How will you spend your Thanksgiving break?
Maybe John Surico felt that acknowledging Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's religious motivations for the massacre he committed would reflect badly on his co-religionists. Or maybe he just wanted to make an argument against President Obama's plans to add more troops in Afghanistan. Whatever the reason, finding the "real issue" did not seem like his aim in his piece.
Related
Surico argues that the "mental effect that Iraq and Afghanistan is having on our [soldiers]" is to be nervous about his deployment to the point of going on a shooting spree. Could Hasan have been crazy? Sure. But he was also a religious fanatic, and that is the underlying issue. To pin this massacre on shell shock, or other effects of war, is irresponsible.
To make sure this doesn't happen again, Surico suggests, the government should reverse its ideas of increased deployment of troops to Iraq and Afghanistan. A better policy move, I think, would be an increased surveillance of suspicious activity by soldiers.
Col. Terry Lee told Fox News: "[Hasan] was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans ... He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that [the U.S.] should not be in the war in the first place." Lee added that Hasan said he was "happy" when a U.S. soldier was killed in an attack on an Arkansas military recruitment center in June.
Please do a better job of choosing editorial pieces in the future to maintain a reputation of informative pieces and informed opinion.
Thanks, Daniel Pessar, CAS junior
