Fort Hood Memorial: Notes from the Preamble

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So, I’m watching the half hour of yak that (MS)NBC is putting on over the Army band, waiting for President Obama to take the dais for the memorial service.

Jim Watson / AFP – Getty Images

And I am hearing just how screwed up our thinking is from the irrational framing that emerged as our national “consensus” after Nine Eleven.

Some idiot pipes up about the obvious dangers of having a “Muslim serve in war against other Muslims.”

Seriously.

If you don’t get the mindless racism slash religious bigotry of that comment, let’s reframe it using the variable “x” or the pronoun “they” — as in Having an x serve in war against other x, or Having one of THEM serve in a war against THEM. (The speaker clearly has a defective thought process, not being sure in his stereotyping whether “Muslims” are a religious group or a race. The formulation is the same — and this is some kind of news “expert” or “pundit” undoubtedly unaware of the Hindu origins of the term “pundit“:

pun·dit

NOUN:

1. A source of opinion; a critic: a political pundit.
2. A learned person.
3. Hinduism Variant of pandit.

---

ETYMOLOGY:
Hindi pait, learned man, from Sanskrit paita, learned, scholar, perhaps of Dravidian origin

pan·dit (pndt) KEY or pun·dit (pn-) KEY NOUN:

1. A Brahman scholar or learned man.
2. Used as a title of respect for a learned man in India.

---

ETYMOLOGY:
Hindi pait, from Sanskrit paita ; see pundit

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition.

I mean, if them MOOO-slems is so danged bad, think ‘a what a awful bunch them Hindooos is.

Now, to be fair, MSNBC reports “Suspect said Muslims shouldn’t have to fight,” which, taking it at face value, doesn’t mean a damned thing, other than that the suspect, too, was the victim of an assinine formulation — in a war against an impossible foe “terrorism” or a fictitious foe “Islamofascism.”

When you fight against fictions, you cannot ever win: If you’re going to be a dragonslayer, you have to have dragons to slay. And, as a corollary, the existence of dragons becomes more than an academic question to you: you have to actively promote the existence of dragons against doubters.

And, at that point, you’re no longer a dragonslayer: you’re a dragon seeker. A dragon apologist. A dragon promoter.

In the case of the Nine Eleven terrorists, whose professed goal was to destroy the United States economically, our “dragonslayers” have actively suppored Al Qaeda’s cause, however witlessly (as opposed to unwittingly, which presupposes wits).

Worse, as in this case, y0u can lose horrifically without ever understanding why. We lost thirteen soldiers, and perhaps thirty more will bear the scars for the rest of their lives.

(Here is the transcript of the President’s remarks.)

Here comes the KlanThink:

obvious dangers of having a

• Christian serve in war against other Christians.
• Jew serve in war against other Jews.
• Black serve in war against other Blacks.
• White serve in a war against other Whites.
• Man serve in a war against other Men.
• Woman serve in a war against other Women.
• Right-hander server in a war against other Right handed persons.

But it gets worse. Some idiot (I ran it back, “Jack Jones” or something like that) says: I believe that this was an act of terrorism. I’ve said that from the very beginning. (Uh, see my prior post, “Our Groovy Festival of Hate.”)

And then General Barry McCaffrey, former “Drug Czar” (In the daze when GOPpers and Beckholes liked the idea of czars and “Wars on Drugs”) then says, Yeah, me too. I think it was a terrorist attack, too.

Right. As though “terrorism” actually meant what they imply it means: A specific ideological group, with a specific geographical nexus, operating out of specific countries for specific purposes.

No. “Terrorism” is a tactic. Like “Wife beating.”

Do all wife-beaters pay allegiance to a secret cabal of “Wife-beaterdom” sequestered in some unrepentent male-supremacist and backwards country (and there are a lot of them, including Fundamental Christianity) coordinating all wife-beaters around the world?

It only works when assholes like McCaffrey and Jones elevate it into a full-fledged dragon, like, say, Communism.

The “war on poverty” was morphed into the “war on drugs,” which was then morphed into the “war on terrorism.”

ha-ha-hate from a rightie site

In all cases, the metaphoric became the actual: in GOP terms, it became a literal war on the poor; in the “war” on drugs, by 1989, surplus A-4 jets sold at bargain basement prices to South American governments for their “help” in the “war on drugs” were shown on American television firing surplus and outdated sidewinder missiles into mountain villages that were called “drug factories.” Whether they were or weren’t some idiot had taken “war on drugs” literally, and we have succeeded in turning that metaphorical war into a LITERAL war in Mexico, at least.

So, the “war on terror” became “the long war” which at least doesn’t violate any truth in advertising standards.

And you ended up with an “objective” that was precisely as defined and winnable as a “war against sand,” or a “war against snot.”

Terrorism is a tactic that small, powerless fanatics use against larger societies. SOME Jews used it in Palestine prior to 1948, and SOME Palestinians have used it against the Israelis ever since. Viet Cong used it against the South Vietnamese government. Castro used it against Batista.

I could go on and on and on.

Again: when you formulate your objective with a fictional or impossibly nebulous opponent, you may win, but it will undoubtedly be accidental if you do. Because your war is defined in quixotic terms, you are literally tilting at windmills.*

[* And don't discount the notion that it's INTENTIONALLY endless and unwinnable: the military contractors and looter of the War on Terror are still going strong on "no bid" contracts and unaudited and astonishing waste, not to mention all the bribe money we're openly paying to Iraqis not to shoot at us -- an almost irresistible temptation to skim cash off the top, or get kickbacks from those we're bribing. Remember "Millions for defense, not one penny for tribute!"? Well faggidaboudit.]

So, we have the racist/religious bigotry of: He was a Muslim. The Al Qaeda are Muslims. Therefore all Muslims are Al Qaeda. (All men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, all men are Socrates.)

from another Wingnut hate site

(And the consequent Rupert Murdoch New York Post distortion of “he was in contact with someone who had been at a mosque that the Nine Eleven hijackers had attended” to “he had attempted to contact Al Qaeda”:

FBI blew off killer e-mail to al Qaeda

Officials admit shrugging off gunman’s e-mails to Qaeda

By JOHN DOYLE in Fort Hood, Texas, and CHUCK BENNETT in NY

AP [??!?!?!]
Last Updated: 4:29 PM, November 10, 2009
Posted: 3:01 AM, November 10, 2009

The FBI knew for nearly a year before his murderous Fort Hood rampage that psycho Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had repeatedly contacted al Qaeda — but the blundering agency last night admitted it dismissed the lead.

The clueless G-men said that at the time, they simply chalked up the chilling e-mails between Hasan and a radical imam and other terror-tied Islamic figures to his “research” as an Army shrink.

Outraged congressional leaders immediately called for a probe into the debacle — and the red-faced agency vowed to get to the bottom of things itself….

Except even the story admits it wasn’t email TO Al Qaeda. And, it claims to be from the AP [?!!?!?!?]. This is the kind of racist sleaze and hatemongering we’ve come  to expect from that leper of news, Rupert Murdoch.* (May his Pinocchio nose rot off.)

[* "the Post's 'goal is to destroy Barack Obama..."]

Nobody’s paying much attention to the evidence of just how corrosive this idiotic formulation was ON the alleged “terrorist.” While the notion that he was being forced to fight against “Muslims” or even “Islam” may well have finally been uppermost in his deranged mind, consider that he learned that formulation FROM the Army environment and KKKonservative culture that has come to dominate it SINCE Nine Eleven.

And they say that thoughts aren’t toxic:

from Real Clear Politics (Owned by Forbes, hosted by Time)
November 9, 2009
Fort Hood: Let’s Drop the Political Correctness
By David Warren

… What happened at Fort Hood was no kind of “tragedy.” It was a criminal act, of the terrorist sort, performed by a man acting upon known Islamist motives. To present the perpetrator himself as a kind of “victim” — a man emotionally distressed by his impending assignment to Afghanistan or Iraq — is to misrepresent the reality… He reportedly shouted “Allahu Akbar!” before opening fire on American soldiers…

This deadly enemy of the West — the Islamist ideology which holds all Jews, Christians, other non-Muslims, and a considerable number of Muslims, too, to be human filth in need of extermination — is well infiltrated. Events like that at Fort Hood prove this, and from what I can see, the problem can only grow with the passage of time.

Getting at Islamist cells, to say nothing of lone, self-appointed jihadis within our society, means getting over the false sentimentality that turns a terrorist incident into an “incomprehensible tragedy” when it is not incomprehensible, and not a theatrical event.

It also means ripping through the politically-correct drivel that is put in the way of investigators. They should surely be allowed to assume that every loyal Muslim will be eager to give information to help them identify any potential killers in their midst…

“Islamists” of course, means Islamic Extremists, but, really, that mask is all but dispensed with. This is about hate: an equal and equally vile hate back in the direction of those haters who perpetrated Nine Eleven.

And THAT kind of hate is repellent no matter WHO espouses it towards WHOM.

That horrific illogical and irrational formulation is surely as much the engine of this tragedy as his implicit racial/religious identity. And it continues, as the idiots on NBC decided to CONTINUE with speculation about isolating, quarantining or otherwise surveilling all Muslims in the military.

An idea that one of the idiots, having gone gaily along with the mindless hate of the irrational meme suddenly pooh-pooh’ed.

Because it’s in the fuzzy thinking that our tragedy lies.

the same kind of fuzzy thinking that conflates Obama
with Muslims conflates Muslims with terrorists*

[* Note: what's got the Righties' panties in a bunch is that Obama was speaking to a gathering of Native Americans about, at long last, addressing THEIR issues. But racist whitie righties don't pay that no never mind. Just continue to rag on Obama: first that he wasn't instantly at Fort Hood. Then that he wasn't at Berlin yesterday for the Wall Fall Anniversary -- which are, of course, mutually exclusive. Remember, "the Post's 'goal is to destroy Barack Obama..." or Denny Flahault's "you'll love these" pictures of Muslim Commie Obama urinating on the United States.]

And while the racists slash religious bigots gleefully masturbate with the blood of our slain soldiers, screaming, “It’s JIHADIS!” and meaning “all Muslims” since they cannot tell the difference, the memorial service played on.

With “Amazing Grace,” and the chaplain’s invocation of “Our Lord.”

["That saved a wretch like me"? Speak for yourself, pal.]

Throwing the contrast into even sharper relief: We are “christians,” fighting against “mooo-slems.”

And the tragedy of it all is that they may well get their wish. Rather than figuring out a way to coexist, we are moving inexorably towards a cultural confrontation between one billion Christians and one billion Muslims in a modern-day crusade.

click to make sense of this nonsense

Because wars are, finally, not about land, not about money or loot, or power. Finally, all wars are ontological. They are about incompatible belief systems in a “trial by combat” in the modern world. And we continue down the path that makes such a monstrous confrontation inevitable.*

[* Just remember, one night of long knives in Saudi Arabia would completely change the complexion of the geopolitical map, and bin Laden is, finally, a Saudi -- a speculation for another day.]

It is a favorite “discussion” of the hate-filled blogosmear of lower Wingnuttia that Islam is SECRETLY about killing all other religions, etc. (The same argument can be made of evangelical Christianity, BTW.) Having “established” that they are ALL out to kill US, the conversation and mental masturbation moves rapidly into how WE have to kill THEM, and what Chuck Norris movie they should base their “strategy” on.

ha-ha-hate cartoon from Australia’s “The Age” –
the newspaper that put false words into
my mouth in 2000, so I have a pretty good idea
as to what their  “journalistic” standards are

The original Nine Eleven criminal assholes would love nothing more for us to continue down that path — the path that has THEM winning the so-called “war on terror.”

George W. Bush had nearly propelled them to victory before the change of administrations. (See: “George W. Bush, Agent of al Qaeda“)

It is our responsibility and our urgent NECESSITY to purge this racist, stupid and defeatist thinking from our national thinking. A “Muslim” may serve in a war against others who happen to be Muslims — but also criminals, bigots, murderers and swine. But if we DEFINE the war as a war against Muslims, then we’re throwing gasoline on the bonfire in a misguided attempt to put it out.

[Oh, and never ones to miss a trick, today's GOP "talking point" is that "Political Keerecktness" CAUSED this, by the Army coddling this "terrorist." As they continue masturbating with the blood of dead American soldiers. Interesting that, if true, it happened on Bush's watch.]

Albert Einstein said “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results.”

We’re currently on Big Al’s insane list. Let’s try to get off it, shall we?

from barely one year ago …

And somebody evidently WANTS the hate diffused over all their opponents, domestic and foreign. Care to speculate WHO is behind the conflation?

Oh, and don’t continue to send this  journalist to war against other journalists.

We all know how that turns out.

(Look out! He’s got a pen!!)

But honoring our dead and wounded?

No time for that, in our groovy festival of hate.

Courage.

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