Reihan Salam on the Fort Hood shooting

I’ve been at a loss over what to say about the Fort Hood shooting. I think Atrios was on to something yesterday when he wrote “When your first reaction to tragic events is to consider how they might support your politics, it’s time to go for a nice long walk.” Indeed. I was initially tempted this morning to write something like: “When Christians commit murder in politically motivated contexts, it’s an aberration. When Muslims commit murder in politically motivated contexts, it’s time to gird our loins for a clash of the civiliations.” That feels right, but it also feels snarkier than events deserve.

A few months ago, when Scott Roeder killed George Tiller, lots of conservatives urged us not to blame the wider anti-abortion movement for the crimes of one disturbed man. Lots of us on the left — including me — suggested it wasn’t so easy. Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot. Some of the “clash of the civilization” conservatives are making the case that the Fort Hood shootings are exactly what millions and millions of Muslims love to see. I’d rather not believe that. But it’s truly depressing to see all the usual suspects flee to all the usual positions when something catastrophic happens. The sound you just heard? A million knees jerking all at once.

At the Daily Beast, conservative Reihan Salam offers some thoughts worth considering:

Overnight, Twitter feeds and message boards pulsed with anti-Muslim anger. This kind of venting is important to a free society. But it could also be an ominous sign of tensions to come. It is thus no surprise that groups like the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations have been so quick to condemn the violence. The vast majority of Americans recognize that Hasan doesn’t represent all Muslims, just as the Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho didn’t represent all Korean-Americans. Yet people who are on the fence about whether Muslims can be trusted could tip over into believing that they can’t.

Hasan’s most important victims are the families who’ve lost loved ones and the soldiers who’ve lost comrades. They deserve our deepest sympathies. Yet Hasan’s other victims are the millions of Muslim Americans who’ve fully embraced American life, and who feel a profound sense of dread whenever innocent people are murdered in the name of Islam.

And the wise James Fallows offers these remarks at his Atlantic blog:

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the “expert” talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre “mean”? A decade later, do we “know” anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They’ve got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don’t mean nothing.

In one sentence, a not-bad argument for the Second Amendment

Speaking of NYRB’s new blog, here’s Perry Link inadvertently making the case for American gun ownership:

The most striking feature of China’s October 1 celebration of sixty years of Communist rule was the spectacular and tightly choreographed military parade in the center of Beijing. The display of crass militarism—paralleled only by parades in Pyongyang or, a few years ago, Moscow—cannot have done much for China’s image around the world, but China’s rulers may not have cared about that or even been aware of it. They no doubt had a domestic audience in mind. Their aim was to stir nationalism and cast themselves as its champion, or—in the case of Tibetans, Uighurs, or protesters of various kinds—to make it very clear who owns the guns.

Emphasis added. I still think the flood of guns in our cities — Philadelphia in particular, because that’s where I live — does more damage than good. The Second Amendment has enabled the rise of an industry that has, in turn, allowed for that proliferation of guns.

But one of the defenses of the Second Amendment is that it enables people to oppose and resist a government that overreaches its mandate and descends into tyranny. I really have little in the way of common political cause with the people who are armed for just such an event these days. And God help us if universal health insurance ends up being the trigger for revolution — unlikely, but Tea Party rhetoric suggests otherwise — but with those caveats out of the way: China might be a decent example of why it’s good for people to keep their government a little bit fearful.

On the culture of grievance

Ta-Nehisi:

The notion of being besieged–the idea that Obama is a threat to gun-owners, that the gays somehow want something more than to just live out their lives in peace–is essential to justifying the fear-mongering. Much like no one says “Me and my friends are going to kick your ass, because we feel like it,” no one ever comes out and says, “I hate fags” or “I hate niggers.” What they say is that the feminist are attacking our military, or the president “hates white people,” or the president is giving out reparations disguised as health-care.

Very few bullies like to think of themselves as bullies. So they craft narratives in which they’re the victims. Happens all the time.

Those who fail to learn from history, etc. etc.

From today’s Daily Beast:

The United States originally armed the Taliban when it fought against the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Today, though we may now be its enemy, the Taliban still has a way of getting its hands on our weapons, apparently: After discovering that the weapons on 17 or 30 insurgent corpses in Afghanistan were identical to weapons the U.S. had provided to the Afghan government, The New York Times reports that it is likely “that munitions procured by the Pentagon have leaked from Afghan forces for use against American troops.” The United States has failed to account for thousands of rifles issued to Afghan Security forces. “With only spotty American and Afghan controls on the vast inventory of weapons and ammunition sent into Afghanistan during an eight-year conflict, poor discipline and outright corruption among Afghan forces may have helped insurgents stay supplied.”

From NPR, 2006:

The U.S. military can’t account for thousands of weapons purchased to arm some 325,500 Iraqi security forces by December, according to a new report. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said last week that the U.S. military would beef up Iraqi forces’ training. But the new data reveals weaknesses in the arming of Iraqi security forces.

Stuart Bowen, the Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction who provided the report to Sen. John Warner, says the Iraqi security forces lack the logistics personnel they need, including mechanics, supply clerks and medics.

And, he says, only a small percentage of the Iraqi weapons paid for by U.S. taxpayers are registered by their serial numbers. That means they could easily end up in the hands of insurgents.

My copy of Neil Sheehan’s “A Bright Shining Lie,” an indispensible history of the Vietnam War, is lost in my storage closet somewhere. But I recall from it that a major problem created by the U.S. during that war was that it flooded South Vietnam with small arms to be used against the Vietcong — but through corruption, capture and other means, the Vietcong came to possess many of those weapons for use against the U.S. and its South Vietnamese allies. The United States has a long history of inadvertently arming the people who are trying to kill our soldiers. Seems like somebody would try to figure out how to make that stop.

Do not — I repeat — do NOT eff with Jimmy Carter. He will put a cap in you.

In today’s Times, former President Jimmy Carter writes:

I have used weapons since I was big enough to carry one, and now own two handguns, four shotguns and three rifles, two with scopes. I use them carefully, for hunting game from our family woods and fields, and occasionally for hunting with my family and friends in other places. We cherish the right to own a gun and some of my hunting companions like to collect rare weapons. One of them is a superb craftsman who makes muzzle-loading rifles, one of which I displayed for four years in my private White House office.

Carter’s gun cabinet is more tricked out than the master sergeant’s in Halo! And he’s got Secret Service guys surrounding him, too. If you got a beef with Jimmy, best take it elsewhere.

In reality, Carter is establishing his gun-loving bona fides to argue for a re-establishment of the assault weapons ban. Guns are good for hunting, he says, but the assault weapons are just dangerous to humans.

Which would be a little more convincing, perhaps, if Jimmy didn’t own two handguns. What kind of game you hunting with those pistols, Jimmy?

They’ll get my gun answer when they pry the questionnaire out of my dead, cold fingers

Via Politico, looks like the National Rifle Association is getting its panties in a twist over a question posed to job applicants by the Obama transition team:

The National Rifle Association has denounced the move, which has already led one Republican senator to consider legislation aimed at ensuring a president can’t use an applicant’s gun ownership status to deny employment.

Obama’s transition team declined to go into detail on why they included the question, suggesting only that it was done to ensure potential appointees were in line with gun laws.

“The intent of the gun question is to determine legal permitting,” said one transition aide.

Tucked in at the end of the questionnaire and listed under “Miscellaneous,” it reads: “Do you or any members of your immediate family own a gun? If so, provide complete ownership and registration information. Has the registration ever lapsed? Please also describe how and by whom it is used and whether it has been the cause of any personal injuries or property damage.”

Boiled down to its essence, the question seems to ask: “Have you ever possessed or used a gun illegally or improperly?” I don’t think it’s anti-Second Amendment to ensure political appointees haven’t broken the law or, you know, shot a man in Reno just to watch him die.

Why’s this important? I can think of at least one reason. Maybe even two. Improper and illegal gun handling by high-ranking aides can be a real political distraction, and if there’s one thing we’ve learned about Obama is that he really doesn’t like distractions.

Besides, it’s important to note that other questions posed by the Obama team ask about Facebook accounts, e-mail habits and blogging. There’s been some grumbling about that, yes, but the ACLU isn’t mounting a campaign about this. The “scandal” here is that the NRA is looking for every opportunity to be offended — and every opportunity to capitalize on that offense for some good fund-raising.

3 things: They can take my gun away when they pry it out of my shopping bag

3 things to know, 74 days before George W. Bush leaves office:

•Looks like Obama’s election has sparked a wave of gun-buying:

Sales of handguns, rifles and ammunition have surged in the last week, according to gun store owners around the nation who describe a wave of buyers concerned that an Obama administration will curtail their right to bear arms.

“He’s a gun-snatcher,” said Jim Pruett, owner of Jim Pruett’s Guns and Ammo in northwest Houston, which was packed with shoppers on Thursday.

“He wants to take our guns from us and create a socialist society policed by his own police force,” added Mr. Pruett, a former radio personality, of President-elect Barack Obama.

Gotta love the black helicopter stuff. What’s funny about this is that people flooding gun shops, worried that they’re not going to be able to buy guns, are mostly people who already have guns. But you can never have too many, right?

• The effort to rehabilitate George W. Bush’s historical legacy has begun:

Kellerman, author of the book “Bad Leadership: What It Is, How It Happens, Why It Matters,” noted that Bush has not had luck on his side for the past eight years.

“He [Bush] has been a quite unlucky president. Certain things happened on his watch that most people don’t have to deal with — a 9/11, a [Hurricane] Katrina, the financial crisis, being three obvious examples,” she said.

“And yet they happened on his watch. He is being blamed,” she said.

This is only half-right. People don’t dislike George W. Bush because bad things happened on his watch. They dislike him because the way he reacted to those bad things made even more bad things happen: He reacted to 9/11 with an unnecessary, costly and bloody invasion of Iraq; he reacted to Katrina … slowly; and there’s a consensus that he didn’t move as quickly as he could’ve to shore up a shaky financial system because he was a little too wedded to free-market ideology.

Unfair as it may be, terrible times make great leaders: We revere Lincoln because of the Civil War, FDR because of the Depression and World War II. George W. Bush could’ve been a great president. He wasn’t — though he certainly wanted to be. But he fumbled it away. That’s not going to be different when historians look back on it in 100 years.

• 240,000 jobs were lost in October. The unemployment rate rose to 6.5 percent. McCain never had a chance.