In the aftermath of the massacre at Fort Hood, it is perhaps unsurprising that there are those eager to point out that Nidal Malik Hasan’s faith had nothing whatsoever to do with his murderous rampage, immediately prior to which, witnesses now say, he was heard to shout “Allahu akbar.” Knee-jerk, unreflective, politically correct reflexes are hard to subdue.
Nor is it entirely surprising that some would choose to make hay over the president for his admittedly clumsy “shout out” to a group of government bureaucrats before turning to weightier matters. Partisan reflexes are equally difficult to moderate, even as the bodies of heroes lie cooling.
But you think that we’d be better than this.
Or at least you would until you read this morning’s New York Times article on the shootings. Not so much the article itself, containing as it did professional, if unexceptionally bland reportage. But rather the side bar to the story, containing user-generated links to the stories that New York Times readers found sufficiently compelling at 0730 on the 7th of November in the year 2009, less than 24 hours after a massacre of 13 US soldiers on a military base in Texas. These are the “most popular” stories in the paper’s content, representing the beating heart of the Times readership. Things they send to their friends to read.
Sad, really.
And then there’s this, from the Times article itself:
The former imam at a Silver Spring, Md., mosque where Major Hasan worshiped for about 10 years described him as proud of his work in the Army and “very serious about his religion.” The former imam, Faizul Khan, said that Major Hasan had wanted to marry an equally religious woman but that his efforts to find one had failed.
“He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab, and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things,” the former imam said.
You really have to wonder how much of what we’re facing today is mere sexual frustration.
And this guy qualified as an Army shrink? What’s up with that?
According to neighbors, and at least one store security camera, the Major spent the previous couple of weeks wearing the white clothing of a martyr during his off-duty hours, as well as giving away his possessions.
You’d think someone might have noticed that.
Sexual frustration? Right. I haven’t had sex since Sept 2002. You don’t see me on the brink of mass murdering people. Give me a break, Lex. Please tell me that was a line of sarcasm.
It’s not just the time, it’s the entire culture that looks at women as a necessary evil. I had a friend that lived with her (then) husband in UAE and was convinced that most of the problems with the younger people would be averted if young men were allowed to date young women. But such things are taboo over there, and apparently over here as well if you are Muslim. Or maybe just a certain kind of Muslim. I don’t know much about their religion. I’m just another infidel.
Michael
I’m with you. I’m not sure how much more sex would help the situation. I find it hard to believe at least, and more than likely a hang-up/explain all of the depraved fringe of the Left which Freud somehow made far more popular a theory than can probably be justified.
As far as frustration goes, I’m single in Oak Harbor WA if anyone else knows what that’s like. And the most violent I get is yelling at a politician on the boob tube then changing the channel.
Although, now that I think about, I do usually yell at them to go perform a sexual act . . . maybe I’m discounting this theory too quickly
“You’d think someone might have noticed that.”
I’m sure people did. But we live in a society where if you bring that up, you’re called an “Islamophobe”.
Political correctness — which is a one-way street, considering Republicans, Conservatives, Jews and Christians get no such PC protection — is going to kill this nation from within.
Actually, I never read the Times for real news… but I did read those two links about 100 things restaurant staffers should never do… in fact saved the article content with links in a document I intend to carry with me on my PDA.
In defense of the readers, maybe the NYT article was a bit too much “me to” to the blogosphere? I have followed the story ad nauseum on 30 some blogs plus FOX and there really isn’t anything new that times could add except apologetic victim-hood political slant to the story.
Maybe also the stories most linked provided better information (at least I found the “100 things” articles much more interesting than reading a rehash of rehashes of information and opinions I had already read).
So anyway, don’t be too quick to call shallow the Times readership… even if true, you could find yourself calling out “I know you are, but what am I” defense when they start casting the usual lefty tripe back in your direction.
There was a gal like that over at the Aspergers LJ community. Still is, I think. I think she might be backing out of her idealistic islamic perseveration, having met some actual male mohammedans.
I read the NYT story, and many others, but didn’t feel the urge to e-mail it on, I trust my family and friends will seek out the stories such as this on their own. Does that make me a bad person?
A recent glance at today’s WSJ, the most e-mailed stories:
1. Opinion: The Return of the Inflation Tax
2. How to Write a Great Novel
3. Coincidental Obscenity Deemed Extremely Dubious
4. Opinion: The Madness of Queen Nancy
5. Review: Motorola’s Smart Droid
6. Opinion: The Coming Shortage of Doctors
7. Fannie to Rent Foreclosed Homes
8. Opinion: Strassel: Hello, Tipping Point
9. Opinion: John Steele Gordon: Obama and the Liberal Paradigm
10. Opinion: Charles Gasparino: Three Decades of Subsidized Risk
Hasan wasn’t looking for a wife/friend/equal/partner. He was looking for a 21st century slave, chattel, minor property that just happens to cook, clean house, and spread leg. Had an Omani pilot invite several of us to his house for dinner years ago. Women stayed in kitchen, never seen. He proudly boasted that he could divorce his wife and throw out his MIL by simply stating “I divorce thee” 3 times. And that was why she wore lots of gold as that was her “emergency savings account”. Yep, the kind of “friend” you really want in life. The more we learn, the less there is to tolerate, much less like.
My second wife’s son from a previous marriage married a Turkish girl he met in college who’s father happened to be the military attache to the US. That set the stage for us traveling to Istanbul for the wedding celebration. The most unusual thing culturally was the part of the celebration where the bride and groom are seated and the guests bring them their wedding gifts. One by one the guests went forward and gave the gifts to bride and groom. The bride received all manner of gold jewelry, mainly bracelets that she placed on her arms as received. By the end of the celebration they reached almost to her shoulders on both arms. ‘Twas explained that this was to be her security because, according to their laws and customs, a man could indeed divorce his wife simply by declaring trice that to be the case. The gold was hers to keep to support her once she found herself in such a condition. It was all very strange to my simple country upbringing.
Now these were moderate Muslims, these Turks, and showed such great hospitality even as the silent stares could be detected once in awhile directed our way. The affair was held at an O Club, the father by now having been promoted to BG and now back in Turkey full-time. The other thing that added to the element of discomfort was the many Turkish soldiers, armed with sub-machine guns patrolling the perimeter, there being a palatable risk of the Kurdish terrorist group the PKK possibly showing up uninvited to wreck the celebration.
I remember thinking even as I enjoyed the exposure to things I would likely never experience again, “east is east and west s west and never…”.
This was prior to 9/11 and the day after that fateful event I took a call from the General from Istanbul who, in very emotional terms, pledged his and his countries devotion in pursuing the perpetrators.
I often wondered if all the guests at the celebration would have felt that way.
Also, to be fair about the NYT e-mailed stories…
I don’t go to the NYT for news. And I don’t know anyone else who does either. I get all my news from political blogs and military blogs. When I want to get the best political analysis and current events analysis, I go to political blogs. When I want to get the best military analysis, I go to military blogs.
The only time I have bothered to read anything in the NYT is when a specific story is linked by a political/military blog I am reading.
So, the “most popular e-mailed stories” might just say more about the fact that the NYT is not a true news source, since their most popularly e-mailed stories are non-news.
I don’t think the “Most Emailed” list shows that NYT readers are shallow. People usually email stories that they find interesting for whatever reason, but might be buried in a sub-section of the site.
What’s the point of emailing a story that is being covered by every news site, TV station, radio, etc.?
Just look at jpr’s comment, the WSJ most emailed list…
For the denizens of New York anything that happens outside of NYC isn’t news. Most consider the rest of the country to be inferior to their neck of the woods. The Times is a reflection of that. Also remember that Fort Hood is in Texas, which the fine folks in NYC equate to the dark side of the moon.
Sexual frustration indeed. Couple that with an absolute mysoginistic attitude – women are at best second-class citizens in their worldview – and you create a volatile mindset that can, and apparently does, result in violence. This is also the same culture that allows men to eye goats and other barnyard animals as sexual objects.
Ken
Looking at the overall demographics of the Islamic world something tells me they’re having a good deal of sex.
From the Corner
Political Correctness and the Ft. Hood Shooting [Stephanie Gutmann]
“Overseas, you are ready for it. But here, you can’t even defend yourself,” said Jerry Richard, a Fort Hood solider who was nearby when Major Nidal Hasan went on his shooting rampage.
What do the Pentagon bureaucrats have to say about that? If soliders on this base had been allowed to carry the weapons they use overseas, the service weapons they train with, Hasan would have been able to shoot perhaps one or two people, not 41. (As of this writing, 13 are dead, 28 wounded.)
“It’s a tragedy to lose soldiers overseas and even more horrifying when they come under fire at an Army base on U.S. soil,” said President Obama.
Indeed. How ironic: Survive Iraq or Afghanistan then get picked off like a game bird in a bland, institutional “Soldier Readiness Center” in Texas.
Soldiers in other countries are allowed to carry arms on base and even when they are off-duty. In Israel, for instance, soldiers are issued a rifle and then . . . it’s theirs. One sees slender 18-year-old girls, traveling from base, home to the suburbs for Shabbat dinner, still slung with a massive M-16 rifle almost as big as they are. The prevelance of arms doesn’t mean the country experiences the kind of random mass murders seen in the United States. It means that the few times someone has gone crazy with a gun in a city street, he was taken down fast by bystanders.
But not American soldiers. When asked if ordinary soldiers nearby had been carrying their service weapons, Fort Hood spokesman Lt. Gen Robert Cone said piously, “We do not carry weapons. This is our home.” Defense is out-sourced to military police, or even — oh the indignity! — to civilian policemen.
This is not the first time American soldiers have been victims of politically correct policies. In 2000, Navy brass were so concerned about appearing to be “sensitive guests” in Yemen’s Port of Aden, that sailors patrolling the deck of the U.S.S. Cole were not allowed to carry loaded weapons. The ship did not deploy “picket boats” and establish a perimeter. In other words, the destroyer was totally unprotected when a small motorized skiff packed with explosives steered by two men, now believed to have been al-Qaeda, plowed into it’s hull, killing 17.
Even two hours after the attack, as the wounded ship listed in the harbor, sentries spotted yet another small skiff motoring deliberately toward the them. One of them raised his rifle and aimed, not to shoot them — he couldn’t have — but in the spirit (as he told Navy Times) of “Nobody’s getting near this ship.” Almost immediately, his superior told him, “Let me tell you somthing about the rules of engagement. You can’t point a loaded weapon at these people. That’s an act of aggression.”
The U.S. military would like to pretend it’s not about defense and aggression, and it’s sacrificed many young men and women to maintain this fiction. How many more victims of political correctness can we afford?
— Stephanie Gutmann is the author of The Kinder, Gentler Military: How Political Correctness Affects Our Ability to Win Wars.
11/06 10:46 AMShare
Sexual frustration? You’d think that the Arabs and Persians, having been merchants and traders for millenia, might recognize the under-served mail-order-bride market that exists here.
Hmmmm…. Wonder if ACORN can help them break into the market?
– Max
Well,
Maybe since he was so frustrated he was thinking he would be rewarded with his “bevy of virgins.”
I hope they are all goats and sheep, maybe an alligator or two..
It’s been that way for years Austin. When the ship I was on was in Naples in 1986, I was assigned to Shore Patrol for my duty day. I was told to go to the Master at Arms office and draw a weapon so that I could provide security for the bus going from Fleet Landing to AF South and NSA. When I got there I was handed a pistol belt with a .45 in it. I went to pull it from the holster and check it over, when I was told not to bother. It was safety wired into the holster and the clip was welded into the butt. Most of the time I wouldn’t have minded, but, a few days before I was thrown back into the E-club at NSA because of a bomb threat in a nearby building. As it turned out, it wasn’t a threat.
How appropriate then that it was a female who took him on in a close quarters standup gun fight and won. /heh
Wonder how he’s feeling about women in the military today? /snork
14 centuries of a consistent value system demonstrating a consistent behavior pattern towards “infidels” doesn’t lie. Endless Jihad. This should not surprise anyone. The NYT and other like-minded godless elitist types think they can ignore it or spin it. They are the liars.