Time Magazine Successfully Notices, Identifies Elephant in the Room

I'm so proud of Time. Next we can move on shapes and colors! Like Big Boys and Growing Girls!

Golly Gee Willickers -- do you think maybe it's possible that Hasan's obvious terrorist sympathies were overlooked because he's a Muslim and there are special rules protecting Muslims? And that you could get your career ended in a hurry for asking the sort of questions you'd ask of any non-Muslim?

As everyone here keeps saying: If a white Christian reader of this blog was in the military and began writing letters to White Supremacist groups and openly stating his first loyalty was to "his race" with his country and constitution placing a distant second and third, it seems rather likely that investigations, and dishonorable discharges, would ensue.

So why not this guy?

Because the Muslim lobby screams bloody murder and goes on lawsuit jihads whenever a correligionist gets so much as three seconds of Stink Eye from anyone.

And this is killing people. People are being murdered due to hurt feelings being elevated above human life.

As it was long contended it would.

Army officials strongly deny any suggestion that Hasan's religion resulted in his being given special treatment. But one officer who attended the Pentagon's medical school with Hasan disagrees. "He was very vocal about being a Muslim first and holding Sharia law above the Constitution," this officer recalled. When fellow students asked, "How can you be an officer and hold to the Constitution?," the officer said, Hasan would "get visibly upset — sweaty and nervous — and had no good answers." This medical doctor would only speak anonymously because his commanders have ordered him not to talk about Hasan, he said.

This officer said he was so surprised when Hasan gave a talk about "the war on terror being a war on Islam" that he asked the lieutenant colonel running the course what Hasan's presentation had to do with health care. "I raised my hand and asked, `Why are you letting this go on — this has nothing to do with environmental health.' The course director said, `I'm just going to let him go.'" The topic of Hasan's presentation, the officer says, had been approved in advance by the lieutenant colonel.

The officer says he and another colleague complained to staff at the Uniformed University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Maryland, but got nowhere. "It was a systemic problem — the same thing was happening at Walter Reed," the Army Medical Center several miles away, where Hasan was working as a psychiatrist. (The Washington Post reported Tuesday that Hasan gave a similar presentation at Walter Reed in which he said Muslims should be released as conscientious objectors rather than being force into combat against fellow Muslims.) But "political correctness" inside the military, the officer asserts, insulated Hasan. "People are afraid to come forward and challenge somebody's ideology," he says, "because they're afraid of getting an equal-opportunity complaint that can end careers."

A retired four-star officer says that, based on the evidence gleaned so far, it was Hasan's career that should have been cut short. "They could have given — him a dishonorable discharge and said what he's doing works against good order and discipline," said the general, who also requested anonymity. But rather than any preferential treatment given to Hasan because of his religion, "My guess is he fell through the cracks," the general said.

And my guess that is General McCaffrey speaking, who emailed Michael Yon making the same basic point.

This investigation will go nowhere, because no one will ever admit they refrained from acting out of fear they would be punished and their careers terminated for doing so. In other words, the government has created a perfectly self-sustaining system of willful ignorance: They will cashier people who lodge complaints about people about to "Go Muslim," but, on the other hand, those people, having failed to take the necessary steps to protect human life, in order to protect their careers, will never have the guts to admit they did so, and will blame their inaction on other factors.

Which is just what the government wants: It wants these things swept under the carpet and deliberately overlooked, and it furthermore wants its very policy of sweeping these things under the carpet and deliberately overlooking them to itself be swept under the carpet and deliberately overlooked.

That's the way it perpetuates this scandalous indifference to security and human life: It has created such a perverse system of rewards and penalties that no one can publicly admit to being so monstrous and callous as to act according to that system of rewards and penalties. A system so corrupt that no one can admit to acquiescing to it.

Who can possibly come forward and declare: "Yes, I chose to allow a risk of human life to proceed undisturbed because I valued my own career more than life or my country's security"? No one can say that. The government has a system of penalties for whistle-blowers, but those dissuaded from whistle-blowing can never admit to being cowardly enough to have refrained from action due to government threat.

The system will remain in place, because no one dares admit the very existence of The System at all. The System requires denial of The System. In fact, that's rule one of The System.

And so we see here, everyone who could have acted to stop Hasan's murderous rampage quickly ascribes their behavior to any other motive -- well, we just need mental health professionals in the Army; even -- dare I say especially? -- mental health professionals who are themselves dangerous lunatics, because hey, personal experience and all -- rather than admitting to following the covert, cowardly policy the government actually favors and enforces. Secretly.

posted by Ace at 03:27 PM

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