Posted on 02/03/2014 9:31:54 AM PST by Rummyfan
Barry Rubin, a great strategic thinker and cartographer of the emerging post-American world, died today in Tel Aviv. I read him regularly and cited him in After America re the collectively insane urge of almost everyone Nidal Hasan encountered as he wafted upwards through the US Army to look the other way and not see what was staring them in the face:
As the writer Barry Rubin pointed out, Major Hasan was the first mass murderer in US history to give a PowerPoint presentation outlining the rationale for the crime he was about to commit. And he gave it to a roomful of fellow army psychiatrists and doctors - some of whom glanced queasily at their colleagues, but none of whom actually spoke up. And, when the question of whether then Captain Hasan was, in fact, "psychotic", the policy committee at Walter Reed Army Medical Center worried "how would it look if we kick out one of the few Muslim residents".
I remember when I read Rubin's line about the PowerPoint presentation. Many of us had been groping in the same direction, but he was the one who came up with the perfect, piercing image for the madness that was going on. He did that a lot, right up to the end. Rest in peace.
(Excerpt) Read more at steynonline.com ...
Classic Steyn
Thanks for posting! I love Mark’s wit and dry humor! I wish he subbed for the radio hosts more often!
I clicked through your Steyn link and found this treasure from 2011, The Shagged Sheep:
http://www.steynonline.com/1516/the-shagged-sheep
An interesting argument about Khomeini’s book giving instructions to the faithful for deflowering nine-year-olds and sheep. And camels. Etc. OMG
A long piece you cannot stop reading.
My favorite...on a similar note: I discovered that Moammar Qaddafi (or however you spell it) Published a “Green Book” that was his manifesto which I learned was read from every night on Libyan TV. Not so ironically, I think, the inside-the-beltway-corporation I presently work for named its “ethics” book “The Green Book”. Coincidence...maybe not but everytime I think of it I remember this Steyn piece. Classic!
Interesting about the green “ethics” book. Then, of course, there’s Mao’s Little Red Book.
Maybe we should do a FR “Little Red White and Blue book.”
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