He Had to Serve Somebody

Pat Buchanan has it right, as usual – while the rest of the commentariat gyrates around in a spasm of confusion and hysteria, hobbled – as usual – by the dictates of political correctness. How many hours did it take for the first brave soul in the media to even dare point out that Nidal Malik Hasan has a somewhat Arabic sounding name? And this was after every other explanation for why he started slinging lead down at Ft. Hood had proven way too thin. As Buchanan calmly points out, Hasan is a U.S. Army officer and a Moslem Arab – a difficult combination to hold together in this day and age, especially when our own military's “contractors” -- AKA mercenaries – openly admit that (at least in their point of view) we are waging a war on Islam. For Hasan, the prospect of being sent into a battle zone to fight against his co-religionists was intolerable; what he chose to do about it is, of course, another matter. But this sort of conflict seems so rare and inexplicable in our time that it bears further scrutiny. Why, for example, was there so little resistance on the part of German-Americans to enlist during World War I (despite the paranoid fears of the WASPs who got us into the war)? And why did it turn out that many Japanese-Americans – even those with relatives interred in the detention camps – were perfectly willing to fight Japan in World War II? Those actions seem to typify the ideals of a propositionally-based society vs. one that is rooted in race, ethnicity, or religion. And it's true, I have always suspected that people who immigrated to the U.S. from other countries did so for a reason – i.e. that their actions were neither whimsical nor arbitrary. German immigrants preferred the U.S. to Germany – for whatever reason. And ditto Japanese immigrants. Why is this always so hard for people to grasp? As sentimental as a given group might be about their country of origin, they had no problem bailing out when the time came... and, in most cases, pledging unconditional loyalty to their new country. And when it came time to fight, they knew they were not fighting their own people so much as a regime. And while it is true that most refugees over the eons have been of the economic sort – beginning perhaps with the Sons of Jacob – this country was also settled by people fleeing political strife, religious persecution, and – yes – long prison sentences. America is still, to much of the world, the Gold Mountain... although that gold has tarnished a bit of late, so much so that even the invasion from Latin America has subsided a bit. At the same time, however, some immigrants have turned out to be “more equal than others”, as witness the early discrimination against the Irish as opposed to, e.g., the Germans, Italians, Poles, etc. Furthermore, most immigration into the U.S. from places other than East Asia has, up until recently, been at-least-nominal Christians immigrating into a nominally Christian country.

And herein lies the key to Hasan's dilemma. His parents may have been seeking “a better life”, i.e. economic opportunity, in the U.S., but they, by and large, left their co-religionists behind. The far-flung Moslem enclaves of the U.S. don't really make up for the rich and intense experience of living in a place where the entire culture is grounded in one's own faith – especially including Palestine, where that faith is very much under attack from without (as opposed to intra-faith feuds within, as in Iraq). So conditions were ripe for a much more conflicted situation than was ever experienced by the Germans, Japanese, and others. (One could ask, why don't the East Asians have the same problem, and I suspect it's because their religions don't make the same kinds of demands on them that the monotheistic religions make on their adherents – but that is definitely a discussion for another day.)

But was – is – Hasan a terrorist? Buchanan doesn't call him that. Was his attack irrational? Certainly, to the extent that, in doing what he did, he was punishing all the wrong people. The “troops” at Ft. Hood were simply doing what soldiers have always done down through history – following orders. Were any German enlisted personnel tried at Nuremberg? Not that I'm aware. There is a certain wisdom – call it resignation if you will – when it comes to assigning blame for war and even for its more heinous acts... despite the fine propaganda piece “The Universal Soldier” crooned by Buffy Sainte-Marie during the Vietnam conflict. And this is not to say that soldiers leave their free will and Natural Law at the door of the MEPS (Military Entrance Processing Station) when they enlist – and we do see, often enough, prosecution of enlisted personnel for “atrocities”... not only our own but, thanks to the “Nazi hunters”, a bunch of old guys in wheel chairs toting oxygen tanks. But the blame for wars, most of which are, arguably, unnecessary, clearly resides -- at least in our time -- with civilian leaders and politicians, “policy makers”, and – in the next circle out – arms makers and war-mongering media, much more than in the poor schmucks who find themselves caught up in them. So, again, Hasan was definitely dealing with the wrong end of the spectrum – picking on the low-hanging fruit, if you will, because there are more of them and they are much easier to get at. So in his confused mind, the troops at Ft. Hood were America, and they were the cause of all the woes of his people (based, of course, on the premise that Israeli "domestic policy" and American "foreign policy" are one and the same -- which is pretty obviously the case).

Buchanan regrets that “tens of millions have come [to America] whose first loyalty is to the kinfolk and country they left behind and to the faith they carry in their hearts.” The key term here is “first” loyalty – since we can hardly expect immigrants, or sons of immigrants, to turn totally against their racial, ethnic, and cultural roots. But what I'm trying to say is that the situation is different – if not unique – among Moslems, firstly because they preach, and believe in, a doctrine of exceptionalism and exclusivity that rivals anything the Christians or Jews have ever come up with, and secondly because they are, still, strangers in a strange land. And the more devout the Moslem, the more conflicted he will become; that certainly makes sense. Hasan was not only on an “officer track” in the Army, he was also on a “true believer track” in Islam – and the two were certain to clash at some point. The sensible thing for him to have done, of course, would be to simply resign his commission and take the consequences – which might have included having to repay the taxpayers for his medical education. Well, fair enough – it should have been a worthy sacrifice if he had passed the point of no return in his beliefs. So we have to add in the possibility that he was a bit unbalanced in his thinking, which implies that he was unbalanced, period. This is not to excuse his act one iota, merely to call into question his discernment... and I think we can fairly expect Moslems to exercise as much discernment in issues of peace and war as other Americans – especially if they are already wearing the uniform.

Well, Hasan is already, in a sense, “history” -- he will stay behind bars for the rest of his (now crippled) life, as will the 9-11 “suspects” whose day in court fast approaches; the system will see to that. America's love affair with “victimology” only extends so far – how many protested the recent execution of John Allen Mohammed? The real issue is, what is to be done? Not about Hasan but about all the other Moslems in and out of uniform in the U.S.? Do we have another World War II Japanese-American detention camp scenario on our hands? (Michelle Malkin seems to think so.) No – but then what do we have? The question when it comes to violent crime of any sort is, what sort of intervention should there have been, and when? And on what basis? And this is what has the media – and the politicians – and, I assume, the military - in a tizzy. Are we waking up to the fact of having to deal with a fifth column of one-man Islamic sleeper cells? Is anyone in uniform who trots off to a mosque on a regular basis automatically a suspect? Is this just another example of what is called “blow-back” -- but on a domestic level?

But there are even better questions. Why are we, in fact, waging war on Islam? Is it at the behest of Israel? Is it because these people who have been willingly selling us oil for decades now have suddenly “gotten religion”? Maybe it's because Moslems have the bad taste to actually believe in what their faith preaches -- unlike the bulk of so-called Christians and Jews these days. It certainly has nothing to do with any sort of “crusade” in the traditional sense – heaven knows, Christianity is hardly defended in this country, especially by its leadership... and we all know by now what our exertions in Iraq have meant for the Christians over there; they've been driven out. The largest category of ethnic cleansing on the world scene today is that of Christians being cleansed from Moslem-dominated countries, and I think that the cause can be traced, fairly readily, to our policies over the years – that and “economic imperialism”, which has impacted the Moslem world as much as anywhere. The Chinese have finally figured out that the way to combat American economic imperialism is to turn around and start beating us at our own game. For Latin America, the answer is to regress to a political faith – communism – that has been discarded nearly everywhere else. And in the Islamic world, the answer seems to be a form of fundamentalism that requires – in many cases – a return to a pre-technological, pre-industrial (not to mention pre-democratic) paradigm... because those things are associated, rightly or wrongly, with America, Europe, and (to really stretch the point) the Crusades. While most of the world is looking more like the U.S. every day (a particularly depressing observation one can make while traveling – to which, I might add, the U.S. is looking more like northern New Jersey every day) the Islamic world is doing its best to return to some sort of golden age. And of course the first casualty of this movement is what we call, in our fanciful way, “diversity”, or “tolerance”. So in the midst of our own absurdly “diverse” and “tolerant” society, we have pockets of people who are anything but... and who are willing to, now and then, punish the rest of us for our gross failings. I don't think this is going to change too much, but it might not have as serious consequences if we were not – as least in their eyes – waging continual war on their faith, culture, and heritage on behalf of “ideas” which do not stand up to the serious scrutiny of anyone for whom tradition is everything.