Are you freakin' kidding me?

Man, this story just gets weirder and weirder by the second. Could you imagine the disaster such a precedent would set? 

Over the summer I got into a relatively heated debate over the use of hyphenated Americanism (African-American, Italian-American, etc.). I am strongly against the practice, partly because of the divided loyalty it seems to promote, which in turn does nothing but sow divisions amongst ourselves on a daily basis. There simply is no rational reason for the practice other than to highlight irrelevant differences among people at the expense of our commonalities.

With Muslims, the practice is especially idiotic particularly because being a "Muslim" means that you can have no higher allegiance than Allah. Now, I understand many Christians have the same issue insofar as they believe in no higher authority than God as well. The difference, and it is significant, is that I haven't heard an argument yet that would pit national loyalty to the United States directly against sovereign loyalty to God. If the argument exists, by all means let me know.

The Qu'ran is pretty damn clear that in the event of any conflict, Islam wins with no exceptions. The problem is, unlike the Christian/United States authority hierarchy, there are a whole hell of a lot conflicts between Islamic scripture and U.S. Civil Law. I'd say that many of those conflicts are wholly irreconcilable as well. Once a conflict exists, the ultimate question is how far any given Muslim will go to resolve it.

Sometimes, they kill people.

Which is what makes Hasan's suggestion so incredibly dangerous. Why on Earth would the United States Military permit a soldier to remain in the ranks but allow them to decide for themselves which battles they'll fight? Does this resolve the conflict? Of course not. All it does is breed discontent among other soldiers who don't want to fight either. Once the precedent is set, it's difficult to justify not doing so for other "conscientious objectors".

He reportedly told his medical colleagues that allowing them to be released as conscientious objectors would be a way to "decrease adverse events."

The Post obtained a copy of the presentation, in which Hasan said, "It's getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims."

What "adverse events" was he talking about? Hmmm....

If it's getting harder to "morally justify" being the U.S. Armed Forces, then quit, jackass. Is anyone going to seriously argue that a Muslim discharged from the Army would see it as a personal failure? Let me hear you believers of Allah.

On the other hand, AP has an important question at HotAir, the answer to which I don't know either:

The bigger issue here is what to do about guys whom you have strong reason to suspect will do something crazy but who haven’t done anything illegal (yet). In the case of Najibullah Zazi, that’s easy: You know he’s part of a cell, you know he’s been to the training camps, so you surveil him constantly and eventually try to take down the whole network. With a lone-wolf type like Hasan, it’s harder. Without any links to anyone else suggesting he might be ready to go off, he’s potentially a dead-end lead for years. I don’t know what the answer is.

There's a complicated answer to the question that involves admittedly sensitive questions of criminal procedure, constitutional law and simple resource allocation. If you bounce people like Hasan, for reasons such as his behavior or speeches, what do you do with them after that? Now that I think about it, is permitting Muslims to claim "conscientious objector" status the way to go after all?

The answer is still no.

Russ