MAKING SENSE

11/08/2009

MAKING SENSE

My first intention had been to write about the rape of the young girl in California and then the murders at Fort Hood took over the news, so here I am trying to make sense of something else that does not make sense.

In these times of the twenty four hour news cycle, by the time the news of the massacre at hit the headlines, surely most people instantly forgot about the rape of a fifteen year old and moved on. That is not to say that the murders in Cleveland were not important even though most of the victims were all probably black .

Two friends came in, joking, talking about me now, one says, you know he is a psychologist, ( I have a master's in counseling) yeah and the other says and he is in the military, ( I am retired), and we know he has weapons, they agree, and I laugh. You have to have a thick skin to be the one that I am.

Back in 1979, I was teaching Air Traffic Control in the Army, I was called a "camel jockey", a "sand nigger" and a "rag head", at the same time I was also investigated by the Army , twice that I know of, for would you believe, Racism. Not to be left behind, Tim Motley, God bless him, stuck a gun in my face after the hostage crisis, at the Coffee Kettle in town, threatening to show me what how he wanted to deal with those Iranians, I am not an Iranian.

I left my family and I came to the United States to escape fundamentalism, I was always against it and abhor it even today. And yes I was against our war in Iraq. My letter against the war was published in the Dothan Eagle back then and I called the evidence presented to the UN a fabrication. I spoke out against Islamic fundamentalism forty years ago, I call them as I see them today in these United States. I have talked about our stupid economic and social policies, and the decline of the US for years, many of you have seen my letters and blogs postings, I am not shy.

On the morning of the 9.11, 2001, June was watching TV and she came told me when the first aircraft hit the first trade center building, I thought may be it is is foggy in New York and some civilian had hit the tower, but when she came back and told me of the second hit, "where the "F" is the FBI' came of my lips, I had no doubt what had happened.

Yet we have experts, all over the place, on TV and on the talk radio, who never see anything coming, but they are always there to tell you what has just happened, after the fact only.

We live in the time of half hour sitcoms and one hour shows where all the problems of the world are solved, we want instant answers so we can move on, have closure!

I do not have an instant answer, but take time please and try to understand. Before we invaded Iraq, I had said don't go, "I said there was a reason for us to go to Afghanistan but Iraq, no. I said, that there are one point two billion people ion this world that have nothing in common, not language not culture, but they call themselves Muslim, and if we manage to make one tenth of one percent of this population angry at us, and we do not know who they are where they are and what they are capable of we will have problems. I said that if we go to Iraq, they will not receive us liberators but call us occupiers and come after us and try to kill us, and then we will say they are bad, they try to kill us, I said stay out."

Yes I said it, and wrote it in a letter to then Commander in Chief, and had my letter published in "the Dothan Eagle". That makes me unpatriotic in the eyes of many, but then why am I here. If I am an American do I not have a right to an opinion? Do I not have the freedom of speech? Do I not have the right to criticize the government policies? Well I think that I do, and I use my right, even as I have told you it has cost me friendship of many, and also otherwise.

Can we even imagine how many soldiers have comeback hating Muslims and Arabs because they were injured overseas or lost their friends to the enemy, or lost their wives and kids due the divorce or separation caused by deployments? Can we imagine them opening up to an Arab with these sentiments? I have been at the receiving end of these feelings even though most of (an incredibly vast majority of my comrades have been totally respectful, but there have been a few exceptions also)

For many, religion is an escape, a sanctuary from day to day problems, this where we find someone to dump our problems on. So it is not question that the Fort Hood killer turned to his god, misguided about the religion by who ever he was talking to. It is the tragedy that parts of Islam have become like a doomsday cult, like what David Koresh was saying or James Jones or even Charles Manson.

No one can justify or excuse the senseless murders of the innocent. But is there is any crime , ever that is sensible? Any cold blooded murder that can be justified? And then a cold blooded murder in the name of a god? But any way, the gun sales in this country have been up for months, and stores shelves are void of bullets.

The day after Fort Hood, Danny Pierce called me from Dyer, Corrine Fuller was listening in on my end of conversation. You can understand Danny was upset, why? why a Muslim, and I went into the mode of trying to explain, trying to make sense of things. As we were watching a Muslim go on a killing spree at Fort hood, we were also watching the case of an ex marine who had killed eleven women and burried them around his house, John Allen Mohammad was waiting to be put to death and the case of a public rape of fifteen year old was unfolding, did any of it make sense, does anything make sense.

Danny was reminding me of our times together in the army thirty years ago, and how we loved each other and took care of each other and stood by each other. What had happened and how could this fratricide be committed by a Muslim a Major in the Army no less. What I told him was that it had nothing to do with Islam per se, It was a loser, a loner, and one who should have been caught longtime ago and exposed. How did he ever make it to a Major in the Army and a psychiatrist without having had any personality tests and counseling? By rights, all psychology majors take a personality test once or twice or more during their education, all officers and higher enlisted have to have background checks and clearances, obviously some one had dropped the ball.

Then again it is not the first time some one has dropped the ball in this nation of ours, from immigration to drug trafficking to 9/11 we keep dropping the balls. After 9/11 I had asked for the resignation of both Robert Muller and George Tenant, Tenant received the Congressional medal of freedom instead, as a nation, we worship our failures. Do we not know that in the ranks of our military there are gangs, criminals, White Supremacists, Skin Heads, Black Supremacists and others, we know that. May be that's why the Major's behavior was over looked also.

I am not, once again, making excuses, I am examining the facts as I see them, all the facts, just the facts.

Why was a practicing Muslim even assigned to hear the stories of the war? Why he was not pulled back after he apparently became radicalized? Was his radicalization associated with and due to what he was learning about the war at his job? What is the role of his leadership there in, what is THEIR responsibility?

In the end a conviction may hinge on the finding of whether PTSD is real? Is it? If it is then the major was under a lot of stress, listening to the stories of the war veterans, some of whom may have related to him about unnecessary or accidental killings and abuse of the local populace that we are trying to help and bring democracy to. Over a period of time it caused him to become radical and pushed him over the edge. If it was not PTSD in this case, then PTSD does not exist and the veterans are malingering as some in the military hierarchy have already proposed. Is the military ready to deny him a PTSD defense? Is the US?


LIFE IS A GAME OF CONNECT THE DOTS, IF YOU DON'T CONNECT ALL THE DOTS OR DON'T CONNECT THEM IN THE RIGHT ORDER YOU NEVER GET THE PICTURE