Shootings at Fort Hood, TX

[Skybird]

Originally Posted by SS107.9MHz

It does seem like a unfortunate case of combined arrassment and stress meltdown due to his allocation to Iraq... THis has nothing to due with him being a muslim or a palestinian, at least in the assumption of "yeah is a muslim that made him due it"... It sems it's always more easy to find the reason we're confortable with than assessing the real reasons for what happened...

He was actually a therapist for wounded soldiers in Iraq before being comissioned there... He probably cracked after considering what he heard and what might happened to him... If he was suffering from a depression and in a delusional state he might have seen this as an act of mercy...It's messed up but it has happened before... We'll probably know more after he his questioned...

Above all, I want to send my condolences to the families of those slain today... I hope that they can cope with the loss.

PS: Skybird I can't see why a Muslim would be more unconfortable serving in the US Army than a Christian or a Jew for example... I think all these religions see Moses has a profit if aI'm not mistaken and that they must obey to the ten commandments, one of wich is "Thou shall not kill"... So I'd sy it's a level playing field here...

First, please read my very first post in here. I said clearly that I see this issue as a thing of "mental shortcircuit".

Second, I listed several things I see as contributing to the general pressure he must have felt. Amongst which maybe is what he has seen when treating wounded soldiers, like you indicate, too. Or better, what he heared, since he was a psychiatrist, not a surgeon, I always overlook this detail.

Third, the Muslim identity thing. It is probably not approriate to discuss that in this thread, and we already have been there three years ago when we talked about how the Air Force systematically has been undermined by Christian fundamentalists and group pressure is being inflicted on people to confess to this faith, we also found that that the military's priests have been taken over by christian fundamentalists for most, leaving little military priests left only for people of different faiths. there even have been court cases over this. It all also went through the media, which we also discussed. Add to this that Islam is an identity thing from A to Z which is hardly to be reduced to nationality, ethnics, race, etc. It surpasses the traditional legal definitions of what a citizen of a state, a member of a church etc is. Clear only is that Islam claims an identity for itself that is surpassing all these categories and claims to be superior and necessarily to be seen as dominant to these, and that it wants it mandatory to be seen that way. For such a superioristic selfunderstanding, western laws and constitutions and political understandings or categories of reason have no adequate categories to describe it or to thoroughly understand it, ands that is why we often find ourselves to be helpless in correctly describing (not to mention: resisting) it. We have nothing like this in current Western culture, if excluding Judaism here, which also is hard to be nailed down to ethnicity, confession, race, nationality. If somebody would ask me what makes being Jewish, I would need to pass.

Also, I don't know to what degree this man in Texas also is haunted like so many Palestinians by a past that nevertheless in principle necessarily must be meaningless to him, for he was born as an American. I wanted to show that many Palestinians tend to be very irrational about their status and fate when describing that key-waving experience, so did Torplexed.

If that Major, a "devout Muslim" they say, and having Palestinians roots, now needs to go to Iraq or Afghanistan, it may result necessarily in a conflict for him, because in both wars Muslims get killed, Muslims suffer, and no matter how you look at it, it often is by the hands of the American military. Western ratio of assuming that here is the army, there is the enemy, do not help you much, eventually. and let'S not foprget, claiming "victimship" - is a weapon in the propaganda war. For Islam, Islamic interest go first, always, it is God-wanted that way, and while it not only overrules Western laws in validity and importance (from an islamic perspective), it also means global Umma always and forever is a thousand times more important than the regulation of an Army you do service in, or the nation you live in, and it's laws and constitutions and different values. As part of taqja Muslims are allowed to temporarily submit to foreign rules and laws, and are told to do so. but it is not by conviction, but pragmatism to survive in the place without needing to leave it, it is also a temporary "loyalty" only that is to be cancelled once Islamic ruling has been established.

I see it as possible that this "identity conflict" has broken him, for it is an intrest conflict that is impossible to be solved. It can only be ignored, and rejected. But it still exists, and it cannot be solved. Every other way of thinking of it is just a foul compromise - to stay able to deny that this conflict exists. But it does. and in this case it interacted with other details from this man's life.

Somehow I do not think of this man as an "evil" guy, on the photos he maybe gives the impression of being a bit stupid (or not), but you see a man with friendly eyes - not the cold-hearted shark-eyes of a religious fanatic (look at photos of Ata, Bin Laden or anyone of this kind, and see the difference).

I think this man simply was desperate as a result of factors that have all fallen together since a longer time, and then something just clicked inside his head - and yesterday two trains entered his head's tunnel from both ends simultaneously.