#39: Don't Jump to Any Conclusions

Hard as it is to believe, there is a big discussion going on concerning whether Nidal Hasan is an Islamic Terrorist or not. Obama, the fearless leader, tells us “not to jump to conclusions,” as do other lesser mortals like G. Stephanopoulos. As far as the actual question is concerned, I have nothing to add to the excellent and voluminous coverage it has already had. I do want to remind my readers, however, of one of my earlier themes, namely the propensity of the Left to deny the obvious, often in evidence of how much smarter they are than everyone else. This seems to be an “obvious” instance of that phenomenon.

We see a man with a radical Islamist history, with documented Islamist anti-American rants, who carefully plans and executes a massacre while shouting “Allah Akbar!” Given the history of Islamic terrorism against the U.S., a good amount of it actually on American soil, one would think the conclusion “hmm, this is an Islamic terrorist” would leap to the mind and the lip. And it does, for many. Yet, at the same time, we hear frequent cautions that we should not “leap” to a conclusion. After all, this could be a case of post-traumatic shock, it could be a case of a psychotic break, it could be just a criminal act, hell, for that matter, he could have been possessed by a Venusian extra-terrestrial bent on destroying the earth! Hell, it could have been anything, anything at all, anything, that is, except … the most obvious … the rat-bastard was an Islamic terrorist.

Pray tell, how much of a leap is involved, given the already available data? Is this a leap of Olympic proportions? Is it an Evel Knievel Grand Canyon leap gap? How great is the gap between the data and the conclusion? Apparently MUCH greater than the ordinary man in the street recognizes. HE thinks the conclusion is obvious, but the talkers and scribblers of the Left see too many nuances in the situation to draw that conclusion. But why is this? Are they just stupid, as they are always claiming that conservatives are?

I don’t think so. I do believe that Leftist ideology will ultimately cause brain damage, but I think there is more at work here. The reason is that the fatuous politically correct platitudes being exuded now were also exuded by G.W. Bush and his administration. “Don’t leap to a conclusion” about Hasan is of a piece with the flatulent “the vast majority of Muslims are just like you and me, just trying to get through the day, take care of their families.” Yeah, right. There’s a LOT of evidence in favor of this view.

Just as no one with a still functioning frontal lobe will not conclude that Hasan is an Islamic terrorist, no one who still thinks will believe that “the vast majority of muslims …” What is fascinating about the latter nonsense is that it is repeated again and again with a tone of absolute certainty when there is actually not a shred of evidence to support it and much to make it dubious. It is not an empirical generalization, it is much more an article of faith, a presupposition. The way it is said suggests that the sayer is thinking: Oh God, it has to be true, it just has to be.

But why? Why do apparently adult apparently functioning people utter these transparently silly feel good platitudes?

I suspect it is because they are very much afraid of what would happen if they told the truth as our intelligence services know it.

If it were made public that the vast majority of Muslims hate, loathe, detest the West, want all Jews dead, want all Christians dead, want everyone dead except themselves, this would generate, among other things, a lot of hatred of Muslims within the West. Indeed, more than there is now. The Left is very much afraid of public passion, whether it is love or hate. An impassioned public is a public difficult to control and manipulate. But, further, as I argued in an earlier post, the Left has its origins in the rationalism of the so-called Enlightenment, and this rationalism is itself very hostile to passion of any kind (unless it be purely sexual and transient). It is for this reason that it has fought again and again for purely “rational” (and by this read “utilitarian”) accounts of justice, of religion, of relationships. It is for this reason that government no longer encourages the kind of hatred of the enemy that existed in the armed forces (and in the public) during the two great wars of the 20^th C. There was no censoring then of racially colored propaganda in the Pacific theatre, nor were our soldiers penalized for calling the German soldiers the “boche” or “Heinie,” “Jerry,” or “Fritz.” Indeed, in those days, it was almost compulsory to hate the foe. According to Leftist “intellectuals” it is simply “beneath” us now to hate the enemy, and hating the enemy would “make us just like them.”

Perhaps, however, for some of these talkers, there is something that motivates them even beyond this. Leftists the world over have always tended to be pacifists. Of course, some of them are simply ideologically driven. But for others, I cannot help but think, it has to do with money. The way that third-way socialists gain power and maintain power is through the delivery of entitlement benefits, and this is very expensive. War, in effect, makes the delivery of entitlement benefits far more difficult to accomplish, and therefore to do what third-way socialists do for the sake of power. In the decision between guns and butter, your third-way socialist is “all about” butter (and let other people pay for the guns).

Now, if a population begins to hate the enemy, as could well happen with Nidal Hasan and his fellows in America, that population begins to demand aggressive military action, whether at home or abroad, but any such action that is not quickly completed with victory and low costs in both human and material terms is a political disaster. Obama and his Chicago Socialist cabal do not want a political disaster.

Socialists want to stick to what they do best: give away other people’s money; they do not want to get involved in expensive external campaigns. Chamberlain and the third-way socialists, as well as tribal leaders in Africa and the middle east, prefer to take tolerable losses in human life as the cost of doing business, rather than retaliate and engage the enemy. For many leaders, the way to deal with harassment, even murderous harassment, is to either ignore it or attempt to buy it off.

So, it might just be the case that Obama doesn’t want us to “leap to any conclusions” on Nidal Hasan because he just doesn’t want to “go there.”

He really doesn’t have the foggiest idea of what to do with any of the problems facing the U.S.A., and he certainly doesn’t want the bulk of Americans demanding more aggressive action against Muslims in general. What would he do if they did? What could he do? He doesn’t know. But he does know that his special constituencies expect him to continue to expand their entitlements, and military activity is costly, too costly for his tastes and needs.