Because, you see, the massacre made Muslims afraid -- not of jihadist supremacism within their own ranks, but of discrimination in the military! But never fear, the Army is still doggedly trying to recruit them, and of course not dreaming of asking potential recruits a single question about what they think of jihad and Islamic supremacism. That would be "Islamophobic"!
"Fort Hood ups challenge to recruit Muslim, Arab troops," by Kathleen Gray and Donna Leinwand for USA TODAY, December 10 (thanks to all who this in):
DEARBORN, Mich. -- Army recruiter Sgt. Chris McGarity is on the front lines of the military's effort to add troops who speak Arabic and understand Middle Eastern culture -- a battle that grew more challenging after the shooting at Fort Hood, Texas.McGarity says he recently signed up an Arab-American high school student who lacked only her parents' approval to enlist. Then came the Nov. 5 rampage at Fort Hood. The Army has charged Maj. Nidal Hasan, 39, a Muslim and Arab American, with killing 13 people and wounding 32.
The high school student's mother "made her withdraw her application," McGarity says.
Such experiences illustrate heightened fears of discrimination and harassment aimed at Arab-American and Muslim troops since the Fort Hood shooting, says Mikey Weinstein, a former Air Force lawyer who founded the Military Religious Freedom Foundation, which advocates for separation between church and state in the military.
Muslims in the military experience "horrible" discrimination, he says.
Before the shooting at Fort Hood, the foundation had 80 Muslim clients who had reported instances of discrimination and harassment, Weinstein says. Complaints jumped 20% to 103 in the weeks after the shooting. "We had people almost immediately ... being told 'you people' should not be in the military," he says.
Weinstein says he regularly gets complaints from troops who report name-calling, extra duty on holidays such as Christmas and Thanksgiving, anti-Muslim graffiti scrawled on prayer centers, and officers who encourage their troops to kill Muslims or demand Christian prayer....
"If you don't have a valid green card, you're out. If you can't pass the aptitude test or can't physically qualify, you're out," says McGarity, 31, who served in Iraq early in the war and has recruited in Dearborn for four years. "Then there are the guys who are willing, but their families aren't."
The recruiters recognize that Arab-American enlistees may worry about fitting in with fellow troops or having to fight in Arab or Muslim countries. They work with Arab organizations in the community and attend job fairs to meet potential recruits. They hire Arabic linguists to work in their office, learning about the Middle Eastern cultures themselves.
Sgt. Ian Parker, 27, starts conversations with potential soldiers by asking how they feel about going to Iraq or Afghanistan. "Once you hit an objection to that, you're just wasting your time," Parker says.
Arab Americans and Muslims in the military remain a tiny minority. Of nearly 1.5 million active-duty military, about 3,500 are Arab Americans. The military does not keep full data on the number of Muslim troops.
Jamal Baadani, 45, a Marine reservist living in Virginia, is one of them. He founded the Association of Patriotic Arab Americans in Military and often walked around Arab-American communities in uniform. People would ask why he wanted to serve a government "that's going to kill your own kind," he says.
"The U.S. military did not go over there to 'kill your kind.' They went over there to attack a threat that came to this country to attack us," Baadani would respond. "The U.S. Army really respects our community and goes above and beyond to understand our community."
At this point in our history, all things considered, is it not time to look with some degree of skepticism, suspicion and distrust at all Muslims? And I say this having taken the time to read Mr. Spencer's books, Ms. Ye'or's book, Mr. Bostom's works, Ms. West's works, Ms. Geller's works, Mr. Fitzgerald's works, and the news accounts of countless acts of violent jihad, whether consummated or foiled in the planning stages.
I will try not to parrot here what Mr. Spencer has already written so skillfully about Islam's doctrines and the mandates to its followers.
My question is, how can we as rational, reasoning people not justly suspect all individuals who are followers of Islam, until each proves himself not to be a proponent of Islamic supremacism and violent jihad against non-believers. The doctrine is very clear. The law is very clear. The verses are very clear. The Hadithe are very clear.
The premise of the news report above is madness. It is insanity. It is delusional. It is as irrational as a woman who continues to return to the man who beats her senseless and puts her in the hospital. She will go back again and again until he kills her.
I heard Mr. Spencer on the Peter Boyles radio show here in Denver one morning, saying that he was not hopeful that there will ever be any awakening in the United States as to the real threat of jihad, because of the narrative that our government has adopted about Islam.
Thank you to George Bush, thank you Bill Clinton, thank you Barack Obama, thank you Heshan Islam, thank you Gordon England, and thank all of the countless useful idiots around them who have obstinately refused to look at the written doctrines of Islam and consequently led us to this precipice like lemmings.
The sole mission of our military is to kill people and break their stuff.
We don't need Muslims or Arabs in order to complete the mission.
OT: Notice how discussions of the Ft. Hood shootings have vanished from MSM and how much do you want to bet that its a result of pressure from Obama?
That said, this Muslim outreach is comes down from the highest levels of government. Either from that uber idiot Myers or from Obama White House.
All this time, we should have been training non-Muslim Americans in Arabic, Urdu, Farsi. We have lost time, but we can still train folks in these languages. It will take a while for expertise to be reached, but it will have long-lasting and MORE RELIABLE benefits.
I am going to go to the local recruiter in town and ask a few questions. Can't hurt. I will also ask them who is the enemy that we fought in WWII? Then who are we fighting today? I will then tell them who the enemy is and challenge them to prove me wrong.
Anyone else up for going to their local recruiter and doing the same. Maybe when they hear it often enough from the grass roots so to speak they will start to get it.
I do understand the need for the Army to get native speakers but they should be very very careful as Elmer Fudd would say.
On a side note I was talking with a Marine I know who had come back from Iraq. He gave the official PC rhetoric about the natives and Islam vs Al Qaeda and the bad guys. I tried to correct him, not sure if I did. Just be forewarned if you do go out.
In past centuries the role of military was clear, to destroy the enemy. In today's touchy-feely world the military is asked to do way beyond its role as fighters, now they are 'peacekeepers' and civil engineers to rebuild failed societies, in particular failed Islamic places like Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Pakistan, an endless list of failed 'stans' around the globe. This is not military work, this is missionary work, and since the Liberal Left has painted itself the new 'religion' they are forcing the military to commit what for them are unnatural acts. Works of Liberal-christian charity should be left to their missionaries, not the Marines. What would have Chinese Gordon thought of this when he went against the Mahdi to end the Sudanese slave trade? What would Lord Kitchener think? He was clear headedd and killed the (self professed) Mahdi and avenged Gordon's death. We need a military like that, not the touchy-feely ninies who are tiptoing around modern day successors of the Mahdi. We have grown soft, but like Gordon's war against the Mahdi, sadly we too lost our heads. There's a war to fight.
The recruiters one can find at a local office are not the deciders. Recruiting policy is written at the Pentagon. I think you'd be wasting your time.
The local offices are usually staffed with one officer, a few NCOs, enlisted personnel ~ usually at home on leave after finishing BCT ~ and some civilians.
Better to find the head of recruiting for each of the four services and write there. Be polite.
Insane! ...what "Pigheaded Islamophobes"! ...yeah, we can thank liberals for this crazy nonsense. Oh my gawd ....
Here is a related story I found on Drudge Report "Rules Of Engagement Are A Dilemma For U.S. Troops"
As the title says we are tying the solders hands in fighting this war. I am surprised they were not told to read the Miranda Rights after an engagement just before they put them on a plane for the New York City jail. Got to keep them all together, ya know. Just a bunch of criminals, ya know. They need their prayer time, ya know.
The one statement from General McChrystal summed up the fussiness of this logic. He said, "I think when we err on the side of maturity and caution, there is a cost. And I know that we're asking an extraordinary amount from them to operate with such restraint and self-discipline, but I think it's how we win the war.
WIN THE WAR!!!! HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa
This is another "hearts and mind" rehash from Viet Nam.
And why would there NOT be fears of discrimination and harassment?
If people from your community are constantly raising hell for everybody else, is it not completely reasonable to expect that you are likely to catch some heat from time to time?
And yet we still don't see the mohammedan community of today's America break out in American flags the way the Americans of Italian and German decent did during the WWII period.
If I were a mohammedan I would display my good regard for America and all the other religions practiced here as prominently as possible at all times.
But most of them don't.
Why wouldn't they expect to catch heat?
I'm certainly not going to worry about this. Nor am I going to apologize.
Mohammedans want to be regarded as good friends and neighbors? Fine with me. As they say in Oklahoma, SHOW ME!
"The recruiters recognize that Arab-American enlistees may worry about fitting in with fellow troops or having to fight in Arab or Muslim countries."
I thought they were AMERICANS! Why are they worried about fighting in Muslim countries, unless they have divided loyalties? If their loyalties are divided then there should be no room for them in our armed forces, no matter how much they want to enlist. German-Americans and Italian-Americans were able to fight for this country. There should be no problem "fitting in" if you want the same thing your fellow troops want - for THIS country to survive and prosper.
If Muslims are such a liability that they can't be trusted in the defense of the country then it must follow that we must limit their % of population - on current projections based on current policy, an impossible task.
Muslims in the US should burden as much of the defense task as anyone else. However, when an individual gives out clear warning signals, as jihadist Hasan did, then these need to be headed and this individual needs to be treated as a traitor.
Why was the FBI so blind to 9/11 preparations and why was the military so blind to Hasan's treachery?
This systemic blindness, call it political correctness, call it what you will, is the fundamental problem.
Muslims are trained to feel discriminated against!
It's part of the religion. As is whining about it. Muhammad made that charge over and over when he worked hard to motivate the early Muslims to do some plunder and violent takeover of their surroundings.
Praise the Lord and pass the ammo...
Frankly, why do you need Arab (or Farsi or Pashtu or Urdu) speaking Muslims to fight this war? Did they take native speakers of German and Japanese in the Allied armies in WW II? Has commonsense completely deserted even our military leadership?
And I agree with Henrik. Muslims have a congenital victim complex, which makes them look out for and grab every possible opportunity of even the faintest perceived discrimination or victimization. This is because they know clearly what THEY would do to the Kuffar if the Muslims were in a position of wielding the slightest power over them.
Secondly, this acutely distorted hypersensitivity allows them to justify unconscionable violence and cruelty against the Kuffar - "All of you can see what forced us to commit that hideous atrocity".
Ironically, they are unconsciously helped and egged on by the dumb, insensitive MSM and the Left wing organisations which generously provide them an unending supply of victim fodder with half baked reports and conjectures. The Muslim thinks to himself - "This is what these vested Christian/Jew/Hindu media interests are letting on...the real situation must be far worse"
Fro above, "The military does not keep full data on the number of Muslim troops." If you do not know who is loyal to America versus loyal to the Ummah you are going to get your men killed.
In WWII, Germans, Italians, and Japanese were suspect for potential sympathy to the enemy. Japanese Americans were formed into their own unit, the 443nd RCT and they performed heroically. The Germans and Italians were integrated into regular infantry & other fighting units and as far as I can remember there was never reported sabotage or treachery traceable to any of the three groups in the armed services. There were problems with sympathizers in the civilian population.
We have here and now a different problem. Muslim troops have to be loyal first to Islam. You cannot have people with divided loyalties in a military unit. We have multiple cases like this with a string of dead Americans as a result. Utterly stupid PC and failure of the Army to protect its soldiers from treachery.
On another subject, look up Lynne Torgerson, who is a candidate for the 5th MN seat, opposing Muslim Keith Ellison. She has an interesting take on the First Amendment- that it does not protect criminal advocacy as found in the Qoran.
Here is her website:
http://www.torgersonforcongress.org/
I can see the need for interpreters in Arabic, etc. My father fought the Japanese in WWII, in Papua New Guinea. He was in Australian Army Intelligence. When Japan entered the War, Australia found itself without any speakers of Japanese -- we interned all the "Japanese Australians". So my dad, who had graduated top in languages just before the war, was sent off to do a crash course in Japanese, which he learnt well enough to interrogate Japanese POWs, and -- so he told me when I asked him at various times in my childhood -- that they got valuable intel from them.
What Australia did *not* do was to recruit the Oz-born Japanese Australians, even though --- as the US experience was to prove -- they may well have been patriotic to Australia not Japan. What we did do was to recognise the shortfall in language abilities and to tackle the issue by training gifted linguists.
The US should do the same: train gifted linguists; and also: use Arabic speaking Jews (I read somewhere that some Arabic speaking Jews were sacked from a government department, even though they were in short supply, for some issue that had to do with PC-ness, and I can believe that...).
What the US Military should NOT be done is to recruit Muslims in the US, even US-born ones, just because it needs some language skills.
I agree with commentators here that Muslims in the military are going to be compromised, sometimes fatally, in their beliefs and allegiance. Why take the risk?
INFIDELATLARGE noted as follows:
"My question is, how can we as rational, reasoning people not justly suspect all individuals who are followers of Islam, until each proves himself not to be a proponent of Islamic supremacism and violent jihad against non-believers..."
May I add that islam is at perpetual war with the rest of us? And that deception is a tool of this war? At no point in the process of proof (as asked for by INFIDELATLARGE) can there be a certainty of honesty. I believe that time for removing this cancerous growth from among us.
You make very good points, though. IN essence, what should people of decency and good will do in face such organized violence and deception?
Dear Meeker,
I signed in to say exactly what you did:
"The US should ... train gifted linguists; and [also]: use Arabic speaking Jews"
We Jews share the exact same culture as the North-Americans, we love the US as our own country, and we are as brave and patriot as any US citizen.
But then again... we are living in very, very strange times.
This pretty much sums it up: Political Correctness
Is this a bad thing? I mean it is possible to teach non-muslims how to speak such langueges as arabic and farsi, right? Even customs and how to deal with situations they will encounter on the battle field with indigenous personnel can be taught.
And with less muslims in the military it's safer and easier to recruit the type of people we really need in the military, young folks with beliefs that are not at odds with the oath to defend the constitution of THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA against all enemies, foreign and domestic!!
The PC mindset of the US military cannot admit they may not enlist Muslims for this war against Islamic Jihad, or they would be forced to admit Islam is the enemy. So they are forced into strange contortions of political correctness at the risk of more Muslim treachery within the ranks. But this points to the obvious solution as noted above, stop enlisting Muslims. If you must enlist them, then form separate Muslim units as was done with Japanese units in WW II, so any possible treachery as witnessed can be isolated. And the suggestion that we train our own linguists is beyond rational thinking, it is a must. For the Mohammedan "war is deceit", a truism of their treachery.
How HARD is the U.S. military trying to recruit Muslim troops? They're nuts!
http://go.to/islamhistory
The military brass may think they need muslims in their ranks, but what about those who actually do the fighting on the battlefield? I doubt they are happy with muslims being in their ranks. How can any military man or women trust someone who's religion advocates the killing of apostates or non believers. Also on the topic of Ft. Hood, I haven't read anywhere of a change of the gun carrying rules that would allow our servicemen to carry firearms while on their base. Had not Bill Clinton made it illegal to carry firearms on a military base other then by military police, we may not have seen such a high death count and number of wounded. One gun carrying soldier may have been able to take out Major Hasan before he tried to reach his goal of 72 virgins in the name of allah. With Obama and the PC crowd in power, I don't expect any change in the rules.
Why on earth are our free and democratic countries even trying to recruit disciples of the great paedophile? Surely, all our efforts should be directed toward keeping out these treacherous stone-agers.
Why is it not compulsory for all recruiting personnel to study mein koranf in detail? Perhaps we would then not be clasping so many vipers to our bosom. Please, let's stop training the enemy to kill us.