Krauthammer: Medicalizing Mass Murder
What a surprise — that someone who shouts “Allahu Akbar” (the “God is great” jihadist battle cry) as he is shooting up a room of American soldiers might have Islamist motives. It certainly was a surprise to the mainstream media, which spent the weekend after the Fort Hood massacre playing down Nidal Hasan’s religious beliefs.
“I cringe that he’s a Muslim. . . . I think he’s probably just a nut case,” said Newsweek’s Evan Thomas. Some were more adamant. Time’s Joe Klein decried “odious attempts by Jewish extremists . . . to argue that the massacre perpetrated by Nidal Hasan was somehow a direct consequence of his Islamic beliefs.” While none could match Klein’s peculiar cherchez-le-juif motif, the popular story line was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.
They suffered. He listened. He snapped.
Really? What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?
And what about civilian psychiatrists — not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics — who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?
It’s been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.
But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, who National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.
And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won’t find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as “compassion fatigue.” The poor man — pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.
Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. His business card had his name, his profession, his medical degrees and his occupational identity. U.S. Army? No. “SoA” — Soldier of Allah. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It’s a danger, clear and present.
Consider the Army’s treatment of Hasan’s previous behavior. NPR’s Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising grand rounds that Hasan had apparently given. Grand rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital — attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding.
I’ve been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia — as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan’s. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers — consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This “really freaked a lot of doctors out,” reported NPR.
Nor was this the only incident. “The psychiatrist,” reported Zwerdling, “said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he’s a terrorist, or is he just weird?”
Was anything done about this potential danger? Of course not. Who wants to be accused of Islamophobia and prejudice against a colleague’s religion?
One must not speak of such things. Not even now. Not even after we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.
What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn’t cry “Allahu Akbar” as they squeezed the trigger.
The delicacy about the religion in question — condescending, politically correct and deadly — is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: “Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center.”
Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.
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So sick of this shit. Over and Over,pounding it in the ground.
He is a muslim, who killed or wounded multiple US soldiers.
He is guilty. Stand him up in front of a firing squad and shoot him, saving all the cost to trial and incarcerate this man. Or one better, send him to the maximum prison in Colorado and let him live out his life trying to keep from being butt fucked by the other cons.
No,NO, What should be done with this mussie bitch since he can’t walk is throw him into a pig pen and let loose the swine…. Pigs will eat anything that falls to the ground. It would be slow and painful being eaten alive.
Dear Pat,
I am in the service. You need to start a grass-roots movement to “FIRE GENERAL CASEY!” He and other General/Flag Officers are responsible for the deaths of these young servicemen, as well as the Jihadi piece of trash. They gave this guy a pass, and Casey defended diversity immediately after the bloodshed. GEN Patton rolls in his grave. We need real leaders. I am tired of working for cowards.
Take the country back.
One of my law enforcement co-workers who is still in the National Guard unit we deployed together with to a-stan in ‘02 told me that their last drill revolved around E.O. training. Funny part is, that it wasnt on the monthly training schedule, which is made up a year in advance. Some of what he told me, that was put out by the Major conducting the training, was outlandish.16 years down the shitter but I’m glad I got out when I did.
Pelican Bay should have a reception for this reprobate along with the rest of those Guantanamo terrorists awaiting the same afterlife fate.
I thank goodness for Mr. K’s clear-sightedness. I am in shock at this Nations reaction to a terrorists work. The left is bending over backward to call this terrorist killer anything but a terrorist killer.
WE NEED TO KILL MEDIA…..JUST FUCKING DO IT.
WHEN HILTER’S PROPAGANDA MACHINE STARTED DYING OFF FROM UNDERGROUND ASASSINTIONS, PEOPLE STOPPED FOLLOWING HITLER AS MUCH.
MSM NEED TO BE KILLED, NOW. PUBLICALLY AS POSSIBLE.
STOP THE LIBERAL LIARS. NOW.
“Ah yes, those Jersey men — so resentful of New York, so prone to violence.”
A good line by Krauthammer.
I guess that the NYT was hoping that we might give the Jihadis a break and blame it on a feud between NY and NJ about from which the best Sicilian Gravy comes.
Actually a bit of a “Sopranos” approach to the Jihadis would be a far better idea than obama’s & holder’s coddling.
I was writing comments as I read Krauthammer’s article.
I just deleted two screens worth of comments.
American Patriots, just send Krauthammer’s article to your entire e-mail address book.
If necessary, send them Krauthammer’s bio…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Krauthammer
Creeping Sharia.
The rank and file military will even be more willing to fight on our side after this dance with diversity. As for Gen. Casey ” You can stick your diversity training up your fat chair shaped traitorous ass……” (and no I will not call you “sir” you don’t rate it)
The left takes up for the evil instead of the innocent because they are of their father, the devil. When have you ever seen them take up for the poor people that are murdered? NEVER. Just like obummer, (now bowing to the Japanese). They will always take up for evil, because they are evil.
This should be easy to prove. All you need to show is that Hassan is a jihadi. He chose to wage holy war on the United States while at the same time being a major in the US Army. That is an act of treason.
When we sweep these people out in 2010 and 12, we must wipe the crust from our eyes after waking up from this nightmare and fix things.
Too much of the liberal agenda has been installed in the past 50 years. And they’d pretty much be done if they weren’t such buffoons; brazenly trying to put the finishing touches on the remaining 20% of their plan while they have full control of everything — including the MSM. The conditions have never been so right and yet these children can’t close the deal.
Consider some of what has happened:
– The courts have made the lack of political correctness a crime. Think about all the sensitivity training you have to go through in your work place. And because of what? You can get sued or fired for the slightest misperception (cripes, I even worded that cautiously, it’s so beaten into me).
– We have awakened in a bi-lingual nation. Have you noticed that Spanish is almost always side-by-side with English now…just about everywhere you go? This needs to be stopped. English is the official language and if you want to represent non-English speakers: Sorry, you gotta take care of everybody: Chinese, Koreans, Japanese, Vietnamese, Sanskrit, French, German, Italian, etc. We fix so that it becomes unworkable and overwhelming.
– In the final stroke, they are about to subvert our Constitution and release our soverignty through the biggest joke instituion of all: The UN.
All this must be righted. All this must be stopped.