By W.B Dunne

Just think of it: Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has already been called a terrorist by the great Joe Lieberman. The Major admittedly committed an atrocity by any civilized standard, but unlike the greater part of our recent shooters, he has survived. If he makes it, look for him to be blasted as the evil Muslim murderer. Hell wish he died on that horrible day for the rest of his life after the NEOs [neocons] are through with him.

When Obama visits Texas this week, I hope his security remembers another November visit a certain president made to Texas, and prepares accordingly.

The News Pauper is disgusted to have to revisit this issue so soon after the actual event. I thought that for once there would be a pause in the rhetoric in the view of the great horror of a one-day body count here in our own country as high as any in some far-off theater of war.

Major Hasan held the post of psychiatrist, in an institution sworn to the protection of our way of life. He of all people has the education and background to cope with the many pitfalls attendant to his mission, yet his resources have had no discernible value in the light of the fact that he felt the only way to make himself understood was to attack the very soldiers he was charged with caring for.

Never mind the families of the victims. Never mind the screaming indictment this is of the way the military itself is coping with War Inc. Never mind the attention that the shooting brings to the mental instability of the actual doctors in that system, overwhelmed by the caseloads. Which one of you wouldnt crack if you listened to hundreds and hundreds of war stories from green kids turned into monsters? I knew a wounded Iraq vet, 19-years-old, shot through the wrist, and when I said hed probably stay stateside after that, he stated that on the contrary he couldnt wait to get back because he had to be there to keep his buddies safe. I wanted to puke.

What kind of society squanders that level of service into the bloody maw of War Incorporated?

There is a particularly agonizing and intriguing moral statement being made about us when a man that is a doctor, a soldier, and an American Muslim in the current social climate, strays so far from the tenets of his beliefs. Karl Rove would decry this remark as treason. Thats what happens for attempting to understand the motives of the “others.”

This disturbed man has gone to extremes to bring our own failures before our eyes. His violence reflects our own. His desperation to be listened to matches our own impotent tiny objections to what authority commands us to do.

One gets the feeling that this man supposes well all recognize this act as the start of a new perspective, perhaps the threat of more of our most trusted figures turning on us and killing us in surprise attacks like this one will improve the etiquette around here. Make your towelhead jokes at your peril.

The News Pauper holds vigil for the Major, as unpopular as it might be at the moment.

My motive is the fact that he may prove to be the first of the victims, martyrs even, of the cause of bringing some sanity back into our discourse. Many large pundits and small politicians are already disgustingly clamoring for special debriefings of Muslims in the military, in order to make hay out of the shock of it all. Watch out for the burning of your local mosque, if these ideologues get any traction.

In the News Pauper’s eyes, it wouldnt be surprising to see the Major experience a “turn for the worse” in order to spare the military the spectacle of explaining where else they are failing. Oh, the ironybeing put into the position of prosecuting the murders of those that you were sending to be maimed or killedsoldiers, struck down by the hand of the doctor to whom was entrusted by the military the mental health of any that may have survived a poor shrink made insane by the ever-increasing load of spiritual death the Pentagon’s War Machine heaped upon his shoulderssnapped by its decision to send him even closer to the carnage!

Would it not be sweetly ironic if this attack on our soldiery by one of their own opened the eyes of the rank and file to the betrayal they have experienced from the heads of the hawks up at the Pentagon? Could the killings transcend the bigotry, and somehow be generally recognized as the bellwether that our violence itself can no longer be sustained?

Would an uprising of the public against the liars that put our defense through the past eight years of degradationagainst the torturers of the spirit of our traditions and valuesbring to an end this slaughter? If we were wiretapping the devil himself right now, would he be shorting those KBR stocks?

Behold what Cheney/Rumsfeld hath wrought!

In closing, save your chaff about my portraying the Major in a somewhat humane fashion as a signal for the anarchists to recruit me. Im independent in mind in spite of my skepticism about what can be learned from all this.

I suppose I should register now as an enemy of the statewhen the NEOs reclaim the country after the revolution maybe theyll show clemency and merely have me shot.

Contact the author at WBDunne@ltsaloon.org

2009 W.B. Dunne. All Rights Reserved.