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"The US Army has to have zero tolerance. He should have been gone."

Submitted by Rafique on Tue, 11/10/2009 - 1:17am

That's from Sen. Joe Lieberman, on the hard questions that need to asked about Nidal Hasan.

I still think it highly irresponsible to suggest that this is evidence of some sort of infilitration of the military by Islamists, or that we ought to treat Muslims with suspicion, but I think it's clear now that we have a man who was motivated by anti-American, extremist views. When someone comes out and suggests that " non-believers should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats," among other things, that's a real bright red flag.

HT: Althouse

Too many comments, not enough action

What should have been do about it?
Removing him from the Army would have just taken the problem off their hands and possibly made it worse. He would have mostly gone to the civilian sphere (see my former response)

You can't jail him for his beliefs unless we want to revive the Espionage and Sedition Acts of WWI

Complaining about it (mainly because he is Muslim) dredges up the flying imams accusations of profiling.

That's the problem with lone gunmen. How do you stop such future crimes without impinging on (or give them the ability to sue for impinging) rights

Is there a clause in the military or civilian law that can withhold someone (ie jail) for suspicion of future acts? Can we send lone gunmen to jail under attempted murder if we have clear evidence of planning for such an act? And what would be the criteria? Could it be watertight under defense accusations?

And as much as I like Lieberman, I think what he's doing is useless UNLESS they come up with a plan to protect military and civilians from such lone gunmen. Otherwise, L. is doing nothing more than a public censure

Red flags mean squat if there is no rules for follow up. It's a balance of keeping the rules strict yet generic enough so that discrimination arguments become moot.

All good points, Rachel.

Assuming Lieberman's hearings remain a fact-finding exercise, as opposed to something else, I'd say it can be useful. As to the larger issue, I certainly don't think you can jail for his views, but someone should have pulled him aside. It's a tough issue in a way, because unless there are corresponding actions, you cannot remove him. Now, apparently the FBI knew for a year that he allegedly had contact with al-qaeda, so if the military had known that, they could have at the very least, taken him out of the rotation.

Exactly.

Exactly. Unfortunately everybody seems to politicize this rather than asking *exactly* what should have been done IE removed from position, jail, suspension to hold a gun license, etc. And this should be universally done so that "profiling" will never become an excuse. There is a 1979 SC case called Addington vs Texas which allows the interment of a dangerously mentally ill person (check out wikipedia). Perhaps Congress can create such an act and have the military apply it. They already so such for active cases (Fort Dix Six, etc) perhaps they can do the same for "less threatening" cases.

But even extremists talk smack; perhaps there are worse cases out there the FBI saw and we don't :\

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