The Hitchens/official line on Ft. Hood: ignore any evidence that doesn't blame what happened solely on Maj. Hasan's extreme Islamic beliefs, his non-connection to al Qaeda, and the government's too lenient, liberal pussy-footed failure to shut him down and get him out.
It should go without saying that there is no absolutely discussion of underlying or root causes of the event, as if the terms themselves somehow don't exist or aren't real.
I would probably be disgusted by this cover-up if it were not so unsurprising.
I'll say it again: it seems clear to me that what drove Nidal Hasan first to Islamic extremism and then to commit the massacre at Ft. Hood is the WOT itself and all of its many damaging consequences both at home and abroad. (Update: a claim that Hitchens has just officially rejected in a new article on Slate, "The war on terrorism didn't cause the Fort Hood shootings." So if WOT had never been waged, the Ft. Hood massacre would've somehow happened anyway? Yeah, right.)
Anyway, Mark Ames has an article today on Alternet that destroys the official line on multiple fronts. Some opening clips:
What happened to all the initial reports that accused Fort Hood killer Maj. Nidal Hasan snapped because he was distraught over the Army's refusal to grant him either a discharge or an exemption from being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, wars which the Muslim psychiatrist abhorred -- and how it was this callous Army refusal to accommodate Maj. Hasan that led to his downward spiral into despondency, rage and mass murder?
...The Army's pig-headed failure to accommodate Maj. Hasan was, for a time, the most important -- and most damaging -- detail for understanding his shooting rampage. Because if Maj. Hasan tried to get out of his deployment, and if he telegraphed every warning signal possible (emailing terrorists, cruising 7-11s in his Al Qaeda costume) to bolster his case to reverse his deployment orders, and all the while the Army bureaucracy ignored him despite his 20 years' service -- then that means the massacre can't be blamed just on one crazy Islamofascist's inner evil. Instead, much of the blame for driving Maj. Hasan to crack would fall on his superiors in the Army, who held his fate in their hands. They could have shown some flexibility, but instead treated with the kind of callous bureaucratic insolence and nasty ethnic harassment you'd expect to find in a 19th century army, not 21st century America. If the Army really did fail to respond to a million-billion signals from Maj. Hasan, then it means we'd have to investigate more than just his evil little Muslim soul. We'd also have to look at the environment that changed him from a good loyal soldier into a cracked lunatic. That would mean examining just how screwed up the Army culture really is, how poorly it manages its resources and personnel, and why we went so long without knowing how bad things were…
“The enemies of intolerance cannot be tolerant." • "If it is an offense to justice to hold people who may have been victims of mistaken identity or of vendettas by other factions, then it is also an offense to justice to release psychopathic killers who believe that they have divine permission to throw acid in the faces of girls who want to attend school." • "Don't be such a lesbian!
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