austindefender

When I first heard about the Fort Hood attack, I thought the political fallout might have something to do with gun control.  (Gun nuts arguing that soldiers ought to be armed, to protect themselves against… each other.)

It didn’t even occur to me they’d use it against Obama.  But apparently they have, and they are.  (The attack proves, says Jonah Goldberg, that Obama, unlike Bush, can’t keep us safe from terrorism.)  The attack is terrorism, they say, because Nidal Hasan is Muslim.   (There are a number of other facts about Hasan – that he was an officer, male, a psychiatrist, a US citizen, and a soldier… but those facts are irrelevant, I guess.)

Unfortunately, there are more mass shootings in the US in the past few years than I can remember.  But here’s a list of some of them.

• Robert Stewart, 45, killed 8 at a nursing home in NC.  2009.
• Michael McLendon, 28, killed 10 in rural Alabama.  2009.
• Robert Hawkins, 19, killed 8, at a mall in Nebraska.  2007.
• Seung-Hui Cho, 23, killed 32 at Virginia Tech.  2007.
• Charles Roberts IV, 32, killed 5 girls at an Amish school in Penn.  2006.
• Jeffrey Weise, 16, killed 9 at a high school in Minn.  2005.
• Terry Ratzmann, 44, killed 7 at a church in Wisconsin.  2005.
• Byron Uyesugi, 40, a copier repairman, killed 7 at Xerox in Honolulu.  1999.
• Mark Barton, 44, former day-trader, killed 9 at two brokerages in Atlanta.  1999.
• Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebond, 17, killed 12 at Columbine H.S., Colorado.  1999.
• John Allen Muhammad, 41, former Army sniper, killed 10 out of the trunk of his Chevy Caprice.  2002.
• Timothy McVeigh, 26, Gulf War veteran, killed 168 with a truck bomb in Oklahoma City.  1995.
• George Hennard killed 23 at a Luby’s in Lubbock, TX.  1991.

I’m not sure what all this proves, exactly.  Other than that it happens too regularly.  And that there is, apparently, a desperate need for psychiatric services aimed at angry, resentful men in this country.  Particularly if they have access to high-powered weaponry.

(Click for bigger image.)

Under Reagan & Bush 1 government increased from about 29% of the economy to about 34%.

Under Clinton, it shrank from 34% to about 29%.

Under Bush 2, it rose again to almost 34%.

As long as I’m rambling, there’s another thing.

“Human shields.”  Whenever they shoot, or blow up civilians they say the enemy was using them as “human shields.”

Israel has been saying this about Gaza.  Before that, Lebannon.  And before that, US spokespeople said the same thing about Iraqis.  I don’t know who gets credit for coming up with it first.

But just so we’re straight on this, what is it, exactly they expect them to do?

Gather in a nice, big, empty field, a safe distance from all civilians, and wait for the bombs to fall on them?

And who are these “human shields,” anyway?  Aren’t they just the families of the men who are doing the fighting?  Their neighbors, their children?  Do they really want them to be killed?

Or is it possible, just possible, that they’re fighting in their own, civilian, neighborhoods because that’s where the enemy tanks are?

This afternoon I caught a bit of Obama’s statement on the fighting in Gaza.  I was only half watching, but I remember they’d just switched over from talking about a group of Palestinian children, who’d been killed by an Israeli rocket.

“If somebody was sending rockets into my house,” I heard him say, “Where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that.”

Like I said, I’d only been half watching, but my initial reaction was amazement. “Wow,” I thought, “I’ve never heard anyone put himself in the place of a Palestinian.”

The next sentence caught me up.  “And I’d expect the Israelis to do the same thing,” he continued.