CNN.com / MSNBC: Shootings, multiple deaths reported at Fort Hood (MET; Merged)

[Perky72]

In a few posts (here and in the Around the NFL) I've come to respect the opinions and the carriage of Perky. Welcome aboard, my friend. May all of our future disagreements carry the memory of this acknowledgment of your contributions!

Thanks for the welcome and your quality posts!

:dallasuck

[Destino]

The problem I think goes back to one of my original points (but let me expand a bit): How can we truly establish that someone has had a mental break? Does it matter?

It matters because our war is poorly defined. The "war on terror" is a joke. We are at war with Al Qaeda and other specific groups that have decided to target us for violent attacks.

We are not at war with a method of violence.

The question becomes is this particular killer acting as an agent of the organizations we are currently fighting around the world. This is important for obvious reasons. If he is an agent of our enemies than we need to know how they infiltrated our military and what useful information they may have accessed via this infiltration.

For instance, did the guy who shot up the Holocaust Museum qualify as a lone terrorist? I think so. because he had a certain sociopolitical agenda in committing the murder (and where he went.) Now that doesn't mean he wasn't mentally unhealthy but should that disqualify his act from the realm of terroristic activity?

This is why the "war on terror" is such a poorly defined "war". That person certainly had a political agenda and as such qualifies for the base definition of terrorism. Are we at war with him? Were we ever? No.

Think of Zarqawi. That man could possibly be deemed more sadistic and psychopathic than Bin Laden. He reveled not only in the violence but in excruciatingly cruel and arbitrary forms of punishment and murder as a form of dominion over other human beings. Is that a sane person? Would it matter if he were a BIT touched in the head?

The important distinction here isn't if Zarqawi is crazy but the fact that he belongs to one of the rogue groups that we currently find ourselves at war with. It's not that he's a terrorist, it's that he was the enemy of the US via his own declaration and his groups attacks on our country.

Nothing in this guy's history indicates that he's anything other than all the other Sudden Lone Jihadis we've had in this country. As I also pointed out, we do not concern ourselves with Amish, Quakers, Hindus or Buddhists committing these acts, in spite of forming a rather large segment of the populace themselves--yet they are not represented in these cases in nearly the same frequency as Muslims---probably because there is something at the heart of Islam as a faith which renders it more susceptible to interpretations (correct ones, in my opinion) that violence against non-believers and apostates is not only sanctioned but demanded.

This is where you need to be careful. We didn't openly wonder why so many white Europeans were popping up all over the world during the cold war to create wars with the US. We understood that there was a subgroup, communists. Even communists weren't behind the cold war but specifically a handful of nations that were hell bent on spreading their cause violently. Likewise during WWII we only singled out the Japanese and not all Italians and Germans. We have to recognize our built in bias (traits similar to ours can't be the problem). When whites or Christians are the enemy we find some other common element. When non-whites or non-Christians are the enemy the fact that they are non-white or non-Christian is immediately seized upon as the common element.

[ljs]

GNM has the best posts in this thread and I completely agree with what I have read today.

[Mickalino]

I wonder, with all the disturbing signs pointing to his dangerous nature prior to the shootings, if the military would have taken action against him, he would have gotten an attorney and sued for discrimination due to being Muslim ??