This Was An Act Of Jihad

Let's call this act by Nidal Malik Hasan what it really it is, a heinous crime and a deliberate act of jihad. It's hard to stomach the mealy-mouthed spin of the New York Times, CNN, Time, etc. that we should empathize with this man and work hard to figure out what drove him over the edge.

Harry's Place has put together to try and understand the meaning of the attack at Fort Hood:

Lucy Lips, November 6th 2009, 4:35 pm

"The first reports on the BBC indicated that the terrible shooting at Fort Hood, committed by Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an American soldier of Palestinian ethnic origin was not “connected to terrorism”.

Instead, there was some discussion of concern about being deployed to Afghanistan, and suggestions that Major Hasan had “been battling racial harassment because of his “Middle Eastern ethnicity”".

Indeed, the BBC report initially included the following quotation:

Asked whether the shootings were a terrorist act, Lt Gen Cone said: “I couldn’t rule that out but I’m telling you that right now, the evidence does not suggest that.”

I did not post on the topic of Major Hasan’s massacre of his army buddies this morning because I do not automatically assume that any crime that is committed by a Muslim is religiously motivated. Indeed, there have been many mass shootings in the US, some committed by soldiers and some not, some committed by jihadists, and some by other species of nutters...."

Read it whole here:

http://www.hurryupharry.org/2009/11/06/a-jihadist-attack-in-the-usa/

Exactly amidut.

They make it seem as if he was reacting to discrimination. As I said elswhere I was in the US military and Jews have often experienced discrimination there. I have never heard of a Jewish soldier going on a shooting rampage as a result.

Are you familiar with the case of Uriah P. Levy?

“During his tenure in the U.S. Navy, Levy faced a great deal of antisemitism. He was court-martialed six times and once demoted from the rank of Captain. Twice, he was dismissed from the Navy, but reinstated. He defended his conduct in his handling of naval affairs before a Court of Inquiry and in 1855 was restored to his former position. Later, in recognition of his superior abilities, he was promoted to the rank of Commodore, then the highest rank in the U.S. Navy.”

He reacted to these injustices not by killing any one but by:

Promoting “justice and human rights, in his post as Commodore, Levy was instrumental in abolishing flogging (corporal punishment) in the U.S. Navy, which resulted in Congressional approval of an anti-flogging bill in 1850.[3]”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uriah_P._Levy

He also later on bought the home of Thomas Jefferson in Monticello and dedicated it to the American people:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uriah_P._Levy#Monticello

amidut, I agree basically with your reading of the grim event but I would, however, suggest that understanding and condoning are two very different things -- sometimes understanding something is a tool for preventing its repetition.

Also, I don't understand the reference in Marty's posting to "native Arab dress." I'd assume Hasan wore whatever is the designated uniform for duty at Ft Hood.

Crazy? Yes, I think I came to the same conclusion after the reference to Sirhan Sirhan's "act of jihad".

SirHAN....HasAN. Coincidence?

Muslim men in Muslim orbits spreading Muslim ideas in native Arab dress.

Edgy dissimulation leading to conclusions that will be very uncomfortable for the Obami.

Time for the Final Crackdown...on Them!! General Peretz will lead the charge from The Spine. Will you have the guts to follow him into battle as the clash of civilization gets closer and closer to Armageddon?

Yeah, crazy about sums it up. That and hysterical.

gw

"Also, I don't understand the reference in Marty's posting to "native Arab dress." I'd assume Hasan wore whatever is the designated uniform for duty at Ft Hood."

It's probably a reference to this:

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/11/06/national/main5548029.shtml

I agree that to understand is not to condone, but as amidut said, it was heinous crime and a deliberate act of jihad. What is there to understand? His uniqueness? Sadly, this bastard isn't sui generis - he's not a one-off "jihadist"- he's another armed coward (to hell with Bill Maher on that topic), taking out his hatred on the innocent and defenseless, another murderer in the much too long line of actual and would-be murderers who have killed or plotted to kill on an industrial scale in malls, airports, subways, military facilities and synagogues.

"....another murderer in the much too long line of actual and would-be murderers who have killed or plotted to kill on an industrial scale in malls, airports, subways, military facilities and synagogues..."

gw:

Indeed. Look what happened in the malls, airports and subways in Gaza. Or the malls, airports and subways the Predator drones stalked in Afghanistan.

An act of terror when they do it. An act of war when we do. A pattern is begining to emerge here. And a really crazy one at that.

gw

Loony George Walton is jealous.

He wishes he could have acted like NIdal Malik Hasan, but he is too much of a coward.

This si why spends his days posting cracy bigoted screeds here.

JD, the cbs footage shows Hasan in a 7-11 or similar, not on base. I would be very surprised if he had been permitted to wear such clothing when on duty, counselling military personnel at the base (hence I found Marty's suggestion a bit weird/unlikely).

I don't agree, b. We have no idea at the moment whether this guy was of sound mind or whether he had tipped over into clinical schizophrenia; we don't know if his motives were religious or political or some of both; we don't know if he planned this or whether it was a spontaneous act; most of all, we don't know if he kept this particular plan to himself or whether he shared it with others (which opens up another can of worms, if he did).

And for the sake of the American muslim soldiers who have actually served and in some cases died in these wars, we need to know exactly what was going on.

Irony, Yes, it is important to know whether it was part of a conspiracy, or whether he had alerted others who chose to remain silent, but at the end of the day, do the killer's motivations and mental state really matter to the victims? They're just as dead.

This report seems to point to premeditation, planning, and a religious "motivation".
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091106/ap_on_re_us/us_fort_hood_shooting

"We have no idea at the moment whether this guy was of sound mind or whether he had tipped over into clinical schizophrenia; we don't know if his motives were religious or political or some of both; we don't know if he planned this or whether it was a spontaneous act;"

I'm reminded of another event, three or four years ago, of a shooting in a Seattle Jewish community center, which was attributed to the acts of a mad man:

"While Haq's violence exploded inside a political context — the Jewish Federation, Israel's war in Lebanon — his motivations were those of a frustrated man, who, according to [his friend] Renner, didn't fit in anywhere and felt persecuted and embarrassed by his parents' Pakistani background. Haq is not a jihadi, nor a radical Islamist; his anti-Semitic rhetoric seems more like a veneer of politics on a man disturbed by feelings of inadequacy and rejection.[34]"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seattle_Jewish_Federation_shooting#Shooter

And I wonder if there will be a moment in which such mass murders will come under the legal defense of "irresisitible impulse", meriting an acquittal. After all, if the person is not in full of charge of his faculties, how can we hold him responsible for succumbing to Jihad mental disorder?

The incredibly brave Arab-American psychiatrist, Wafa Sultan, spoke once on Al-Hayat TV on May 29, 2008:

When I examined the Koran, the hadith, and the Islamic books under a microscope, I came to the absolute conviction that it is impossible – impossible! – for any human being to read the biography of Muhammad and believe in it, and yet emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person

[...]

The language of Islam is a negative, dead language, replete with violence, anger, hatred, and racism. Man is the product of language, the outcome of the negative and positive language to which he is exposed in this lifetime. If his life is dominated by negative language, he will emerge as a negative, reckless, and non-productive person, who rejects everything. On the other hand, if positive language dominates his life, he will emerge as a positive, happy, and productive person. This is why the negative language of Islam has failed. It has failed to produce people with a spontaneous and positive outlook. It has produced negative people. If we take a look at Islamic societies, we see what that negative man did.

http://www.memritv.org/clip/en/1783.htm

"Look what happened in the malls, airports and subways in Gaza."

It's funny how unselfconsciously clueless george is about anything he pretends to know.

ironyroad
"JD, the cbs footage shows Hasan in a 7-11 or similar, not on base. I would be very surprised if he had been permitted to wear such clothing when on duty, counselling military personnel at the base (hence I found Marty's suggestion a bit weird/unlikely)."

I read reports that he did come to base dressed in similar fashion. As of now though nothing is certain. Still, I spent years on bases and soldiers did and assume they still do walk around in civilian clothes there.

ire:

We have no idea.....We don't know.

gw:

This is without a doubt the most brilliant analysis of the Ft. Hood massacre I have read to date. And the rest of his post puts all the rest of you to shame!!

Sorry, ire, it's the only thing I can think of to get back at you for scubbing me.

; o )

gw

Shooting spree killers are not difficult to understand. They are cowardly suiciders. They want to die but don't have the guts to do the deed themselves so they find an outlet for their rage as a means of getting to the point of no return. Simple. Self awarding a badge of honor for their own cowardice. Further reason to hate oneself. Its not a derangement without its own logic.

JD: yes of course, but not on duty. Marty's comment implied that the guy carried out his official military medical/psychological activities in "native Arab dress."

b: it doesn't, perhaps, matter to the victims (kinda depends on your religious views, among other things). But on that basis we'd never investigate a fatal car crash as it can't help the victims. We have however a tradition of trying to establish the facts in cases of murder, accidental fatality, and the like.

Noga: that's a hell of a question, regarding the totality of a theological language and its effects at the individual level. The impression (and I emphasize that term, as I haven't studied Islam or Arab cultures) I have of hair-trigger anger and pathologically wounded pride among Arabs always disturbs me, and yet I never really know if it's a prejudice of mine grounded in nothing but stereotypes. The guy who killed the 30-odd students at Virginia Tech was a Korean kid, probably as far away from Islam as you could get. Timothy McVeigh, our American Christian, detonated a truckload of TNT outside the Oklahoma City federal building knowing that it contained a childcare center, but his political convictions apparently made him ok with that. What's a few kids if you can protest against the evil guv'mint!

Your point, I guess, is that while McVeigh and the guy at VT evince similar pathologies, the big difference with muslims is that it's not rare and exotic phenomenon -- it's more like the group pathology of millions of people. And yes, that is not to be ignored. But then I get confused, as all my life I've fought against group condemnation based on individual behavior.

"...it's more like the group pathology of millions of people. And yes, that is not to be ignored. But then I get confused, as all my life I've fought against group condemnation based on individual behavior."

__________

"it is impossible – impossible! – for any human being to read the biography of Muhammad and believe in it, and yet emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person"

Could easily and speedily be translated to:

"it is impossible – impossible! – for any human being to read Hitler's "Mein Kampf" and believe in it, and yet emerge a psychologically and mentally healthy person"

We have no problem condemning the Nazis and Germany under that regime. but maybe we are wiser with regards to them, because they were successful and we witnessed this success. It happened.

The question is, are we talking of only a few millions of believers, or 1.5 billion of believers?

If the latter, doesn't the sheer number suggest that if madness is that widespread then it is no longer a madness but a universally acknowledged truth and already too late to do anything about?

_________

"What's a few kids if you can protest against the evil guv'mint!"

Terror and virtue: "Par pitié, par amour pour l'humanité, soyez inhumains!"

By sheer coincidence Norm Geras talks about it today:

http://normblog.typepad.com/normblog/2009/11/terror-talk.html

Irony, " however, suggest that understanding and condoning are two very different things --"

Ever hear of "tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner?"

Gevalt, Marty! Cool your jets. In the last 30 hours we learned the shooter was dead, and then alive. Who knows what else we will learn? We have professional criminal investigators to figure out what happened. I am no more prepared to prejudge an entire group based on this incident than I am to shed my faith, people and heritage, or argue that Jews should not serve in the U.S. military because of Baruch Goldstein, with whom somewhere in the dark recesses of the past I share a common ancestor.

Take a chill pill man! I agree with your problem with people's reluctance to discuss the bigger issues of racial and religious identity, but don't conflate this tragedy into a result of our society's inability to be honest and open about the results of radical religious teachings, whatever faith they spring from. Let's see what the facts are before we take away any lessons from this episode though.

"By sheer coincidence Norm Geras talks about it today"

Thanks for the link, Noga. Geras' article was quite good.

"I am no more prepared to prejudge an entire group based on this incident than I am to shed my faith, people and heritage, or argue that Jews should not serve in the U.S. military because of Baruch Goldstein, with whom somewhere in the dark recesses of the past I share a common ancestor."

This is a nutty comparison, worthy of a George Walton, but a Stuart Wild.

Did Baruch shoot American soldiers? In their fervor to argue against bigotry some people unintentionally end up manufacturing their own.

"Ever hear of 'tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner'?"

I did, JD, but I'd dispute the princple advanced therein.

Query what Marty means by the statement that we are "actually fighting . . . Muslim ideas."

As to the notion that Hasan is representative of 1.5 billion Muslims, that is pure bigotry.

ironyroad

"I did, JD, but I'd dispute the princple advanced therein."

Well, we do live in the age of deconstruction and any notion can be deconstructed.

What is remarkable about Major Hasan and what hasn't been talked enough about is the fact that he was a doctor of psychiatry.

This isn't the first time practicing doctors engaged in Jihad. A few years back this occurred in Scotland:

“2007 Glasgow International Airport attack”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Glasgow_International_Airport_attack#P...

“Police identified the two men as Bilal Abdullah, a British-born, Muslim doctor of Iraqi descent working at the Royal Alexandra Hospital,[11][12] and Kafeel Ahmed, also known as Khalid Ahmed, the driver, who was treated for severe burns at the same hospital.[13] The newspaper, The Australian, alleges that a suicide note indicated that the two had intended to die in the attack.[14] Ahmed did eventually die of his injuries, on 2 August.[15] Bilal Abdullah was later found guilty of conspiracy to commit murder and was sentenced to 32 years in prison.”

How is it that people trained in the art of healing are ready to engage in killing others as well as themselves?

Do you have an explanation, Irony? Or are you merely content to counter other people’s explanations?

irony, "...b: it doesn't, perhaps, matter to the victims (kinda depends on your religious views, among other things). But on that basis we'd never investigate a fatal car crash as it can't help the victims. We have however a tradition of trying to establish the facts in cases of murder, accidental fatality, and the like..."

Damn straight! But my point was not about being disinterested in determining the facts, rather that the facts are really all that matter, and I really don't care about his motivation, or his mental state.

sight:

Peretz does not hate people for being Arabs nor does he adhere to a "hardcore Zionist line." Peretz has made clear in several places that he does not believe that Israel should hold every square inch of Judea and Samaria because it is the Jewish people's birthright...

gw:

Yes, I recall 6 or 7 months ago congratulating Marty for drawing the line against Israel "holding every square inch of Judea and Samaria". Have you been reading his posts since though? If with a straight face you can tell us Peretz, railing over and again about the unwashed, uncivilized Arabs, does not express a taunting, denigrating perspective of the bigoted point of view how can I take you seriously at all? Even today he can't help but point out the "Arab dress" Muslim jihadist Nidal Hasan wore. What are the actually facts there? Who cares! He is a jihadi muslim terrorist who dresses like an Arab. That's almost as bad as the jihadi muslim terrorists who dress like Persians in Tehran.

sight:

What does set Peretz off is the whitewashing of any malign expressions of intent by Fatah and anything else that would indicate that concessions to the Palestinian powers that be would be used as a springboard from which to attack pre-1967 Israel. Your disinterest in those considerations and insistence that the only possible motivation is a racist desire for domination is as odious as any degree of racism you accuse Peretz of.

george:

This is such a blatant caricature of my point of view only JD and noga will recognize it as the gospel truth. I have made it clear over and again that I oppose any and all Palestinian forces that refuse to accept the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign nation. I also condemn any and all attempts to link the Palestinian plight to Islamism or to political authoritarianism of any sort. I merely point out that I can never really grasp their plight because it was not my plight; so I can understand why they might reject my own arguments in turn. I don't have a disinterest in those considerations. I simply refuse to believe that Peretz's liturgical interest in this is the final word on it.

sight:

There was an article some time ago in TNR on personal freedom and sovereignal freedom in which personal freedom was the right to do anything which does not impinge on others freedoms while sovereignal freedom is the ability to disregard someone else's freedoms. My use of the term societal freedom is meant to apply to societies what the term personal freedom means to individuals.

gw:

No one has ever written an article anywhere which clearly delineates where "sovereignal freedom" of the state ends and "personal freedom" of the individual begins. Instead we have all these different cultures worshipping all these different Gods and political ideologies telling us that only they know where this crucial line is to be drawn. And, most crucially, these transactions always unfold within a context that ever includes the relationship between might and right. More than anything else the world functions at the behest of those who own and operate the global economy. The Bilderberg ruling class.

Do you honestly believe with respect to Israel and Palestine [and with respect to Israelis and Palestinians], we can set out to capture the most rational, the most ethical, the most politically correct "facts" here? And they are?

But still, again, I have always pointed out that Israelis live in a far more democratic political environment. So their approach to this vital relationship between "I" and "we" and "them" [at least for Israeli Jews] is governed more by the rule of law and thus, in my view, is far superior to some of the more despotic Palestinian agendas. And, yes, Arab/Muslim agendas....from Egypt to Saudi Arabia.

sight:

There are some facts that align with the Palestinians. I would say that they have the right to live where they are, to control the land connecting there settlements and to conduct the major functions of international relations from that territory. I have not seen anything that would indicate that Peretz does not agree with this.

george:

What does it really mean for someone to embrace this when he holds those who might embrace it along side Israel in such utter contempt?

sight:

Is it racist to believe that the Palestinians are not automatically entitled to anything more than this (though there might be good reason to give them more anyway)? If so, what entitles them to more other than the fact the Jordan conquered the land in 1948?

george:

I agree that given the now embedded reality of the past 60 years, the Palestinians should accept a two state solution based roughtly on the 1967 borders. I'm just suggesting their interpretation of all this will not necessarily coincide with mine or yours. And all I've seen from Peretz so far is this disdain for anything they might suggest that does not coincide precisely with his own historical chronology. And his own interpretation of what this complex trajectory means.

gw [original post]: "And how does this constellation of facts serve to rationalize the Israeli policy of subsidizing Israeli citizens who move onto more and more Palestinian land in the West Bank? Again, in violation of both international law and the 8th Judaic commandment."

sight:

I'll repeat, if you showed up with an armed gang and threw me out of my house and then I came back ten years later to reclaim my house, would you call that theft. In many cases, such as the Gush Etzion bloc, that is exactly what is happening. I think that settlements that impinge on what I think should be the Palestinians' entitlement should be dismantled, anything else, it's just a matter of what Jordan conquered in 1948.

george:

Whether it was the Jordanians, the Israelis or the realpolitik of the international community dividing up the Middle East after decades of colonial rule, hundreds of thousands of Palestinians got uprooted and tossed on their asses somewhere they didn't want to be. What should be done about that? And is everything always everyone else's fault here? Are Israel and Zionism basically the only good guys in all this?

Please.

george walton

I apologize for the above post. It was meant as a rejoinder to sight on the "Buying time" thread.

george

"Well, we do live in the age of deconstruction and any notion can be deconstructed."

Hm. OK. But I don't want to "deconstruct" the notion, I merely want to dispute its truth/validity.

To understand all (or as much as you can) is not in fact to pardon all.

A case in point: the Eichmann trial in Israel went to great and to some extent unprecedented lengths to understand the origins and dynamics of the Nazi genocidal project and, especially, Eichmann's role within that. We found out some things not really known or recognized before, including the lack of personal malice on Eichmann's part. The latter (Arendt's "banality of evil") was possibly more disturbing than a conscious hatred of Jews would have been.

This advanced understanding, however, did not mean that the court must pardon Eichmann. And it didn't.

Irony, at the risk of butting into a fine bilingual debate between you and Jackson, I took Jackson's comprendre c'est tout pardonner in context as illustrating the principle that, if everything is equally important then nothing is significant, and therein lies the moral quagmire of cultural relativism. All that I think is really significant is what he did, could it have been prevented, was there a conspiracy or did some have advance knowledge, not his motivations or his mental state.

...and I don't think it's possible that someone can be responsible for the logistics of murdering six million people without personal malice towards them, or that Arendt was not speaking out of the wrong body orifice when she described Eichmann's evil as in anyway "banal".

“To understand all (or as much as you can) is not in fact to pardon all.”

The emotionally charged example of the Eichmann Trial notwithstanding, I disagree.

The French saying implies that to understand human motivation ultimately means to look for deep causes which are ultimately are beyond the subject’s control. It is to treat human motivation in terms of cause and effect; the same way you that look at causality in matter.

I’ll avoid dealing with your example right now because it would take us at least a week of posting to get to the bottom of it.

bl462, again, I don’t wish to get into a deep discussion of Hannah Arendt, but her recourse to the concept of "banality" shows that she was unable finally to come to terms with the notion of evil.

Arendt did not describe Eichmann's evil as banal. She described him as the very personification of banality: a mediocre bureaucrat with some organizational talent happy to serve those whom he considered rightly above him and positioned to give orders. He did not have an original thought in his mind and his language was replete was platitudes and cliches characteristic of a stunted mind. Yet this man could still assemble an efficient system of extermination. The mismatch between the ungraspable enormity of the evil he was responsible for, and the littleness of that man's mind and thinking, that is what Arendt meant by her "banality of evil".

She herself was not immune to banalities, considering her love affair with Heidegger; what could be more banal than a tryst between a comely awe-struck and spunky student and her much older and charismatic professor? The very stuff of Harlequin romance.

PS to irony - I got rhetorically carried away ... of course the facts as to the killer's motivation (e.g., grudge vs. ideology/faith) and mental state matter, just not to the victims. Nolo contendere.

I seem to have had an Arendt thought...

Thanks jackson and noga.

But, b, Hasan's motivations and mental state are relevant to whether his actions could have been prevented. Moreover, one of the questions on the table here is whether Hasan's mental state is representative of the mental state of 1.5 billion Muslims.

Love stories in real life tend to be exciting from within and banal from without. But my point was that the "understand all = forgive all" proposition is hyperbolic. The proposition has a certain lapidary truth by virtue of its expressive concision and elegance -- one could imagine it being the central idea of a play or a novel -- but not a legal or investigative type of truth, which is what I assumed we were discussing here.

Noga has described effectively what I meant by my Eichmann reference.

We need an accurate account of what he did and said during the previous few days of the shooting. If as it has been alleged he did indeed regard his action as a kind of Jihad then his religion would be relevant:

From The Daily Beast:

"Authorities are still piecing together a troubling portrait of the man thought to be the killer of at least 13 people in Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood. Follow the breaking details about the victims, suspected shooter, and government response.

At least 13 people were killed and 30 more wounded in a shooting at Ford Hood in Texas on Thursday, and authorities are still piecing together a troubling portrait of the man thought responsible on Friday. The Army says the gunman is Major Nidal Malik Hasan, a psychiatrist born in Virginia and raised in the United States. Hasan, who is alive but in a coma and on a ventilator, allegedly shouted "Allahu Akbar!" before starting his shooting rampage, which is Arabic for "God is great." Hours earlier, he had given away much of his belongings to his neighbor, and told her he was ready to fight. The base commander says the gunman used “a very calm and measured approach” in his shooting. The shooter was exiting the building when police officers Kimberly Munley and Mark Todd arrived, and he shot Munley in the thigh. Hasan allegedly then began to reload his weapon, and Munley shot him four times. An Army officer then used his belt to make a tourniquet on Munley's leg. She's in stable condition.

Hasan, whom officials now say acted alone, allegedly carried two weapons, one of them semi-automatic, which explains the high casualty count. Hasan, 39, is a psychiatrist recently reassigned from Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C., to work with soldiers at Fort Hood. His cousin said at Walter Reed, Hasan treated soldiers returning from war with combat stress and PTSD and was afraid of his own impending deployment to Afghanistan. Hasan had recently undergone a peer review; his fellow doctors found no fault with the care he provided.

His aunt told The Washington Post that her nephew tried to get out of his Army contract for several years but couldn't. She says he felt harassed because of his Muslim faith. Hasan reportedly drew the attention of federal law enforcement six months ago for online posts about suicide bombings and other threats including "a blog that equates suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades." An imam at a Maryland mosque he attended said that Hasan was a lifelong Muslim, but showed little sign of political or religious zealotry...."

http://www.thedailybeast.com/blogs-and-stories/2009-11-06/fort-hood-shoo...

b, my last post crossed your last few.

Regarding understanding vs. condoning, coming to terms with the nature of evil means coming to terms with psychosis and other psychological pathologies. To simply say evil is evil is to come to terms with nothing.

"Noga has described effectively what I meant by my Eichmann reference."

Her description was very lucid and to the point.

I, on the other hand, hold with Saul Bellow who said that banality (the cog in the machine act) was precisely the mask he wore in order to escape moral censure. This is what is missing from Arendt's account the possibility that he was dissimulating.

Had he lived today he would have spoken of being the victim of the “Israel Lobby.”

This is what some politicians accused of crimes have been doing:

“Disgraced former Congressman Jim Traficant was recently freed from federal prison after serving seven years of hard time for corruption and tax evasion. He surprised many people who haven’t followed his case by claiming in subsequent interviews that he had been framed by the “Israel lobby”.

Now, according to a column he has published on the neo-fascist website American Free Press, Traficant is planning to travel to Germany to testify on behalf of John Demjanjuk. Demjanjuk has been indicted for war crimes committed while allegedly serving as a guard at the Sobibor concentration camp during World War II; the trial is set for later this month. Traficant also announced that he would be writing a regular column for American Free Press. (Read Traficant’s AFP column here. Read a Youngstown, Ohio Business Journal report on this here; and Editor and Publisher, here.)”
http://blog.z-word.com/2009/11/disgraced-ex-congressman-to-testify-for-d...

"Regarding understanding vs. condoning, coming to terms with the nature of evil means coming to terms with psychosis and other psychological pathologies."

In other words, Hassan is the victim of his pathologies and hence isn't a free moral agent that can be said to be responsible for his actions.

Here is the essence of the phrase: "tout comprendre c'est tout pardonner."

Arendt was wrong - banality can never coexist with evil unless evil itself is banal. Eichmann was the personification of extraordinary evil. Such a monster could by definition never also be the personification of banality, the "banality of evil". And for Eichmann defense that he was just following orders it would have been essential not to seem like he was other than a cog acting on the orders of his superiors, (thanks jackson for pointing that out). But that hardly matches the Eichmann that came out in the evidence at his trial.

No, Jackson, the fallacy of your position is the premise that pathology relieves the actor of moral responsibility. Only in the most the most extreme cases does our criminal justice system excuse criminal actors on the basis of insanity. In most cases of obviously pathological behavior, the actor is held responsible (Jeffrey Dahmer comes to mind, among many examples). What is your objection? That pathology cannot explain evil because it would relieve the actor of moral responsibility? Why? And what if it were the case as a factual matter that all behavior we regard as evil was the result of pychological pathology? Would you refuse to accept that fact because it would mean no one could be held morally responsible for thier actions? Or that there is no such thing as evil?

I'd like to take the liberty to repeat my point as it seems to have been ignored:

The "understand all = forgive all" proposition is hyperbolic. The proposition has a certain lapidary truth by virtue of its expressive concision and elegance -- one could imagine it being the central idea of a play or a novel -- but not a legal or investigative type of truth, which is what I assumed we were discussing here.

To put it another way, JD, you're the one who introduced the phrase. After I responded that I didn't believe that proposition or indeed believe that I was expressing it, you kept on as if I had said the opposite. Once again, I don't think anyone on this thread is asserting that proposition, and certainly I'm not.

dhurtado
"No, Jackson, the fallacy of your position is the premise that pathology relieves the actor of moral responsibility. Only in the most the most extreme cases does our criminal justice system excuse criminal actors on the basis of insanity."

The law does not hold insane people responsible for their actions.

Judges and Juries may decide if someone is insane under the law, but that doesn't change the principle.

Moreover, Judges and Juries can err in deciding who is and is not insane. I am not familiar with the
Legal details of the Jeffrey Dahmer case, but it likely that his act was so shocking that no judge would want to absolve him of responsibility. This though is a political and not a medical decision.

Jackson: "The law does not hold insane people responsible for their actions."

To the contrary, the law does hold psychotic people responsible for their actions. Legal "insanity" sufficient to constitute a defense is much, much narrower than medically adjudged pyschosis. A Hannibal Lecter type would very likely not be able to establish an insanity defense, even though it is highly likely that he would be medically adjudged to be psychotic.

dhurtado
“Jackson: "The law does not hold insane people responsible for their actions."

To the contrary, the law does hold psychotic people responsible for their actions. Legal "insanity" sufficient to constitute a defense is much, much narrower than medically adjudged pyschosis. A Hannibal Lecter type would very likely not be able to establish an insanity defense, even though it is highly likely that he would be medically adjudged to be psychotic.”

You don’t get it, Hurtado.

The principle that insane people are not responsible for their actions is a different notion from the standard we set as to who we judge to be insane. The first is an absolute, the second is variable and often political as well as medical considerations are at play.

This is as it should be. We don’t want to make it too easy for people to claim the “insanity" which would absolve them of responsibility.

Some have invented a category called insane but guilty which is really an oxymoron and which they want to see instituted.

The issue is very complex since there are degrees of insanity: or "diminished (mental) capacity".

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Insanity_defense#American_Law_Institute_Model