Call it treason

Dorothy Rabinowitz, for whom words are saber points, has a delicious take in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the willful blindness of American opinion leaders on the subject of Major Nidal Hussein:

'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."'

Of course we know the motive: Major Hassan saw the US Army as engaged in a battle with Islamic extremism, and he enlisted on the other side. Ms Rabinowitz calls this terrorism, but that's not strictly true, since terrorism by definition is the use of deadly force against civilians for political ends. What the major committed was something much more basic: treason. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

God is great

Over the weekend, I switched from the New York Times to the Washington Post in hopes of getting actual news about the Army major who recently murdered 13 of his comrades at Fort Hood, instead of pap about it being 'too early to judge' and 'his motives were unclear'. It seems I should have gone farther afield. The Telegraph of London reports:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.

Whoa! He did? That’s news to me, not to mention the NYT or the WaPo. The Torygraph goes on to say:

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother's funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.
Hasan's eyes "lit up" when he mentioned his deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings, according to a fellow Muslim officer at the Fort Hood base in Texas, the scene of Thursday's horrific shooting spree.

The Torygraph has this additional nugget about Major Hasan, likewise not to be seen on the websites of NYT or WaPo websites:

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, the gunman who killed 13 at America's Fort Hood military base, once gave a lecture to other doctors in which he said non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats.

He also told colleagues at America's top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire.

I once met an Army psychiatrist. He struck me as a bit nutty, but nothing on the order of Major Hasan. Can you believe that even US Army officers have been so inoculated by political correctness that they didn’t dare to report this nutter for ‘ fear of appearing discriminatory’? Blue skies! – Dan Ford (Ah, I see that the NYT now has the story, tagged 3:51pm, so we can hope it will be in Tuesday’s paper)

What does ‘winning’ mean?

Douglas Macgregor, a retired colonel, spoke to the cadets at West Point last week. The YouTube clip above is the fourth of seven, and you probably should start from the beginning, but it does give the flavor. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Remembering the Wall

Twenty years ago, this Wall still existed. And that ‘death strip’ still existed—a cleared space overseen by 116 watchtowers from which guards would shoot anyone trying to cross over to freedom in West Berlin. This from Wikipedia:
‘If an escapee was wounded in a crossing attempt and lay on the death strip, no matter how close [he was] to the Western wall, [he] could not be rescued for fear of triggering engaging fire from the 'Grepos', the East Berlin border guards. The guards often let fugitives bleed to death in the middle of this ground, like … Peter Fechter (aged 18). He was shot and bled to death in full view of the Western media, on August 17, 1962…. The last person to be shot while trying to cross the border was Chris Gueffroy on February 6, 1989’—i.e., nine months before the Wall came tumbling down. Whatever dreary atrocities we must live with in the 21st century, at least Europe is not divided by that scar any longer, of countries that had to build barriers to keep their people in. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

On being congressional, er, presidential

A strange performance. Perhaps Mr Obama doesn’t realize that he's on camera? He spends minutes stroking the egos of his Native American and Department of the Interior audience, including a weird ‘shout-out’ to Joe Medicine Crow, whom Mr Obama identifies as a holder of the ‘Congressional Medal of Honor’. No, no! Civilians sometimes append Congressional to the Medal of Honor, but I never thought to hear it from the commander-in-chief of our armed forces. And although Dr Medicine Crow served gallantly in World War II-—he even counted coup and stole horses from the Germans, as Crow warriors are supposed to do-—the Army didn't think him medal-worthy at the time. In 2008, after his deeds were publicized by the documentary film maker Ken Burns, he was belatedly recognized with the Bronze Star, and two months ago Mr Obama awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom. Blue skies! – Dan Ford

Major Hasan of unknown background

When Major Nidal Malik Hasan went to the convenience store yesterday morning, he was wearing white robes and prayer cap, according to a surveillance video shown on ABC. He is 'a Muslim of Palestinian descent', according to the Times of London. Yet the New York Times this morning says nothing about a religious link, and indeed goes out of its way to caution us that 'much about his background — and his motives — were unknown' and furthermore that he'd 'listed “no religious preference” on his personnel records'. Whatever happened to that pledge to give us 'All the news that's fit to print'? Perhaps fit is the problem. Facts that touch on religious, racial, ethnic, or gender differences evidently don't fit the Gray Lady's view of what's permissible for us to read. I'm switching my morning read to the Washington Post. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford