How Can the United States Address Radicalism Within the Military?
Last week's arrest of Pfc. Naser Jason Abdo thwarted an attempted terrorist attack at Fort Hood, the military base that was the site of a 2009 rampage that left 12 soldiers dead. Abdo is at least the third Muslim-American soldier suspected of trying to kill his fellow troops since the start of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. In 2003, then-Sgt. Hasan Akbar threw a grenade into a tent in Kuwait, killing a pair of American soldiers. Six years later, Maj. Nidal Hasan was charged with opening fire on a crowd of troops at Fort Hood, killing 13 people--including 12 soldiers--in the worst act of military-on-military violence in U.S. history.
Is this a growing trend within the military, or a handful of troubling incidents? How much of the radicalization has to do with the Muslim-American troops' own changing feelings toward the United States after serving in Iraq or Afghanistan--as opposed to adopting the views of extremist Islamist clerics? What can be done to prevent troops from adopting--and acting on--violent Islamist beliefs? How can this be done without alienating Muslim-American troops, or suggesting all such personnel are somehow suspect?
August 4, 2011 8:14 PM
Americans, like...
By Col. W. Patrick Lang
I suppose you or your "guides" understand by now that Americans think this is an inappropriate question.
August 1, 2011 10:16 AM
Reflection on Religion and the Military
By Gordon Adams
Professor of International Relations, School of International Service, American University
I do not see a trend in the three isolated incidents of muslim soldiers; the actions tell us nothing about trends, which depend on a deeper analysis of the experiences and beliefs of muslim soldiers in the US military.
But I am struck that we are discussing the trend in just one religion in the military. There is far too much evidence now of a trend toward extremism on the christian side of the military. After multiple incidents and discussions of proselytizing, norm imposition, and mistreatment of non-fundamentalist soldiers by fundamentalists in the military academies and in the field, I think we need to step back and ask a more fundamental question: why would we foster religious extremism of any kind in the services?
And even larger: how do we help christian, jewish, and islamic cultures to move toward understanding and away from conflict. Far too much death and destruction has been carried out in the name of religious belief, especially extremist belief, whether it is practiced in terrorist organizations in the name of religion or by those who would bludgeo...
I do not see a trend in the three isolated incidents of muslim soldiers; the actions tell us nothing about trends, which depend on a deeper analysis of the experiences and beliefs of muslim soldiers in the US military.
But I am struck that we are discussing the trend in just one religion in the military. There is far too much evidence now of a trend toward extremism on the christian side of the military. After multiple incidents and discussions of proselytizing, norm imposition, and mistreatment of non-fundamentalist soldiers by fundamentalists in the military academies and in the field, I think we need to step back and ask a more fundamental question: why would we foster religious extremism of any kind in the services?
And even larger: how do we help christian, jewish, and islamic cultures to move toward understanding and away from conflict. Far too much death and destruction has been carried out in the name of religious belief, especially extremist belief, whether it is practiced in terrorist organizations in the name of religion or by those who would bludgeon non-believers to convert to their own exclusive ownership of religious "truth."
Focusing the discussion on three incidents of violence by soldiers who are moved to violent acts by their beliefs and searching for a trend strikes me as missing the point, even engendering the hatred and fear that led to these acts.
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