The Fort Hood shooter: How the Army dropped the ball

Congressional testimony does not make an investigation. Even so, nothing in this quote specifically calls out PC attitudes toward Muslims, which is the specific charge being made by those that claim PCness was instrumental in allowing Hasan to be "undectected."

Also, in any other circumstance, if a testifier is asked a yes/no question by a Senator, says "Yes, absolutely" or "no doubt about it" and then goes on to elaborate his answer, we don't highlight the yes and downplay the rest. We realize that you should say yes to a Senator. Here is what Keane said:

"Hasan's position as an officer and also his position as a psychiatrist contributed to that because of the special category I think someone who's operating as a clinician every day treating patients is in in the military." So he didn't have much supervision. Seems relevant.

"The way to make that an obligation is provide very specific guidelines through the chain of command as to what their duties are in regards to this issue." So we condition the chain of command to follow the book but then blame Muslim PCness when they don't freelance?

Finally, another factor ignored by the PC argument, Hasan was a highly-trained, in high-demand officer with a long service commitment left. Maybe a reprimand for some public incident, but separating him from the service? Not a chance.

that the pre-cooked agenda that McCain and Lieberman are bringing to this "investigation" makes a mockery of that word. To my ears, Gen. Keane in this exchange is practically SCREAMING at them, "PC might be part of the problem, but we are not sure how much it was, and your unicausal obsession with a presumed cause of this tragedy is uglier than sin, besides which we need as many Muslim soldiers as we can get if we're going to keep fighting the types of wars I know you two want to fight, so we should be focusing on making the forces an environment that tends to push Muslims toward extremism LESS and not MORE, you ninnies! In which of those directions do you think the tone of this hearing is pushing us?"

But maybe that's just me.

Did you have time to listen to Sen. Levin's questioning? No mention here, hmm.

Am getting increasingly uncomfortable with the ease with which we move towards making thought a crime. Jihadist actions may be criminal, jihadist conspiracies too, but jihadist thought is protected, as is speech. And religion. And the right to peaceably assemble.

And the line between religious fervor and proscribed behavior seems thinning as well ... which should cause pause for religions other than Muslim.

I personally despise religious whackos of all stripes, but that's not the same as criminalizing religious thought. Get a grip, folks. The military is a clan of rule-followers: write those rules with great care.

As the obituary below shows, sometimes with the hindsight of more than 50 years it is hard to say whether barring someone from national security work was the right thing to do.

Qian Xuesen dies at 98; rocket scientist helped establish Jet Propulsion Laboratory

By Claire Noland
Los Angeles Times
November 1, 2009

Qian Xuesen, a former Caltech rocket scientist who helped establish the Jet Propulsion Laboratory before being deported in 1955 on suspicion of being a Communist and who became known as the father of China's space and missile programs, has died. He was 98.

Qian, also known as Tsien Hsue-shen, died Saturday in Beijing, China's state news agency reported. The cause was not given.

Honored in his homeland for his "eminent contributions to science," Qian was credited with leading China to launch intercontinental ballistic missiles, Silkworm anti-ship missiles, weather and reconnaissance satellites and to put a human in space in 2003.

The man deemed responsible for these technological feats also was labeled a spy in the 1999 Cox Report issued by Congress after an investigation into how classified information had been obtained by the Chinese.

Qian, a Chinese-born aeronautical engineer educated at Caltech and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a protege of Caltech's eminent professor Theodore von Karman, who recognized him as an outstanding mathematician and "undisputed genius."

Qian's research contributed to the development of "jet-assisted takeoff" technology that the military began using in the 1940s.

He was the founding director of the Daniel and Florence Guggenheim Jet Propulsion Center at Caltech and a member of the university's so-called Suicide Squad of rocket experimenters who laid the groundwork for testing done by JPL.

But his brilliant career in the United States came to a screeching halt in 1950, when the FBI accused him of being a member of a subversive organization. Qian packed up eight crates of belongings and set off for Shanghai, saying he and his wife and two young children wanted to visit his aging parents back home. Federal agents seized the containers, which they claimed contained classified materials, and arrested him on suspicion of subversive activity.

Qian denied any Communist leanings, rejected the accusation that he was trying to spirit away secret information and initially fought deportation. He later changed course, however, and sought to return to China.

Five years after his arrest, he was shipped off in an apparent exchange for 11 American airmen captured during the Korean War.

"I do not plan to come back," Qian told reporters. "I have no reason to come back. . . . I plan to do my best to help the Chinese people build up the nation to where they can live with dignity and happiness."

Welcomed as a national hero in China, where the Communist regime had defeated the Nationalist forces, Qian became director of China's rocket research and was named to the Central Committee of the Communist Party. China, whose scientific development lagged during the Communist revolution, quickly began making strides.

Qian was born in the eastern city of Hangzhou, and in 1934 graduated from Jiaotong University in Shanghai, where he studied mechanical engineering. He won a scholarship to MIT and, after earning a master's degree in aeronautical engineering there, continued his doctoral studies at Caltech.

He taught at MIT and Caltech and, having received a security clearance, served on the Scientific Advisory Board that advised the U.S. military during and after World War II.

Sent to Germany to interrogate Nazi scientists, Qian interviewed rocket scientist Wernher von Braun. As the trade magazine Aviation Week put it in 2007, upon naming Qian its person of the year, "No one then knew that the father of the future U.S. space program was being quizzed by the father of the future Chinese space program."

Qian returned to Caltech in 1949 and a year later faced the accusation by two former members of the Los Angeles Police Department's "Red Squad" that he was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party.

He admitted that while a graduate student in the 1930s he had been present at social gatherings organized by colleagues who also were accused of party membership, but he denied any political involvement.

Few can agree on the question of whether Qian was a spy. An examination of the papers Qian packed away failed to turn up any classified documents. Colleagues at Caltech firmly stood behind him, and he continued to do research there after he lost his security clearance. In fact, the university gave him its distinguished alumni award in 1979 in recognition of his pioneering work in rocket science.

Although federal officials started deportation procedures in 1950, he was prevented from leaving the country because it was decided that he knew too much about sensitive military matters that could be of use to an enemy.

For years, Qian was in a sort of limbo, being watched closely by the U.S. government and living under partial house arrest. Eventually he quit fighting his expulsion and actively worked to return to China. Some associates said that he was insulted because his loyalty to this country was questioned and that he initially wanted to clear his name.

Once he returned home in 1955, he threw himself into his research with what some saw as calculated revenge.

"It was the stupidest thing this country ever did," former Navy Secretary Dan Kimball later said, according to Aviation Week. "He was no more a Communist than I was, and we forced him to go."

Qian survived the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, when many Chinese intellectuals lost their positions, probably because his scientific research and development for military purposes was considered too vital to suspend.

He is said to have supported the government's crushing of the rebellion in Tiananmen Square in 1989. And he never returned to the United States.

Information on survivors was not immediately available.

Copyright © 2009, The Los Angeles Times

Perhaps just as in the civilian medical profession, where poor performing and misbehaving doctors are all too often not sanctioned or disciplined, but allowed to resign and take up residence at a different hospital, this was the mindset of the doctors that were associated with Maj. Hasan at Walter Reed?

It seems from what I've gathered, his behavior and slide presentation, while at Walter Reed, gave cause for concern by many of his peers, and was reported to their common superior(s), but no action was taken.

I won't comment on the PC issue that may have played a part in allowing Hasan to continue on his way. But I do firmly believe the Army's medical corps' mindset played an important part by sending a bad apple to Ft. Hood, with the prevailing attitude that by transferring Hasan, he'd just go away - out of sight - out of mind.

A question: if Hasan hadn't committed this act, is this the type of individual we want probing the minds of troubled soldiers?

It is not improbable that some people, recognizing the political loadings of the religious fault lines threatening our wars in the Mideast, are willing to lean a bit backwards to avoid the appearance of targeting Muslims. Even perceived unfairness would help make the 'clash of civilizations' hypothesis come true.

However, in this particular exchange, I note two things.

First, Gen. Keane doesn't tell us what is his basis in evidence for determining that PC was a significant factor.

Second, these hearings are primarily political theater, aimed at getting in getting exposure while the media are hot on the trail. So the first question is, what are Lieberman and McCain up to?

"Political Correctness" is typically a charge made against liberals. Lieberman and McCain are hawks who are unhappy with the administration's caution about doubling down on Afghanistan. Although this issue resides far down the chain of command from the White House, are Lieberman and McCain trying to create an atmosphere in which the political fallout accrues to the administration?

What I am curious about is whether a security clearance process would have uncovered some insight into Hasan which would have raised a red flag and encourage further investigation? Did he even need to receive a clearance for his specialty? Maybe he did pass a basic clearance procedure, which means that perhaps we are not asking the right questions, or the process is influenced by political correctness? I don’t know but I would like to.

. . . until we've identified the problem. Identification with Muslim extremism deserves open-season all year round, PC be d**ned.

But a lot that I've heard about Hasan makes him sound, his religion excepted, like a garden-variety all-American loner gone postal.

We've had enough non-Muslim shooters in this nation to prove to the satisfaction of just about anyone sentient that the ideology often (not always) comes second to whatever compulsions are driving people.

No one who wants to think responsibly about this issue--and that means, at a minimum, comparatively--should overlook

"The Fort Carson Murder Spree: Soldiers returning from Iraq have been charged in at least 11 murders at America's third-largest Army base. Did the military's own negligence contribute to the slayings?" by L. CHRISTOPHER SMITH

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30794989/the_fort_carson_murder_spree/

or the companion piece that aired on the radio show "Here and Now" yesterday:

http://www.hereandnow.org/media-player/?url=http://www.hereandnow.org/2009/11/rundown-1119/&title=Another%20Army%20Murder%20Spree&segment=4&pubdate=2009-11-19

There are some obvious parallels (the military overlooking clear signs of danger) here.

But one would be hard pressed to attribute the negligence in the Ft. Carson case to political correctness. So perhaps that's not the problem after all?

Not many cheap points to get from that observation in the so-called "culture war," however. So expect more grand standing until, finally, someone declares we need to get that "e pluribus unum" off the coinage because it's a silly piece of relativist nonsense weakening us when the nation's at war.

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Seems to me any attempt to profile any federal employee based on specific Islamic beliefs would run afoul of Article VI of the same document everyone quoted in Ricks' post swore to uphold and defend. "[N}o religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States" is pretty explicit. And if you're going to start checking for extremism in general, I think Mikey Weinstein has several individuals he'd like added to the list.

The 'symposium' speech strikes me as an an overt cry for help. He wanted out. He made the valid point that his 'don't join crusaders in a war on umma co-religionists' view was not unique among moslems. That dogma is problematic, as we fight and anticipate multiple wars in moslem Asia, Africa, and ignore the demographics of SE Europe.

Acquiring (260 rounds worth, in one purchase?) massive rapid reload capability for a close range homicide weapon also maybe should raise a different red flag, beyond the obvious premeditation. Or is it not PC to mention that here ?

The 2nd Ammendment was written in a time when a militiaman's captured Brown Bess fired a round or three a minute. The cap and ball Colt pistol hadn't yet been invented or deployed, to even the odds for an unpopular officer in the senior service.

How much safer will our children be, when we all achieve firepower parity with Dr. Hasan, the gang bangers, and their white fright counterparts?

Judge and hang the murderous messenger, but do read the note.

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