, similar to so many empires of the past.

The American people are starting to understand the true motivations of those now in power. As shown in the 2009 elections in Virginia and New Jersey, the people can, by their participation in the electoral process, halt or stall the progress made by the Progressives to realize their socialist dream.

The country can return to the path of economic and social prosperity and relegate the Left to the background of the nation’s politics, where they belong, once and for all. The key is time, and time is something we have little of. The 2010 elections will be the most important midterm election in our history.

While John Adams and his fellow founders could not have anticipated what has happened to the country they established, they did give it a framework — a constitution — which can enable us to avoid the same egocentrism that led to the downfall of other major civilizations.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/thde_great_mystery.html at November 08, 2009 – 08:38:02 PM EST

Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood

http://www.nypost.com/f/print/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/fort_hood_xjP9yGrJN7gl7zdsJ31vnJ

Updated: Fri., Nov. 6, 2009, 2:50 PM

Fort Hood’s 9/11

By RALPH PETERS

On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting “Allahu Akbar!” committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11. And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.

What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Ft. Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of non-denominational shoplifting.

This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics, it’s an act of terror. Period.

When the terrorist posts anti-American hate-speech on the Web; apparently praises suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices; refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists his nationality as “Palestinian” in a Muslim spouse-matching program, and parades around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit — well, it only seems fair to call this terrorist an “Islamist terrorist.”

But the president won’t. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there’s no such thing as “Islamist terrorism” in ObamaWorld.

And the Army won’t. Because its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America-haters is safer than calling terrorism “terrorism.”

And the media won’t. Because they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops — despite their crocodile tears.

Maj. Nadal Malik Hasan planned this terrorist attack and executed it in cold blood. The resulting massacre was the first tragedy. The second was that he wasn’t killed on the spot.

Hasan survived. Now the rest of us will have to foot his massive medical bills. Activist lawyers will get involved, claiming “harassment” drove him temporarily insane. There’ll be no end of trial delays. At best, taxpayer dollars will fund his prison lifestyle for decades to come, since our politically correct Army leadership wouldn’t dare pursue or carry out the death penalty.

Maj. Hasan will be a hero to Islamist terrorists abroad and their sympathizers here. While US Muslim organizations decry his acts publicly, Hasan will be praised privately. And he’ll have the last laugh.

But Hasan isn’t the sole guilty party. The US Army’s unforgivable political correctness is also to blame for the casualties at Ft. Hood.

Given the myriad warning signs, it’s appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command, either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Ft. Hood, had the guts to take meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.

Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would’ve been gone with the simoon. But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected minorities.

Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. 31 soldiers were wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don’t roll in this maggot’s chain of command, the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.

There’s another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war? An Islamist whacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who’ve been assigned to his care? And he’s not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?

For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I’m ashamed of its dereliction of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about him.

Get ready for the apologias. We’ve already heard from the terrorist’s family that “he’s a good American.” In their world, maybe he is.

But when do we, the American public, knock off the PC nonsense?

A disgruntled Muslim soldier murdered his officers way back in 2003, in Kuwait, on the eve of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Recently? An American mullah shoots it out with the feds in Detroit. A Muslim fanatic attacks an Arkansas recruiting station. A Muslim media owner, after playing the peace card, beheads his wife. A Muslim father runs over his daughter because she’s becoming too Westernized.

Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again and again. And we’re assured that “Islam’s a religion of peace.”

I guarantee you that the Obama administration’s non-response to the Ft. Hood attack will mock the memory of our dead.

Ralph Peters’ latest novel is “The War After Armageddon.”

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Will the Left Try a Kamikaze Rush?

November 05, 2009

By James Lewis

Dick Morris thinks Mob-O-Care is dead after the Democrat electoral fiascos in the last week. I sincerely hope that Morris is right, but I’m not so sure.

The trouble is that Obama and the Democrats have no other game plan — their other ideas, like the suicidal Carbon Tax, are even more likely to get them tossed out of office. Obama’s power has peaked — and judging by the Clinton backlash of 1994, when the GOP won the  House for the first time in forty years, it’s downhill from here on out. Nothing in politics is certain, and Obama will certainly try to recover power, as Bill Clinton did in the ’90s. But Obama and his dead-enders have to reckon with the likelihood that they will never have more power than right now.

So it’s not out of the question that the Democrats in the House and Senate will go for a kamikaze rush to push MediCoup through Congress as quickly as possible. It would not be difficult. Normal Americans think we can defeat the “Blue Dog Democrats” at the polls, and that is true. But Obama just has to pick up the phone and tell the Dogs he will guarantee them jobs even if they are defeated. How about Ambassador to Upper Slobbovia? How about a nice job in the Soros Empire? Or in the case of Leon Panetta, how about a university center named after you, and funded by the Feds to study, umm…the art of politics? For the real high flyers like Rahm Emanuel, there’s always a part-time job on the Board of Freddie Mac for several million bucks.    

Everything we know about these people suggests that they are single-minded fanatics with basically only one game plan, which is to consolidate as much power as possible as quickly as possible. Everything flows from that. In Europe, the socialists have insulated themselves from elections. That’s how they can do outrageous things time and time again and still stay in power.

Right now the analogy to the Japanese at the end of WWII is strikingly apt. The Japanese Empire was at dead end. Emperor-worship was still the public face of Japan; everybody had to pretend they agreed, even if they privately thought it mad. Japanese defeat was therefore unthinkable, and rather than let the Emperor be defeated, thousands of young men were trained and indoctrinated into the logic of banzai charges and suicide dive-bombing on U.S. Navy ships. Those kamikazes were last-ditch warriors, but they took a bloody toll.

The Blue Dogs don’t even have to suicide electorally. All they have to do is vote for Mob-O-Care as soon as possible, knowing they will be defeated, but also knowing that the Machine always takes care of its own. Just ask Hizzoner da Mare. Or look at Rev. Jeremiah Wright’s nice retirement home.

That’s what’s got me worried right now.

Mob-O-Care is still the big banana. The Democrats can still carry it over the top and then take their losses in elections to come with the faith that no Republican Congress will dare to infuriate all the Victim Groups of the Left by repealing free medical care for forty percent of the population. Or whatever they settle on. Remember that the actual dollar figures have never been believable, and Medicare and Social Security are operating as accounting fictions even now. So this has all been media drivel from top to bottom. All they have to do is pass a shell of a bill, set up the bureaucracies, and expand them in future Democrat-dominated Congresses.

The socialist parties in Europe have done it by taking over the medical sectors of their economies. Once they control medical care for all, every political argument comes down to who makes bigger promises to buy more for the voters. The actual pie might shrink because of rationing, but that doesn’t matter. Most people don’t think long-term, but socialists do. In Britain, a Labourite just confessed what many of us have suspected for years: that the socialists deliberately imported hundreds of thousands of Third World people, including unnumbered Islamist radicals from the Northwest Territories of Pakistan with nothing but a tribal warrior culture. Using their control of the BBC and the media, the socialists accused every British critic of this practice of racism. That’s how they nailed the Conservative Party.

That is also why Britain today is covered with CCTV cameras wherever people live, and why the schools are sending in mandatory reports on racist remarks by children from the earliest years onward. It’s madness, and the only so-called solution, is for Britain to become the Western Province of the new European Union of Socialist Republics. That has been the goal all along for the Leftist radicals, and nobody knows how to stop them now.

Obama is the same. He is a third-world socialist, which is no different from all the other kinds. His real identification is not with this country, but with “transnationalism” — the corrupt and conscienceless elite of the U.N., the EU, and a Vast Left-Wing Corruptocracy around the world. Saul Alinsky was a big fan of the Chicago Mob, and the de facto alliance we see at the United Nations combines an awful lot of Islamists with Leftists with corruptocrats. Witness the Oil for Food Scam, run right out of the Secretary-General’s office at the U.N. during the Saddam years. Witness the criminal cases in France today against Dominique de Villepin and Jacques Chirac.

Don’t believe the Democrats don’t see that as a model. If it worked in Chicago, in Europe, and at the U.N., they figure it will work in Washington, D.C.

Page Printed from: http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/11/will_the_left_try_a_kamikaze_r.html at November 05, 2009 – 05:35:40 PM EST

Videos of the masterful Dinesh D’Souza debating leading athiests

http://ygod.web2.onlinenw.com/

Video: The real lessons of Europe’s nanny-state health care system

Congressman Rogers Eloquently Exposing the Travesty of the Democrat Heathcare Bill