I’ve been trying to keep up with the news about what’s going on with the incident at Fort Hood and it looks like Nidal Malik Hasan is going to be facing the death penalty. Well, that’s what prosecutors are pushing for anyway. He’ll be tried in a military court, rather than a civilian one, and if he is executed it will be the first time that an active duty serviceman is put to death since 1961.
That’s all well and good but honestly I’d rather the guy spend the rest of his life in a Federal penitentiary, without the possibility of parole. It would be like throwing a child molester into a general population prison. This guy killed soldiers in a cowardly act of domestic terrorism and I think it would be much fairer for him to get his ass beaten in jail every day for the rest of his life. Ya, the other people in the Federal penitentiary may have broken the law as well, but I have a feeling that the majority of them won’t take kindly to a person who killed a bunch of soldiers on a US military base, especially given his terrorist ties.
Something that’s bothering me is that the papers and online news sites are still referring to him as a Major. They’re also still referring to him as a soldier. While both of these are technically true, I think he’s lost the right to be accorded that honor. Yes, it’s an honor to be called a soldier. It’s an honor to be addressed by the rank you’ve been awarded. It’s an honor to be acknowledged as one of the country’s finest. He’s a domestic terrorist with ties to known Middle Eastern terrorists. He killed real soldiers. He’s not a soldier. He’s not a Major. He’s just an asshole.
Also, people seem to be trying to paint Hasan as the victim, or at least a victim, in this whole scenario. He’s not a victim. In fact, I read that he wasn’t even a therapist. He was just one of the people that processes paperwork and occasionally prescribes medication. It’s likely he never spent more than 15 minutes with any single person. He certainly wasn’t putting them on a couch and trying to couch them through personal problems or help them deal with PTSD. That being the case, you can’t even claim that he was suffering from some second-hand PTSD, whatever the hell that’s supposed to be. Does anyone else notice how medical illnesses seem to create themselves whenever someone does something f*cked up and wants to justify their actions?
It’s pretty clear what happened to him. This guy never felt like he was an American. He never felt like he belonged. He had an ideological difference with how the US does business. For whatever reason, he joined the Army as an officer. That was the stupidest thing he could’ve done. People join the Army for a lot of different reasons, but to some degree all soldiers are patriotic. So, if you don’t believe in what your country is doing why be in the military? I refuse to believe that he didn’t have ample time to resign his commission. Instead of doing that though, he reached out to Islamic extremists and used his position of trust as a military officer to do as much damage to the Army as he could alone.
People are arguing that if this guy was a Christian his beliefs wouldn’t be at the forefront of the investigation, but we’re not at war with a Christian country and we’re not at war with groups of extremist Christians. Hasan is a Muslim with ties to Muslim extremists, who committed this atrocious act with the idea of protecting his Muslim beliefs in mind. His religion has everything to do with the investigation and with the cause of the killing of 12 US Soldiers and 1 devoted contracted medical professional.
I’m in no way saying that we should take a hard stance against having Muslims in our military. I know a lot of Muslims, especially after having lived over here in Singapore, and for the most part they’re good or just average people. They live their lives more or less the same way any other person does. Hey, there are even gay Muslims. I think people have the misconception that all Muslims are hard ass extremists. That’s simply not the case. What I am saying is that we need to take a harder look at Muslims who are put into positions of authority and trust, at least for the time being, to make sure they have no ties to any extremist groups. Consider the minor loss of privacy to those individuals a temporary necessity of war. At least we’re not throwing them all in concentration camps like we did to the Japanese during the second World War. Hasan had obvious and known ties to extremists and it was brushed off by top government agencies as legitimate professional and educational research. I call bullshit on that. I think someone just dropped the ball. At a time when we’re at war with Muslim extremist groups I think more care should be given to those who are obviously reaching out to them, especially those who are within our military ranks. I’m getting really tired of seeing our government drop the ball when it comes to stuff like this. First the September 11th, 2001 destruction of the World Trade Center in NYC. Now this. What next? Are we going to miss connecting the dots and have a whole city get blown up?
I have a feeling this is going to turn into a long drawn out process. The legal proceedings I mean. This guy will probably push for appeal after appeal, and the final execution order would have to be signed by the President himself, since he’s technically in the military. For example, remember the other guy that rolled a grenade into a tent full of soldiers in Kuwait? Well, that guy, then Army Sergeant Hasan Akbar, was sentenced to death four years ago. His case is still held up in the first level appellate courts.
Bradley Farless 