memo to wackos: try Buddhism for a change

I wasn't a shooting. He tossed grenades into the tents of sleeping comrades. Now he says he was afraid of 'discrimination' for being a Muslim.

Grenades don't discriminate.

I would like to say a lot here, but this is too good a blog to suffer such abuse.

He denigrates the reputation of muslims everywhere. Luckily he comes under the uniform code of military justice, and not the broken civilian courts. This foul blot will soon be no more.

After he tossed the grenade, he allegedly shot another soldier (in the back) who was running away from the scene. And yes, he's likely to be court-martialed and if convicted, executed.

Other religions had their own fair share of wackos, though perhaps they were not as public. Two years ago, in the north of India, large riots by Hindus resulted in the murder, rape and torture of hundreds of Muslims.
Christians managed the crusades and the Inquisition. A perfect cure for the inherent violence in man hasn't yet been found.

Erik, thanks for the comment. Yes, those other wackos get a heck of a lot less coverage.

There's plenty of white, Christian wackos. The only thing is that when a crazy white guy does something no one blames it on the religion, they just blame it on video games and heavy metal.

Afaik, he threw the grenade into a tent of his commanders, not comrades, i.e. he was trying to hurt his leaders. This is also similar to how fragging worked in Vietnam. And his brother left the army because of harassment for being a Muslim, that he was harassed as well doesn't seem unlikely.

I suspect that the answer to why Islam gets the wackos is that it is a religion that recruits in prisons (Richard Reid?) and in low-income communities, i.e. places full of stressed people in difficult situations. If you put people in a war-time situation, some of them will break, that's simply the way life is.

Though I hope that there is no other incident of this nature, what I'm hearing from the reactions of returning US servicepeople, the shock at the fact that Iraqis are not all greeting them as liberators, makes me nervous.