PoliGazette

“Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Support Eroding Within Military

2009-11-09T18:12:46Z

As I have predicted, the declining social stigma regarding homosexuality in society is being mirrored in the military. A new RAND study shows that support for the “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy that bars openly gay people from serving in the military is eroding. Coming after most Democrats and even some Republicans have condemned the policy as damaging to the military’s ability to retain people in critical specialties like linguistics, DADT’s days are probably numbered.

The one thing that could reverse the trend, however, would be overly hasty action on the part of DADT opponents. In 1993, when then-President Bill Clinton attempted to repeal the ban on homosexuals in the military, his failure to line up support from high-profile military officers was a critical factor in the debacle that followed. His threat to act unilaterally through executive order provoked an immediate backlash even in the Democrat-controlled Congress. Congressional hearings were transparently rigged, with senior leaders still glowing in the aftermath of the victorious Gulf War matched against a smattering of witnesses of relatively low rank appearing alongside their legal counsel under shadow of criminal prosecutions. Opponents of the repeal argued that the disruption of gay soldiers would undermine the readiness of units, as anti-gay soldiers would simply not work effectively with openly gay soldiers. And because Clinton had failed to build a case based on anything other than purely moral appeals, he was unable to make a substantive argument about how banning gays actually harmed military readiness in response. The consequence was a rhetorical mismatch, where all the resonating arguments were on the side of those who wanted to ban homosexuals.

The RAND study is a piece in the emerging methodical program of President Obama’s challenge to the DADT policy. The arguments from individual fairness, while relatively ineffective as in 1993, still exist. But the decline in social stigmas against homosexuality, the reality of military manpower and skills shortfalls during a period of war, and changing attitudes within the military itself make the claim that gay soldiers would disrupt military readiness much harder to make. And President Obama’s reluctance to assuage purists by acting unilaterally shows he may to too smart to fall into the backlash trap again.

Figuring Out Hasan

2009-11-09T08:02:38Z

Ever since the attacks at Fort Hood on Thursday, thousands of people from the media and the blogosphere have been trying to create a profile of Nidal Malik Hasan, the shooter. Who was he, and why would he do such a thing? Well, we know some more now. The Telegraph reported yesterday and today that Hasan had all the makings of an extremist.

From yesterday:

Hasan, the sole suspect in the massacre of 13 fellow US soldiers in Texas, attended the controversial Dar al-Hijrah mosque in Great Falls, Virginia, in 2001 at the same time as two of the September 11 terrorists, The Sunday Telegraph has learnt. His mother’s funeral was held there in May that year.

The preacher at the time was Anwar al-Awlaki, an American-born Yemeni scholar who was banned from addressing a meeting in London by video link in August because he is accused of supporting attacks on British troops and backing terrorist organisations.

From today:

He also told colleagues at America’s top military hospital that non-Muslims were infidels condemned to hell who should be set on fire. The outburst came during an hour-long talk Hasan, an Army psychiatrist, gave on the Koran in front of dozens of other doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Centre in Washington DC, where he worked for six years before arriving at Fort Hood in July.

No doubt the first article in particular will cause some to fear the worst, but there is no evidence yet that Hasan was actually a member of Al-Qaeda.

The picture is becoming clearer, but still somewhat murky. What we do know is that Hasan grew more devout following the deaths of his parents in 1999 and 2001. For a few days, there was a gap in our knowledge of how a seemingly patriotic native-born could turn against his own country. Now, with the news of Hasan’s attendence at al-Awlaki’s mosque in 2001, the picture seems to be one of a somewhat new fundamentalist finding a darker meaning behind his religion. Perhaps Hasan turned fundamentalist because of guidance by al-Awlaki, though this is just speculation.

That still leaves a seven to eight year gap after his initial attendance at the church, including his time in residency and his fellowship at Walter Reed.

Lets be clear: This was terrorism. All the evidence collected so far points to this as fueled by Hasan’s religious beliefs. The bigger question is: Was it just one guy doing it on a whim or was it something more carefully planned? We don’t know for sure yet. However, I have seen comparisons of this shooting made to those at Virginia Tech and Colombine, and it certainly does seem closer to those than an al-Qaeda led attack.

Consider that Hasan did not go for a civilian target (as has typically been the case with al-Qaeda type attacks), but the army base, where he knew people. Hasan also apparently had a history of being denigrated for his faith, but more importantly, was about to be shipped off to Afghanistan three weeks later. So he definitely held a grudge with the army. Add that to what was likely eight years of increasingly following a radical form of Islam, and that doesn’t make for a great mixture. In the end, it was probably the thought of having to go fight what he considered an unjust war and killing those he thought were innocent (at best) or had a point about America (at worst) that moved him to commit a massacre. Perhaps as a sort “see how you like it” message.

There will be the temptation (if there isn’t already) in some sectors to try and link this to Al-Qaeda, or some other group, but there is the equal likelihood that this was a solo guy, who was radicalized enough to go out and do this. It has happened with terrorism linked to radical forms of other religions (think Planned Parenthood bombings), and it can certainly happen with Islamic terrorism, too.

Government Medicine Ethics

2009-11-08T09:22:55Z

Sarah Palin is making waves by saying that the Democrats’ mega-healthcare plan – which seems likely to pass the House at any moment – will give government the power of life and death over the elderly and infirm. Of course this is true. Of course it is. It’s simple common sense that whoever controls the money controls the process. That’s one of the things that’s wrong with government-run medicine: It puts control in hands of the one group who it should never be given to – government bureaucrats.

Palin:

“In order to save government money, government health care has to be rationed… [so] than this elderly person that perhaps could be seen as costing taxpayers to pay for a non-productive life? Do you think our elderly will be first in line for limited health care?

And what about the child who perhaps isn’t deemed normal or perfect per someone’s subjective measure of their use or questionable purpose in the eyes of a panel of bureaucrats making our healthcare decisions for us?”

Look, scarce resources have to be allocated according using some criteria. Currently that criteria is primarily based on financial success. Americans employed in middle and upper level positions have the best health care in the world. The lower end of the employment market and the unemployable get what’s left. You may not like it, but it’s a rationing system with a logical rational: The best and brightest get the best medical care.

Liberals want to change the allocation scheme to one controlled by a government bureaucracy because they believe that a government-run rationing scheme is more equitable than one based on ability and competition.

Nevertheless, theirs will still a rationing scheme, albeit one doled out by the Grays in the D.C. bureaucracy rather than by employment/cost-based allocation. Nothing will ever change that elementary fact. The only difference is that liberals want to believe that health care is a basic right of being an American while conservatives believe that it, like all other goods and services, must be earned.

As the ultimate payer, by definition the government will have veto power over medical care provided to those persons subject to their plan. This is undeniable. When President Obama says that a public option will not change your current health care coverage he is, frankly, lying. It is inevitable that employers will stop providing medical insurance stipends if a government plan exists. Why should they when doing so would put them at a competitive disadvantage?

Indeed, the only time businesses undertake actions that damage their financial viability is when the government mandates them. No such mandate will exist for employers to continue to provide medical insurance. Just the opposite is true, because Democrats want private insurance to die off and be replaced by a government-run option.

Palin’s argument that the same philosophy that allows abortion rights could soon be invoked to allow the government to cut off health care from those it deems undesirable may sound extreme. But the truth is that when government controls the funding for public health care it is obligated to make those sorts of decisions in order to keep the plan solvent.

This, of course, is the one outcome that Americans should do everything in their power to avoid.

NPR Reports: Hasan said that if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.

2009-11-06T20:35:15Z

NPR: Co-workers at Walter Reed Medical Medical Center pondered if he would become a terrorist. Co-workers at Walter Reed told not to talk to the FBI in fear that they could be accused of missing the obvious.

Folks, NPR is the left leaning, government subsidized news service who to my surprise is doing a fabulous job of covering this story. I encourage you to click the link and listen to the NPR report (I also fear that it will be taken down so get it now while the getting is good).

UPDATE via the Instapundit: Here’s the NPR segment. Key bit:

He gave a Grand Rounds presentation. . . You take turns giving a lecture on, you know, the correct treatment of schizophrenia, the right drugs to prescribe for personality disorder, you know, that sort of thing. But instead of giving an academic paper, he gave a lecture on the Koran, and they said it didn’t seem to be just an informational lecture, but it seemed to be his own beliefs. That’s what a lot of people thought.

He talked about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire. And I said well couldn’t this just be his educating you? And the psychiatrist said yes, but one of the Muslims in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand and was quite disturbed and he said you know, a lot of us don’t believe these things you’re saying, and that there was no place where Hasan couched it as this is what the Koran teaches but you know I don’t believe it. And people actually talked in the hallway afterwards about ‘is he one of these people that’s going to freak out and shoot people someday?’

Denying the problem won’t make it go away

2009-11-06T11:04:05Z

Before I start, let me repeat Michael Merritt’s words of yesterday: We here at Poligazette would like to send out our thoughts and prayers to all the families of the men and women who died today at Fort Hood. And we wish all the injured a full recovery.

What happened yesterday was, rather obviously, horrible. As Michelle Malkin documents, yet another muslim extremist went on a shooting spree. The attack should serve as a reminder that the war on terrorism continues unabated. The U.S. may have gotten a new president, but that doesn’t mean it can just ignore the extremist-muslim problem that exists in America and in the rest of the world.

Sadly, that’s exactly what MSNBC and European media are trying to do. The leftist American news channel spent some time to yesterday’s terrorist attack on Ft. Hood, but forgot to mention the fact that shooter Major Malik Nadal Hasan was an extremist. The army discovered recently that the major has posted comments on several websites, comparing suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to protect their comrades.

Hasan was about to be employed to Iraq, which upset him a great deal, MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann did say. But here too he forgot to mention one inconvenient fact: one of the reasons Hasan was so upset about being deployed to Iraq, was because he believed that muslims should “stand up” to U.S. forces in the Middle East. You’d think this was important enough to be mentioned, no? Chris Matthews did the same:

Matthews kept going on sympathetically about PTSD, and the “horrendous things” that Hasan must had heard as an Army psychiatrist. But in a fairly long career as an Army shrink, Hasan had never been deployed overseas.

But that fits the liberal media template. Military service can drive you nuts.

The problem with the approach of MSNBC and the European media is that ignoring a problem doesn’t make it go away. Extremists have to be fought on several levels: ideological, spiritual, physical, etc. To do so, we have to admit that a problem exists. Muslim extremism exists. It’s even a gigantic problem, especially in the Middle East (but also in the West). Islamism is an ideology of hatred, intolerance and violence. We can’t compromise with it, we have to defeat it. Whitewashing the acts of extremists thinking they may just leave us alone if we stick our heads in the sand, won’t work.

You would think that the MSM have awakened to this fact by now, but no. Their political correctness prevents them from waking up and doing what they are supposed to do.

This post was cross posted at Hot Air.

Unanswered Questions About Fort Hood Madness

2009-11-06T05:37:30Z

The story of the day is one of madness, for what other word can describe the actions of a man who guns down dozens of innocent people in a purposeless act of rebellion? Major Nidal Malik Hasan killed at least 12 of his fellow soldiers today at Fort Hood and no one really knows why.

Perhaps he was, as reported, fearful and resentful about an upcoming deployment to Iraq. Apparently Hasan’s loathing of the Army’s mission in that country was so great that he hired an attorney to help him get out of the military.

Frankly that explanation doesn’t pass muster. Anyone who works, in any line of business, has to do things that he or she doesn’t want to do, often for months at a time and under difficult circumstances. Although the stresses of most of our daily 8-to-5s can’t compare to those experienced by our deployed military personnel, the comparison is still a useful tool.

Considering it’s unlikely that a trained psychologist like Hasan would be put into a front-line situation, it seems that he would have had relatively little to fear in terms of his personal safety had he been sent overseas.

What then could Hasan’s motive been in attacking his fellow soldiers? Josh Marshall jumped in early on this point, noting that Hasan’s heritage contains Islamic elements. Scott McCabe confirms this assertion, writing:

Hasan attended the Muslim center for about six years and seemed like a good person, [Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring President Ishtiaq] Chughtai said.

Hasan exhibited a dark side at work, however, as noted while he was an intern at Walter Reed:

Hasan had some “difficulties” that required counseling and extra supervision, said Dr. Thomas Grieger, who was the training director at the time.
Grieger said privacy laws prevented him from going into details but noted that the problems had to do with Hasan’s interactions with patients.

Moreover, Hasan made anti-American, pro-Muslim statements to officers at Fort Hood, including now-retired Colonel Terry Lee:

“He was making outlandish comments condemning our foreign policy and claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans,” Col Lee told Fox News.
“He said Muslims should stand up and fight the aggressor and that we should not be in the war in the first place.” He said that Maj Hasan said he was “happy” when a US soldier was killed in an attack on a military recruitment centre in Arkansas in June. An American convert to Islam was accused of the shootings.
Col Lee alleged that other officers had told him that Maj Hasan had said “maybe people should strap bombs on themselves and go to Time Square” in New York.

As Marshall says, things may get very dark indeed with regard to Hasan’s true motives if Lee’s assertions about Hasan’s Muslim sympathies prove true. Previous cases indicate that this is a line of questioning that should be scrupulously followed up on.

For if Hasan’s fear of being deployed to a war zone is, as I believe, insufficient to explain his cowardly, murderous actions, his motivations must have come from a deeply rooted personal sense of vengeance. While it is premature to conclude that Hasan’s religious and social beliefs caused him to commit mass murder, it’s nevertheless obvious that this should be a primary line of inquiry, wherever it leads on the path to the heart of darkness.

Darker still are the larger questions about whether followers of Islam can truly belong in a democratic society. Millions do fit in successfully, just as Nidal Hasan did, to all appearances, prior to today’s shooting spree.

There is a tension between religion and government in democratic societies. Despite founding the first modern democracy here in the United States, American Christians feel it. I suspect that Muslims feel it more keenly yet what with the demanding, legalistic nature of their path to salvation.

Can that tension be resolved to the benefit of democratic society? Or is Islam inherently detrimental to democracy? This is the darkest question of all: Must Islam always seek to undermine secular government in order to gain power, as it has in Turkey and, to a lesser extent to-date, in many European countries?

Certainly it has in the past and still does in the present. But must it? If the answer is Yes, that democracy and Islam are oil and water, never mixing, always distinct, constantly fighting, then hard times and hard choices lie ahead for the citizens of western democracies.

A man can only serve on master. One wonders what Nidal Hasan served.

Fort Hood

2009-11-06T04:58:30Z

We here at Poligazette would like to send out our thoughts and prayers to all the families of the men and women who died today at Fort Hood. And we wish all the injured a full recovery.

The news coming out of Hood, Texas remains unreliable, so I will have some more thoughts about this tragedy tomorrow, when we have a more complete picture of the situation.

SHOCK: Speaker Pelosi’s Government-Run Health Plan Will Require a Monthly Abortion Premium

2009-11-05T20:49:28Z

GOP Leader John Boehner:

Posted by GOP Leader Press Office on November 5th, 2009

Health care reform should not be used as an opportunity to use federal funds to pay for elective abortions. Health reform should be an opportunity to protect human life – not end it.

Unfortunately, Speaker Pelosi’s 2,032-page government takeover of health care does just that. On line 17, p. 110, section 222 under “Abortions for which Public Funding is Allowed” the Health and Human Services Secretary is given the authority to determine when abortion is allowed under the government-run plan. The Speaker’s plan also requires that at least one insurance plan offered in the Exchange covers abortions.

What is even more alarming is that a monthly abortion premium will be charged of all enrollees in the government-run plan. It’s right there on line 16, page 96, section 213, under “Insurance Rating Rules.” The premium will be paid into a U.S. Treasury account – and these federal funds will be used to pay for the abortion services.

Section 213 describes the process in which the Health Benefits Commissioner is to assess the monthly premiums that will be used to pay for elective abortions under the government-run plan. The Commissioner must charge at a minimum $1 per enrollee per month.

This is pure insanity and as foolish politically as can be. The Democrat leadership must want this more than they want to keep their seats in 2010.

GOP Health Care Alternative Bill Online. First Step in Moving Towards Consortium Based Health Pools & Away from Mandates Forced On Citizens by Employers, Union Bosses, and the State.

2009-11-05T19:17:26Z

The best interview you may ever see on how to help bring down health care costs and get people covered, and believe it or not it was on MSNBC. The anchor here finally asked the right questions; questions that aren’t partisan gotchas but questions that are designed to look out for the folks.

The host asks a key question in the interview; why is it that we are subject to the limits our employers, the state or the union bosses put on us when it comes to picking our own health care plan? He hit the nail on the head. The time for letting someone else have so much control over our own health care choices needs to come to an end. It is time to move away from the state, union, employer based insurance to a consortium based series of health care pools that people can buy into.

Click here to view the embedded video.

The new 219 page GOP health care bill is the first step to move in that direction by incentivizing the creation of health care pools across state lines which are now prohibited by the government. The bill also creates and provides incentives for the states to create a guaranteed high risk pool for people with pre-existing conditions.

The GOP alternative removes the government barrier to buying health insurance across state lines, lets you have more choice as to the pools that you can buy into, has bogus lawsuit reform and more. The summary of the bill can be found HERE and you can examine the full text of the bill HERE.

The CBO says that this new 219 page GOP alternative bill will lower premiums by 10%, lower the deficit by 68 billion and help more people get insurance. This bill is not the “be all end all” in health insurance reform, but it is a very smart, incremental first step. Most importantly it doesn’t do any damage.

The current 2000 page Pelosi health bill has the legal mandate word “shall” in it 3,425 times. It doesn’t take a genius to see that such a bill does not expand flexibility in making your health care choices.

Cross posted at IUSB Vision.

Ethical Malpractice?

2009-11-05T19:04:26Z

To the growing list of problems with the death penalty, add this one from Jonathan Adler at the Volokh Conspiracy: It puts attorneys in a position of arguably having to commit malpractice in the best interests of their client.

Ineffective assistance of counsel is a common habeas petition claim, particularly in capital cases. This has led me to wonder whether legal representation that is constitutionally deficient should presumptively constitute legal malpractice. After all, for a capital defendant, effective assistance of counsel can be a matter of life and death. Yet it is rare that defense attorneys are sanctioned for providing inadequate assistance to capital defendants.

One reason for the lack of sanctions may be that the threat of sanctions could discourage attorneys from representing capital defendants, making it more difficult for them to get proficient counsel. On the other hand, I have also heard it claimed that the low likelihood of sanctions gives defense attorneys an incentive to “tank” bad cases, such as by providing sub-par performance at the penalty phase after losing at the guilt phase, so as to plant grounds for appeal. Such conduct would be worthy of sanction for sure, but I don’t know how often it occurs, if at all. But what of shoddy or negligent legal work? Should that be sanctionable too?

But in the end, even sanctioning lawyers who “tank” the penalty phase of a trial might not be enough. As Adler notes, the stakes for the client are life and death. What’s the significance of a $10,000 monetary sanction (see comments at Volokh for a comment from PatHMV proposing this) when the payoff is the preservation of the client’s life? Even for lawyers incapable of bearing the cost of that sanction themselves, there is certainly a plenty of wealthy donors on the anti-death penalty side that would contribute to that cause.

Also, a lawyer has an ethical obligation to make objections in order to “preserve for appeal” items which might form the basis for overturning the verdict if it goes against his client. Failing to preserve issues for appeal is malpractice. And since his own malpractice is a potent issue for appeal in a death penalty case, might it not be his ethical obligation to “preserve” it by ensuring some critical defect in his own performance, even if doing so means paying a fine?

It seems to me that the extreme nature of the death penalty and the lawyer’s imperative to put his client’s interests first doing anything within the bounds of factual truth and law (narrowly construed) creates a situation where failing to commit malpractice may itself be malpractice. Monetary sanctions against the lawyer are likely to be inadequate. And punishing the client for the defects of his attorney (willful or otherwise) is unjust. It’s a nice little legal Catch-22.

And the death penalty circus show grows another exhibit…