Dear Friend and Reader:
There stands a conceptual barrier between what happened at Fort Hood on Thursday, and classifying it as terrorism. This is a serious problem, and if confronted, it’s going to call into question all of our myths and delusions about who and what a terrorist is, why they act, and why the United States is supposedly at war against them.
The futility of that war is quite apparent now, since an act of terrorism has come home to a US military base, perpetrated by someone who holds the status of officer in our own services; who was the product of our own training academies; and who was born and raised on our own home ground. If we’re paying attention, we will start to ask whether we’re training and using our own armed forces as terrorists in just the way we think of them as coming from other societies. On the most practical level, this is precisely what has happened. We still keep looking out there for the terrorist, with night vision goggles. Unless we classify Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan as an ‘outsider’ merely on the basis of his religious orientation, cultural background or genetic descent (rather than where he was born and bred, and what uniform he wore), we need to start looking for the enemy within ourselves. By all presumptions, this could never have happened. But borrowing from Gen. Turgidson of Dr. Strangelove, we did not count on the human factor.
My own instincts tell me this was all about the human factor. Such would include a sense of tribal injury associated with the war crimes being committed by the United States in Iraq and Afghanistan; these wars are being fought under false pretenses, and nobody wants to say anything about that. It would include Hasan’s contact, working at Walter Reed, with many of the most severely injured, psychically damaged soldiers, Marines and officers returning from the fronts. These people are suffering mainly from having been put in the position to kill and risk their lives on the basis of a lie; of many lies. It would include the aspect of military life where people are put in that position, without being cut out for that kind of gruesome ‘work’.
United States intelligence agencies have a security problem on their hands. They can’t be sure if this was not the work of a larger jihad movement, and they can make no assumptions. Imagine the terrifying prospect of an Islamist movement cropping up inside the US military, or already having been propagated. I think this is unlikely, but investigators and military strategists have their work cut out for them dealing with the implications of these possibilities. Even without an organized movement, more people who feel a similar way could be inspired to do what Hassan did.
But what way would that be, exactly? Close to the edge, is what; feeling betrayed and deceived, but mostly, at one’s limit. We don’t readily admit how close to the edge how many people are; we don’t admit how close we often are. The line between sanity and madness is thinner than we admit. We still think of men, and soldiers in particular, as people capable of overriding or circumventing their emotions. We are assuming that troops, that is, humans in uniform, can go through tour after tour of duty and not suffer any kind of breakdown of their sanity. We assume that, with the rest of society so close to the brink (i.e., the economic situations of many families of people serving in the military), that this will not take an emotional toll. Even scarier than the prospect of a jihad movement in the military is the prospect of many, many of its members being on the brink of their sanity; suffering horrendously but unable to say anything; and expected to go into battle zones and kill and die on the basis of a lie.
Hi Eric! The whole event that took place in Ft. Hood was horrible, and so unexpected. My thoughts go out to all those families who lost a loved one because of this.
I wanted to know your opinion about something. Have you ever considered this to be a mind control case? As far as all those shootings ex. Virginia Tech, Columbine, Pennsylvania (women’s locker room), and this are all so similar. There was an article, I wish I would have kept, that compared all those cases and how they all bought their weapons on the same online store. Although this psychiatrist would have had his own gun. It is still a little strange how all these people stepped out of themselves and did something so uncharacteristic. And if you read the articles of the previous shootings, it was methotical, rythmic, and very professional. I have NO idea what group of people could be doing this, but it is a tactic of fear, something this country has been using to control us for a while now. I was just curious to see what your thoughts were on this. Thanks!!
A newspaper report this morning in one of of our major Sunday papers explicitly links Major Hasan with two 9/11 terrorists – Hanjour and al-Hamzi (Flight 77) simply on the basis that they all attended the same mosque at around the same time…
http://tinyurl.com/yl3o4yu
This was unexpected …
“Those who support these wars have to tell themselves this, because there has to be a rationale; we cannot just be there for nothing and live with ourselves.”
Eric:
there have been many convenient drugs to keep us lulled away from our conscience and awakened consciousness this decade and more—the greed for money, goods, and power. Reagan’s Morning in America. Gingrich’s Contract for America. The dissociation from the cause and effect of one’s personal gain meaning another one’s loss. The impact of our consumption on others’ lives here and abroad, on the planet and its air, water and land. The distractions of violence, the evolution of news from information to titillation.
There is a story, I’ve emailed you about this before. Its a story, the author I will have to research again–about a society with all the creature comforts, great learning, marvelous culture and fabulous people–who are all there because they have a dark secret. That secret is that somewhere, in a dark place hidden somewhere in their land, is a cell where a child is being jailed and tortured. Because that one child suffers, many other benefits can continue for that society and its people.
The story asks the question: can you live in that society, knowing the price of your quality of life is based on the suffering of another? Could you bring yourself to leave it?
Let me add: What would you do to cope with staying, knowing full well about it?
The other day I found myself in an argument with a Vietnam vet. I said something and he accused me of being a liberal. The upshot of the conversation was that he still believed that he went to Vietnam to fight for our freedom. This, after everything we need to know about Vietnam is out in the wash; the Tonkien Gulf non-incident long ago being proven as a lie; the faux civil war; the United States being at war with both North and South Vietnam, which distinction is a fabrication; many other things.
With the current wars, we have to tell ourselves that this is to protect us from terrorism. Those who support these wars have to tell themselves this, because there has to be a rationale; we cannot just be there for nothing and live with ourselves.
“Even scarier than the prospect of a jihad movement in the military is the prospect of many, many of its members being on the brink of their sanity; suffering horrendously but unable to say anything; and expected to go into battle zones and kill and die on the basis of a lie.”
I had an interesting experience last night while having an outing with friends.
I brought up Fort Hood, citing the political implications AND the psychological ones–how the Army has been inducting new recruits that may or may not be stable to keep up recruitment quotas for the two wars, particularly Afghanistan.
I was going to say this seems to be the price of prolonged warfare–that the war indeed has come home.
And one of my companions said: “Fe, its an isolated incident. There are crazy people everywhere with guns. He was unstable. Its not about politics. Its not about politics. Its one unstable guy. Period.”
They might as well have said: “Move along. Nothing to see here.”
Thinking about it tonight, I felt shut down by this person’s rationale, which was in favor of a convenient sound bite. The eight year lie. A lie planted to mask the reality of an illegal war. Used to justify years of killing other people in the vain hope of fighting terror elsewhere so we don’t have to fight it here. But it is here. A dark ironic full circle.
Eric’s last paragraph is ringing loudly…..we lie to kids who most likely have led their entire life close to the edge, give them hope that they may find some meaning in life, then with a nonchalant flick, push them over the edge.
Is it any wonder?
Eris67 — I feel for you. The War Within….this is what it becomes until it again manifests as the War Without.
Blessings.
Light.
There he goes again, cutting a swathe through the bullshit and getting to the heart of the matter. Thanks, Eric 🙂 So glad you’re there/here…
Eileen, the planet will do just fine without us; quite the better, I imagine. This is about us, not “it.”
Eric–
Just read “The Human Factor”– bravo!
I so love what you do because you do it so well.
The only thing floating in the unsaid is having us, as U.S., look at our own religious fanaticism and greed, and what we can do to stop it–stripping patriotism from their acts–not like pulling meat off bone, as they would have it connected — but more like some outlandish costume off a spoiled, selfish, and outrageously powerful child, and putting laws on thebooks to criminalize the behavior of our corporate military structure.
Having studied shamanism with John Perkins, it was so weird to learn about his secret life as an economic hitman. But we all have this split in our personalities growing up. We see ourselves and Americans as good, so that makes our enemies bad. Doesn’t it?
Our patriotism is so intertwined with this “God-given” supremacy–I mean it’s so pervasive! We need to wake up to the reality that our ideology makes our military budget possible, it makes a Bush/Cheney presidency possible, and it makes our American brand of terrorism since WWII, when war actually stopped “evil” (military invasion of sovereign states) possible. Perhaps the only thing that will save us now is to realize once and for all that it’s time to stop thinking only of ourselves and start saving the planet.
Hugs,
Eileen
What are we fighting for? Whose cause is it? Follow the money. Who profits the most from endless war? The CEO’s and stockholders of the corporations that manufacture all the death machines are a big part of it. People who make money off of the business of war pay lobbyists to petition the government, give campaign contributions which I tend to think of as legalized bribes, and employ people to think up and transmit via the media a worldview that seems to justify spending the bulk of our nation’s wealth on weaponry. The nationalism is just a traditionally exploitable emotion in humans that’s exploited so these fat cats can continue to rape the rest of the world and give hell on earth to anyone unlucky enough to get caught in one of their wars.
Corporate masters don’t give a shit about you or your country, but the nationalism in the military serves their ends well. You can’t get a bunch of kids to go murder strangers in a foreign country with obedience and efficiency without giving them a solid identity rigid enough to oppose the enemy which was probably manufactured by the same war profiteers. All this to sustain their private heavens. Maybe there are so many terrorists because we drop bombs on so many people and have ever since airplanes got reliable enough to carry them. Endless war for the war profiteers. Terrorism is fueled by the emotions of people whose loved ones were collateral damage from our bombs and missiles. But that’s the idea. Endless war for the war profiteers.
Of course you need oil to run all those war engines. Minds like lizards and machines, stuck in the energies of the substances that make them rich they’re obsessed with maintaining something stuck in the past like the oil they suck, rip and tear from Gaia’s breast. Solar, wind, hydroelectric, geothermal are present time energy sources and I think as we shift to those kinds of energy our worldview will also change. For some of us our worldview has already changed to help shift into this kind of energy. The culture of war is a hell whose fires are the billions of machines who eat oil to fuel their movement, a hell created by the choices we make to sustain the beliefs that justify such insanity. It’s all wound up together, global WARming, war, hell on earth, nationalism, religion, politics, economic strife with Profit sneering but paranoid at the top of the crumbling pyramid. Abuse people long enough with all those war machines and some of them, fibrous watery electric creatures that we are, will crack. What we do to Gaia we do to ourselves. Too many explosions. We need more gardens and fewer war machines. We’re not made for this shit. We’ve pretended for too long now and the cracks are showing.
And how in that training of Killing Machines is it even possible to teach the remembering of Empathy or Humanity? Certainly it is not – and this void is now bearing poison fruit.
How is it possible to expect a wo/man to switch between having and not having respect for life at the drop of a hat?
It is no different from the chemical companies poisoning the water (enter thousands of other examples here) without regard for the ongoing damage it will do.
Where does it end? Where does it begin?
I am curious about the various paths in history re: brutaly trained military forces being deployed then returned to communities as though nothing had changed for them?
Certainly communities “bearing arms” and defending their homes was one (such as at the time of the American Revolution) …….but training killing machines is not the same thing.
I was once a military wife who remembers the process of her husband going off to Desert Storm. We were living in Germany and times were filled with uncertainty. One of my memories from that time is how He was filled with “testosterone” regarding going off to war and “kicking the shit” out of Iraq. Memories of him going off to week long trainings learning how to do just that. No one questioned why what or how….at least not the ones directly involved. What I do remember is now what I consider mind control. “They” pump these guys up with “the cause” until they are sold out, hand them a gun and say your a “hero”. Today he suffers terribly from post war syndrome, is drinking himself to a slow death and fighting a “war within”. What are we fighting for anyway??? Whos cause is it??? Isn’t it the same with the american people. We pump them with biased media opinion until it becomes script and we pass it along and so on and so on. Its distressing, even more that I am a part of it, and how long I believed the lies……