Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s rampage
Bryan Zepp Jamieson, November 8, 2009
It’s been about 48 hours since a inoffensive looking, balding, middle-aged army psychiatrist allegedly opened fire and shot 43 people in a major military base in Texas. The latest word is that the man accused of the shootings is off a ventilator at a nearby hospital, but paralyzed by the wounds he received from police. It’s not clear if he can communicate or not.
Like nearly everyone, I want to know why he did it. The only people who wish he had simply been killed outright are the ones who want to use the shootings as an excuse to go to war against all Moslems. But in this case, there is very little about the events that make any sense on the face of it – not that shooting 43 people and killing 13 of them makes much sense to begin with – and motive is only one of the big questions that need to be answered.
There doesn’t seem to be much doubt that he did it. The Independent reported that one of the police officers who shot him approached him and found him lying on his back, gun still in hand, and kicked it away. There is still doubt as to whether he acted alone or had an accomplice, but there doesn’t seem to be any evidence of any weapon other than the 5.7 handgun – a small caliber anti-personnel weapon with an extremely high muzzle velocity – being used.
That weapon is an anomaly in and of itself. It’s a high-end Belgian weapon, and costs well over $1,000. It’s designed very explicitly to kill people, and its manufacturer, FN Herstal, boasts of the extreme hydrostatic shock the high-velocity bullets will cause. It has a load of 20 bullets, and since Hasan fired at least 100 times, that means he reloaded at least five times. It was equipped with a high-end laser sight, which meant this army psychiatrist, who had no gun-range experience, spent over $2,000 just on this one weapon.
It’s not a military weapon, and the US army doesn’t even have an equivalent. But it’s very nearly the perfect gun for someone who wants to wade into a crowd of unarmed people and massacre a lot of them. I expect it to become a big item for Christmas at the gun shops this year.
How is it, though, that this man, a Walter Mitty sort with no special training in killing people, was able to open fire in a major military base, pausing only five times to reload, and kill all those people? Even if all the soldiers were disarmed on the base, were none of them trained in taking out an armed adversary in hand-to-hand?
Much has been made of how Hasan was about to be shipped off to Afghanistan (yesterday, in fact) and how he was deeply conflicted over the prospect of killing fellow Moslems. Except that doesn’t make any sense.
The man was a doctor, and a major. He wasn’t going to be riding patrols along the Kybar highway of death, or even doing street patrols in Kabul. He was going to be in a military hospital in Afghanistan, doing pretty much the same as what he was doing state-side; trying to ease the psychological and emotional injuries of war that are the biggest invisible damage the troops suffer over there.
Nobody was going to make him shoot and kill people, and in any event, you don’t usually protest being made to shoot and kill people by running out and shooting and killing people.
That his religion played a role in this seems beyond doubt, but it’s not what the hate-mongers on the far right think. They’ve been busily painting him as an extremist in the mold of al Qaida or the Taliban, and that’s sheer nonsense. He was American born, of parents who left Palestine long before Israel reduced it to a charnel house. There’s no shortage of people who have come forward and expressed shock because he loved America and was proud to be in the military. If his parents passed their grievances on to him, it manifested in a odd way, because he didn’t become an observant Moslem until after his mother’s death, in 2001. The pattern just doesn’t fit someone who is seething with rage against America.
What role did his religion play? It’s unlikely he thought he might have to shoot his fellow believers, since even in the Army, psychiatrists don’t usually get into firefights. Nor would he have felt any unusual affinity for the people of Afghanistan, since his family came from over a thousand miles away and a vast culture apart (Palestine is closer in customs to London than to Afghanistan).
He was apparently subject to slurs and taunting from other military people who felt that no Moslem should be in the military. While it wouldn’t turn him against America, it would have left him feeling largely alienated and isolated. Unfortunately, the army has a lot of mindless bigots in it, and as a consequence, gays, women, and people who aren’t Christian fundies all suffer to various degrees. These bigots really are the Achilles heel of the American military.
The first place to look is at how his role as a psychiatrist played into this. He specialized in treating returning soldiers with PTSD, and day in and day out shared the nightmares of those damaged heroes.
It’s a truism that psychiatrists need shrinks of their own more than most people, and the main reason is that the constant wading in the blackness of injured and diseased minds gets to them, and makes them a little crazy.
I would look at his profession as first cause, and reaction to his religion, rather than the religion itself, as the second cause.
Put a man under severe emotional stress. Then isolate and alienate him, and then ratchet up the stress.
What happens? Keep in mind, Hasan IS an American, born and bred. He’s been told, even if he didn’t believe, that guns can solve all your problems. He’s been told this a million times.
What happens next?
In all this, there was a bright spot, a moment where one of the bereaved reached up and touched the ideals of his faith. This, according to the AP, whose tone was not approving:
“‘Lord, all those around us search for motive, search for meaning, search for something, someone to blame. That is so frustrating,’ Col. Frank Jackson told a group of about 120 people gathered at the post’s chapel. ‘Today, we pause to hear from you. So Lord, as we pray together, we focus on things we know.’
“Jackson asked worshipers to pray for the 13 dead and 29 wounded that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is accused of shooting, but also asked them to pray for Hasan and his family ‘as they find themselves in a position that no person ever desires to be.’
“‘And Lord, teach us to love and pray for those who rise up against us and pray for those who do us harm. We pray for Maj. Hasan. Asking that you do the work that only you can do in his life,” Jackson said.”
At the other end of the spectrum is Joe Lieberman, who was quick to run onto Faux News and exploit the tragedy for his vendetta against Moslems. From the same AP article: “Sen. Joe Lieberman, chairman of the Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, said he plans to begin a congressional investigation to determine whether the shootings constitute a terrorist attack. Lieberman, an independent from Connecticut, said on Fox News Sunday that he wants to find out whether the Army missed warning signs that Hasan was becoming extreme.”
In the middle are the rest of us, who are glad Hasan is alive so he can answer the question we all have: Why? I don’t trust the American media to give us the answer. They’ve already come in and made a propaganda circus out of Kim Munley, one of the two cops who apparently shot Hasan. She supposedly, despite being shot and wounded herself, brought him down.
Except she took two rounds, one to each leg, from a weapon designed to maximize hydrostatic shock. I have a friend who took a rifle shot in the leg during basic training in the fifties, and he still has medical problems from it today. She would have been out of commission. She may well be a hero, but she isn’t the Amazon bravely returning fire after being shot that the press is painting. She may be getting the PFC Jessica Lynch treatment.
So if the media is bullshitting us already in their vapid desire to give us bite sized drama kibble in place of news so they get good ratings, don’t expect much in the way of insight or keen analysis if Hasan tells his tale.
But the truth will eventually out, and hopefully, we’ll learn why he murdered and injured all those poor people.





Brian Zepp Jamieson: Liarman Strikes
November 2, 2009 · Leave a Comment
What corporate power has made of a once proud country.
Bryan Zepp Jamieson, October 31, 2009
Joe Lieberman has come to represent what America has become.
Unfortunately, that’s a pretty ugly sight.
Lieberman, who became an Independent in order to cling to power back in
2006 when disgusted Democratic voters tried to kick his ass out in the
state primary, was able to keep his seat that year in part by
campaigning for universal health care. He lured Republican voters by
promising to support Bush’s ruinous tax policies, and to unswervingly
support the hundreds of billions wasted on the twin occupations in Asia.
So he came out Wednesday and told the world that he was going to join
the GOP in filibustering against the health care reform bill because he
was afraid of what it would do to the deficit.
Even Republicans had to be sucking their cheeks in and wincing in
private. What Joe was doing was basically the equivalent of a young
woman loitering in red pumps, a micro-dress and crotchless panties in
front of the police station.
It’s unlikely that 25 people in the country bought Joe’s explanation.
Even Faux News and talk radio, usually fast to lionize a defector from
Democratic ranks, were curiously subdued about it. Oh, they crowed that
it would kill health care reform, but about Joe himself they were pretty
quiet. Even by their standards, his was a pretty disgraceful performance.
By traditional politics, as has been pointed out by many pundits, Joe’s
stance was inexplicable. Health reform will save the country tens of
billions a year, even in a weakened form. With a robust public option,
it would save hundreds of billions, and reduce the deficit.
Nor does he have public support. In his home state of Connecticut,
public option has the support of 68% of voters. Health care reform has
the support of nearly 80%.
He can’t even argue that he is philosophically opposed, because he ran
on a platform of supporting universal health care in 2006.
He did complain that “We’re trying to do too much at once”, an objection
that apparently didn’t occur to him when he voted to lavishly fund the
occupations of two Asian countries, and supported the PATRIOT ACT, which
basically gave government the power to ask your phone company to spy on
you, and to eliminate four of the ten items on the Bill of Rights.
As recently as 2006, Lieberman could claim to be a progressive on most
things, but whatever progressive ideals he had evaporated in a hurry
during his frantic efforts to cling to power in 2006.
Here’s what he says about the relatively mild public option – a step in
the direction of universal health care – today. “I feel so strongly
about the creation of another government health insurance entitlement,
the government going into the health insurance business, I think it’s
such a mistake that I would use the power I have as a single senator to
stop a final vote.”
He’s become such a whore to the Republicans and the Insurance companies
and HMOs (who chipped in $1.6 million to get him elected as an
Independent after Democratic voters threw his ass out of the election
process) that he can’t even allow a simple up-or-down vote.
It’s the sort of behavior you expect from Republicans.
Joe Lieberman is a Republican. It doesn’t matter what he calls himself,
he sold out, and he’s a Republican. The minute he votes to end cloture,
the Democrats need to throw him out of the caucus and strip him of his
seniority. They let him keep those in return for supporting the party on
important votes, and he betrayed them as much as he betrayed his own
constituents.
Not everyone in Congress is a whore for the insurance industry or Big
Pharm or the HMOs. But that’s the way to bet. If your Congressional rep
is a Republican, then it doesn’t matter what his or her personal beliefs
are: the party demands utter lock-step obedience, and will destroy the
career of anyone who deviates on any significant issue. So even if your
rep isn’t a whore personally, that rep is marching in lock-step with all
the other whores, and personal integrity has nothing to do with how that
rep will vote.
With Democrats, there’s some variation. Some, like Senator Baucus, are
as just as bought out as Lieberman, and are scrambling to do the bidding
of the industries. At the other end is Dennis Kucinich, the House
representative from Cleveland who is still pressing for a House vote on
single payer.
Single payer is far too radical for the timid, bought-out clowns of
Congress to even consider. Mind you, this is the highly successful
program Canada has. Doctors and hospitals are private businesses.
Patients can choose any doctor they want. It enjoys nearly universal
approval in Canada, costs 60% of what Americans pay per capita, and
covers everyone in Canada. It’s a nearly perfect blending of private
business and government social service.
But just as the contemptible Lieberman is fighting to prevent the Senate
from even DEBATING the even milder public-option, Democrats in the House
are fighting to prevent a floor vote on single payer. Probably the large
number of bought-out Democrats such a vote would reveal is too
embarrassing.
That leaves the tepid public option, which is a kind of a baby step
toward single payer. It provides for a public insurance company to
provide coverage to people who cannot get it through private insurance
companies. It was originally proposed as a alternative to regulating the
insurance companies, and demanding that they end the practices of
pre-existing conditions, rescissions, and other abuses. The insurance
companies thought this was a good idea, until they realized that despite
what their own propaganda claimed, such a government program would work,
and undercut them by at least 40% on the premiums.
In the Randian world of the free market, the last thing the consortium
of private enterprises want to see is actual competition. What they want
is a nice, gentlemanly competition such as exists between oil companies,
where prices are never more than a couple of pennies apart, and they
have absolute control over retail “independent” outlets and what they
charge. This gives them absolute control of the market and prevents the
horror of a centrally-run economy.
As a result, with nearly utter control of all Republicans, and control
of a good chunk of Democrats, they have an ideal goal: in which a reform
bill goes through that contains no actual substantive reform at all, and
indeed might just tighten things up, making it easier for insurance
companies to gouge and cheat customers, while making sure that they only
have to deal with the type of customer who is worth gouging and
cheating. No more messing about with sick people, or poor people.
And more and more, it looks like that’s what this pathetic excuse for a
Congress will give us: a “reform” bill so hopelessly watered down that
it won’t even qualify as soup, or possibly even something that makes
things worse. It could be like the Medicare “reforms” of the Bush
administration that took a highly successful and popular program and
made it a bureaucratic nightmare that bankrupts people and costs more
and loses money hand-over-fist.
So Lieberman, slimy little whore that he is, might actually be right:
Nothing might be better than any “reform” that comes along now.
If we get fake reform, we’re probably stuck with that for a generation,
as happened with the Nixon “reforms” that inflicted HMOs on us.
If we get nothing, people can make health care reform THE issue of the
2010 election, and use it to throw out Republicans and Liebermans, and
as many industry whores as they can. It will be easy to do: don’t listen
to what any candidate says. Just look to see if he is getting
significant money from HMOs, insurance companies, Big Pharm, the Chamber
of Commerce, or other major industries. If they are, throw them out!
I think we’re near the point where a total loss now might be our best
option for meaningful reform in the near future.
If Kucinich gets his floor vote, we’ll have a pretty good idea of who
has to go first.
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