OK, be forewarned: I am going to delve into some really politically incorrect stuff here, so if you're not up to truth and logic, stop now.
The Army "Major" who shot up Ft Hood has been all over the news this past week, as he should be. I assume most people understand that not all military officers are created equal. This guy was a psychiatrist who clearly went into the miltary to get his education paid for by you and me. The only way the military can attract medical professionals (and I know I'm stretching to put a psychiatrist in that category) is to offer them officer commissions. I have it on reliable authority that they go in as Captains, then automatically make Major within a few years, unless they first kill a bunch of people in a shooting rampage. This is a whole lot faster than your typical 2nd Lieutenant infantry line officer, who might be in 15 years before he makes Major, and who is doing the stuff the military is supposed to do: "killing people and breaking things" as Colin Powell famously said. You wouldn't want one of these medical wonders commanding a company, battalion, or brigade in combat.
And that's just the Army. In the Marines, we used to say that a Marine Captain was the equivalent of an Army General, but let's not go there right now.
I understand that the military is desperate for doctors, etc. Maybe that's why Obama is pushing this ill-advised health care proposal: if (God forbid) it were to somehow pass, doctors would be heading for the exits in droves, and the military would have an instant (and probably cheap) supply. But desperate or not, I guess this guy was pretty out front with his Moslem ideas, what with handing out Islamic propaganda and all; and weren't those security camera images of him prancing around the 7-11 in his white terrorist-like outfit lovely? Maybe he thought it was the 9-11. I assume this wasn't Halloween.
If you read my stuff regularly, you know that hindsight is anathema to me, but hello? I know we wasted a bunch of money educating this ungrateful idiot, and I know we probably really need psychiatrists in Iraq because (apparently) this generation of soldiers is less-able to deal with battlefield stress than were previous ones, but this guy was pretty close to a Trojan Horse, was he not? Guy is a Major of [choose one: a) Palestinian b) Jordanian extraction] in the US Army, is actively proselytizing for Islam, has apprarently been very vocal in his opposition to the war (which he has, also apparently, been very focused on avoiding serving in), including "counseling" returning soldiers on why the war is wrong, has consistently gotten sub-par performation evaluations, and is frolicking about in his Islam outfit (which I guess were his civvies) -- I mean, what could go wrong? This guy was clearly only interested in knowing how to take off and fly, and not how to land. He was a walking, talking IED. And the poor baby was complaining about being harrassed!
And now we're going to be treated to the spectacle of his "vigorous defense" apparently based upon post traumatic stress disorder. As has been pointed out by those paying attention, this joker managed to manipulate things so that he never saw combat, so how does he suffer from PTSD? Sounds like we have a new disorder: pre-combat stress disorder -- the very idea that he might see combat caused him to flip out. Wouldn't that be a fine precedent to set.
One problem we have created for ourselves is bribing people to go into the military for the wrong reasons; ie, to get an education, which applies in this case. I guaran-damn-tee you (that's how the Drill Instructors used to talk in the Marines -- makes me sound tough, huh) that the notion that they might end up in combat is buried in the fine print, while the "College Education" is in 72 pt type. I mean, remember those recruiting ads for the Army -- "be all you can be", which stressed self-actualization? I don't recall it being pointed out that one of the things you can be is dead.
It's like everything else since the 1960's: if we can't get something we want by legitimate means, we mortgage the future to buy it; in this case enticing soldiers to join with a pitch that is likely to get them to join for the wrong reasons, thus causing problems both with them and with recruiting later. I would submit that if there aren't enough volunteers to serve in the military for the right reasons
(you know, that "love of country" stuff), then we ought to just let the chips fall where they do and let people see the consequences of it. Screw it. It's exactly like the causes of the current economic mess: we paper over the shortcuts we took to get what we want, and forget about them until Gene Wilder emerges crying "It's Alive, ALLLIIIIIIVE!!".
Now, I understand that we apparently have thousands of Moslems serving in the US military, but here's the question: are we sufficiently desperate to make the recruiting goals that we are willing to risk the damage that a few of these types of guys can do? How many more of them, with fewer red flags than this guy, are out there right now? Remember the Moslem US soldier in Kuwait a few years ago who tossed a grenade into the officers' tent? There have been a number of other incidents, the details of which I don't have on hand at the moment, all with one common theme: they were committed by Moslems against the war. Toyota is now going to have its kimono sued off because one Toyota (masquerading as a Lexus so the Japanese could compete with the Germans), out of millions sold, managed to get the floor mat wedged under the accelerator, causing the car to hit what, for the occupants, was terminal velocity. It's not at all even clear that it was Toyota's fault, but it's going to cost them a fortune to defend. And the US military apparently can't do anything after repeated evidence of a problem?
Which brings me to the WW 2 Japanese Internment Camps: as anyone who has studied it knows, these camps were set up because, in the months leading up to 12/7/41, US cryptanalysts (for you Obama voters, these are code breakers, not ghouls who examine crypts) had broken the Japanese JN-25 (naval) and Purple (diplomatic) codes sufficiently to be pretty certain that the Japanese had been setting up cells on the West Coast to sabotage the high concentration of defense plants there. What? You didn't hear this from the media? The media who knows about as much about the military and military history as I do about brain surgery? My father was one of these guys (translator/code breaker), and I know whereof I speak . . . which I do elsewhere on this Blog.
In the bleak days of early 1942, when everything was going the Axis' way (you will recall that Rommel was still running all over North Africa, Manstein, Paulus, von Bock and the boys still looked pretty invincible in Russia, and Tojo, Yamamoto, and Nagumo were having their way with the ABDA Command in SE Asia -- I mean, nothing was going right for the Allies), and when Japan had just done the "impossible" by attacking Pearl Harbor, the niceities of individual consideration of the loyalties of individual Americans of Japanese descent (some of whom had been recruited for the above-mentioned sabotage rings) were subordinated to the goal of national survival, given the damage that even a few successful attacks could do. Italians and Germans were locked up on the East Coast too, but that's never discussed.
How much damage to military morale and recruiting do you think a few more such incidents will do? Don't you think that many soldiers and Marines are already looking askance at the Moslems in their midst? Maybe Mohammad, next to you in the foxhole, plans to shoot you next time you're alone together. How does that work for "unit cohesion"?
Now obviously we're not going to raid every mosque at prayer time (which seems to be about 5 times a day -- I mean, does anyone work? No wonder the standard of living in Arab countries is so low) and ship them off to Tule Lake; but it is a fact that there was not single known incident of Japanese-American sabotage during the War. It would have been difficult to convince US military intelligence of that in January 1942: the evidence was sufficiently compelling that it simply was not worth running the risk of what a few incidents could do to the defense effort. As with George Bush and Iraq, the correct pre-emptive action was taken based upon the preponderance of evidence and the clear penalty of being wrong, and both have paid the price with those who just don't understand this stuff.
What we are doing now, in the name of political correctness, is essentially appeasement -- can't be too firm or mean with the Moslems or we'll make them mad -- replace Moslem with Hitler and what late 1930's British Prime Minister does that
sound like? How much evidence, how many more actual events, do we need this time?
If Obama is willing to destroy the security and living standard of Americans for the dubious goal of universal health care, is the defense of the country not worth disrupting the lives of a comparative few?
