Maybe he shouldn’t have phrase it as “diversity,” because that makes it sound more frivolous than what he he meant. If he’d said “losing our equal rights” or something similar “would be worse,” I think it would have come across more clearly.
I guarantee that Gen. Casey wasn’t talking about "hurt feelings "counting to make sure every unit has the right amount of rainbow colors or anything, though.
Because people don’t tend to pre-parse or analyze every word they say before they say it, and usually they don’t get every word sifted by millions of people looking for any excuse to act butthurt by them.
Exactly. The most parsimonious interpretation is that he meant exactly what the context would imply – that he was talking about avoiding an unfair backlash against Muslims.
Regarding allahu akbar, I imagine approximately 80% of American islamophobes are aware of it, have some notion of what it would sound like pronounced aloud, and would assume that any noise they hear that may or may not have been spoken by the Muslim guy is necessarily “allahu akbar,” even if it really was an inarticulate cry of rage or pain or possibly somebody else shouting, “Look out, he’s got a gun!”
The other 20% of American islamophobes weren’t aware of allahu akbar until this story.
I’m sure that practically everybody in there was yelling their heads off once the first shot was fired, and memory can be a treacherous thing. The witnesses who claim to have heard it are not even independent in this case. If one person said he heard it, it would be a matter of minutes before half the people in there would be swearing they heard it too.
That’s inappropriate and annoying and it would be facile for me to say “just report it up the chain of command.” Still, relatively speaking, less worrisome to me than the apparent background here.
There have been threads posted about them before. If I try to find them, will it have any effect at all on your opinion of this topic? If not, what’s the point?
You don’t seem to have a problem remembering how things happened. You think soldiers are too stupid to recognize the phrase and accurately report it and have decided that they were somehow wrong because, I don’t know, it’s so unlike Muslims to say this while going on a murderous rampage?
Well, when I was in some years back I had a run in with a pushy evangelical type in my command - but when he got too pushy I mentioned it to my chief, his chief told his chief to back off, and everything worked out just fine.
I’m not saying other people didn’t have experiences very different from mine - just that I never saw a terrible problem in this area when I was in. So because of that more information that I can evaluate one way or the other would be helpful.
So I’m sure, given your claims, that you are prepared to provide such, right?
Did anyone else briefly see a “BREAKING NEWS” banner on MSN saying that the shooter was awake? I saw it and planned to come back to it when I was done reading this thread, and now it’s gone away. Weird.
And secondly, and perhaps it’s inflammatory, but why would it matter if the shooting as a terrorist attack as opposed to a workplace shooting? How would this distinction impact what happens next?
Just about every old movie with them goofy Arabs has “Allah akbar” in it somewhere. Old movies with those crazy Japnanese has a “bonzai” in it somewhere. In movies with Russians its “nyet” and “das vidania”. Germans , its “nine”. And so on and so on.
Most Americans dont speak those languages, but most of em have been frequently exposed in pop culture to a couple of key phrases.
Show me where I said the eyewitness was an Islamophobe.
You said eyewitnesses. Please lend me a cite to any story citing more than one person claiming Hasan shouted, “Allahu akbar.” All I found was this story,which cites one private saying that Hasan may or may not have shouted “Allahu akbar,” but he doesn’t really know.
“I was sitting in about the second row back when the assailant stood up and yelled ‘Allahu akbar’ in Arabic and he opened fire,” Foster said Monday on CNN’s “American Morning.”
It’s still being reported. Maybe MSN actually uses some measure of common sense in applying the “breaking news” tag; I’ve notice CNN will say something is still breaking hours after it happened.
Political and religious advantage, and the urge to categorize everything. It doesn’t matter much on planet earth, but people who have something to gain will make it out to be important.
Granted, this is what two congressmen are saying the witnesses said, so it’s not 100 percent clear. CNN also says “other bystanders” are reporting that’s what he said before he started shooting. We’ll see. Right now it sounds like there are multiple sources on that. If it turns out only one person heard him say it and everybody else is repeating it, that’s a lot less credible, but right now there’s no particular reason to see it that way.
I suspect you’re right about the urge to categorize and maybe make some political hay out of this incident. I keep hearing reporers mention that Lieberman wants a Congressional hearing to decide if it was terrorist or not, and thus I keep hoping that one of these times, they’ll report what he hopes to accomplish.