Comments on: How do we understand Major Hasan?

By: EJames Lieberman

EJames Lieberman — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 01:29:38 +0000

Re: “We can all feel Major Hasan’s pain: that of a man about to be sent to support a war he hates. Read Pat Barker’s classic novels about the psychiatrists who patched up the casualties of World War I, whose success meant the men would be fit to return to be cannon fodder in the trenches: who was mad there? There is a peculiar craziness to psychiatrists supporting unjust wars.”
I’ve read and admire Pat Barker’s “Regeneration.” A retired psychiatrist, I also admire Lt. Col. Dave Grossman’s “On Killing” (rev. ed. 2009). I’ve opposed 9 of 10 wars in my lifetime and am not sure about the 10th. Dr. Hasan will become a symbol and caricature so I value Dave Belden’s preventive medicine in this case.

By: Cletus Stein

Cletus Stein — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 21:08:15 +0000

All American right wing extremists can do is to tear down. How much easier than to build!

By: JustJack

JustJack — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 21:16:02 +0000

Listening to Obama’s speechmaking around this event I felt shocked and disappointed (then stupid for even feeling that way, how else did I expect the “smart one” to respond when the track record in the face of the hoped-for in him told me to expect the reaction he gave us) that the President could so unnervingly miss the obvious lesson in the tragedy: stop the wars. Period. They are killing every last one of us.

As my late grandfather, a full bird colonel in the US Army, used to say, “War is the epitome of human stupidity and cowardice. It always demonstrates our failure to behave appropriately when he had the opportunity to do so. There is and will never be a decent justification for war other than, ‘we screwed this up when we should have gotten things right in the first place.’” When Bush went to war in Iraq, my grandfather hung out his flag, upside down. He was worried about the men and women who were sent. He kept reminding me they had options to refuse, to disobey illegal orders and he worried about the damage wrought here at home by such an “idiotic adventure born of a spoiled brat’s tantrums.”

These were the first things that popped into my mind when I first heard about the shooting at Fort Hood. Brooks and Saunders live in a very small delusional world limited by their Imperial Consciousness common amongst four-year olds. What will we adults now do?

By: Hungry Hyaena

Hungry Hyaena — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 19:50:31 +0000

Thank you, Dave.

In the media frenzy that passes for much contemporary news and politics, the humane aspects of most events or socio-political dynamics are generally overlooked. So, too, are the individuals involved reduced to caricatures and concepts. I wish I had some ideas as to how we, as a community, might address this ugly, dangerous spin. Alas…

As for David Brooks and his ilk, I frequently marvel at their incomplete assertion that Muslim extremism is the culprit (at Fort Hood, in particular, but globally, too). Why not continue the diagnosis, revealing the imbalanced, immoral global system that produces extreme poverty, social and political disenfranchisement, and national/ethnic resentment/competition as the source of the tsoris that drives so many young men and women to embrace extremism (or, at least, adds to the appeal of a black-and-white, reductionist world view)? Certainly religious extremism should be condemned and confronted, but addressing the root cause (which is also to address social justice globally) seems more sensible. But, were the conservative commentators to finger that root, they would implicitly condemn their own condemnation, as it, too, is born of a naive, black-hat-versus-white-hat construction of our volatile, shrinking world.