A Soldier Gone Postal?
The word on the US soldier who perpetrated the Camp Penn. grenade attack is that he is an American Muslim convert. Jim Lacey, the Time Magazine reporter at the camp, offered this speculation during a phone interview with Fox news:
"I do not think it's a chain of command problem. I don't think this is a soldier disgruntled with the military. I think this was someone striking out because of a misguided interpretation of his Muslim faith."
Bill says it would be more disheartening if he turns out to have been an ideology-addled traitor rather than a terrorist mole. I agree. But couldn't he be both? Is he just a soldier who happened to be a Muslim convert, and who simply snapped? Or is he another John Walker Lind or Richard Reid? That is, had he, like Walker, been recruited by Saudi-funded Wahhabi extremists in the US? Was this merely a spontaneous expression of lethal hostility, as everyone is assuming, or a pre-planned mission?
Is it preposterous or paranoid to wonder whether this might have been part of a deliberate plan to infiltrate the US military, to plant saboteurs among the troops? Could it be that some true believers, like Walker, were sent to fight in Afghanistan, while others were instructed to apply at the nearest armed forces recruiting office and bide their time till activated? Could this have worked? And how likely is it that such an agent would pass undetected? If it was a deliberate "operation" what might have been the goal? Was it a botched attempt to take out the commander, as some TV talking heads have speculated?
Few details are available and it's all idle speculation. I don't know how plausible it is. It would require a significant degree of long-term planning and patience to attempt such a scheme; but we know our enemies are capable of that. They like to use our own machinery and institutions against us, for symbolic reasons as well as in order to further pragmatic goals. Don't they?
UPDATE: Junkyard Blog called this one immediately, noting a DC sniper parallel. Glenn Frazier weighs in as well, adding this comment:
Personal theory: somebody snapped and took out a personal (not political or religious) grudge. Out of a quarter-million heavily-armed folks under stress in-theater, it isn't too strange to think there's a nut or a criminal here or there. The alternative (that it is more ideological and also rationally planned) is almost too disturbing to contemplate.