Saturday, February 14, 2015

Terrorist or Traitor? Let's say both but for legal reasons...

On November 5, 2009 United States Army Major, Medical Doctor and Clinical Psychiatrist Nadiq Hassan was on post at his duty station at Fort Hood in Texas, but that day he wasn't going to his office to treat soldiers on their way home from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.  His views of the United States of America, U.S. Foreign policy and the very army in which he served had slowly transformed into something ugly and twisted.  On that day Major Hassan killed 13 fellow soldiers and injured 30 more.
      He was shot and taken into custody and when he was the debate.  Many who either dislike or distrust the Islamic faith used Hassan and this incident to illustrate their feelings about Islam.   Western powers don't like admitting this, but we were essential in the creation of the autocracies of the middle east. It was a British model first tested in India by the East India Corporation.  Imperialism couldn't simply be entering a country raising your flag and claiming to be in charge, it required smoke and mirrors. There had to be an "independent country" and you had to be the great foreign benefactor. It was simple, find a random schmuck put him in an ornate palace with lots of servants and have him APPEAR to be running the country by issuing the occasional edict provided he passed no laws unfriendly to the great foreign 'benefactors' who were there to become rich while exploiting the country.
          In India the model failed because the British put the leader on an allowance and when he died his son was told to fend for himself which bred the seeds of rebellion. In the post colonial world the British realized the days of the East India Company were over. The best way to continue to get rich from the middle east was to allow them to govern themselves and to let whomever they put in charge become INCREDIBLY rich in the process. Wealthy men want to protect their wealth and absolute rulers became the norm in the middle east. What is the advantage to dealing with an autocrat? No pesky legislatures to deal with because one man's word IS law.
         The problem being that these regions tend to be unstable. The people realize they live in a dictatorship and look at where the dictator gets his money and blame the wealthy western nations who in their minds put the guy in place. How does this relate to Major Hassan? I'll get back to that in a second. The middle east changed forever when in 1979 a group of Islamic fundamentalist overthrew the Shah of Iran a strongman whose father was put in place by the British who was able to keep his father's throne after the CIA helped to oust an attempt at democracy in the 1950s. Yes the CIA ousted a DEMOCRATICALLY ELECTED GOVERNMENT IN IRAN to put the Shah back in charge.
        The Iranian revolution and the birth of the group the American CIA funded Mujahadin in Afghanistan after the Russians invaded created anti western fervor that grew.

         Radical Islamic clerics see any non Muslims in the middle east as an affront and those within their respective governments who allow it as traitorous. The war in Afghanistan was meant to hunt down the Al Quaida network which sprang from the Mujahadin we created after they cowardly attacked us on September 11th.  The war in Iraq supposedly was about "Weapons of mass destruction" which never actually existed or which many claimed were destroyed or simply vanished into thin air. After no weapons were found, then president George W. Bush claimed the war "was never about finding weapons but about freeing the Iraqi people."
         While fighting a war on two fronts we sent soldiers on multiple tours of duty in BOTH theatres. Combat plays havoc on the psyche of those who fight wars and those men and women have access to medical and psychiatric care.  Enter Major Hassan.
        
           Hassan spent time at Walter Reed Army hospital before being sent to the middle east and then to Fort Hood. Somewhere along the way he stopped seeing enemy combatants and saw a people with which he identified. The army should have removed him when this presented itself and didn't.
            Combat veterans I know have told me that they felt they had to dehumanize their enemy. If they considered those whom they fought human it made it difficult to do their jobs. A friend of mine who fought in Vietnam said he never killed a single "person" in Vietnam. He killed well armed "animals" who were attempting to kill him.  Hearing this on a daily basis probably made Hassan develop an us/them mentality. Rather than remembering that he was an American Army Officer he regressed to being one of a handful of Muslims in the neighborhood where he grew up. Rather than being an intelligent decorated field grade officer he was that guy in college who took flack about the ENTIRE Arab world whenever there was a terrorist action anywhere.
         At the end of the day Major Nadiq Hassan decided he was one of the "them" that we created and opened fire on US.

        Many wish to call Hassan a traitor and I am among them. You respect your uniform and the others who wear it ESPECIALLY if you are supposed to be a leader of troops. SOME call him a terrorist and TECHNICALLY he is. Should he be treated as one? I don't think so. Before anyone gets pissed at me here's why.  Terrorist belong to given groups and organizations. If we declared Hassan a "terrorist" we have to treat him under the Geneva accords and possibly hand him over to some terrorist organization which would call him some kind of hero. By declaring him a traitor (as we did) we were able to prosecute him under the fullest extent of the Uniform Code of Military Justice. What does that mean? As a service member the constitution does NOT apply to you the UCMJ does. People have been prosecuted under the UCMJ for "Assaulting a superior officer with a glass of kool aide".  As a document the UCMJ is incredibly unfair to those being prosecuted to the point where most being court marshalled opt to get civilian lawyers,
         Major Nadiq Hassan didn't deserve a "fair" trial that a terrorist would have gotten. He deserved the stacked deck that only a military court marshall would provide. As a terrorist he MIGHT have gotten life imprisonment. The penalty for treason in time of war for service members in a time of war is death by hanging or firing squad.  Hassan as a terrorist would have a chance at being a free man, Hassan as a traitor to the Uniform and flag of the United States of America will get a firing squad.