Loyal To Whom?

When Marine Cpl. Wassef Ali Hassoun was thought to have been the latest victim of Islamist terror-- thought to have been kidnapped and beheaded--I composed a post that started like this:

It’s becoming nearly routine; kidnap-demand-behead, kidnap-demand-behead.

It was a Marine this time. And an Arab Muslim, for diversity’s sake.

"We would like to inform you that the Marine of Lebanese descent has been killed, and you will soon see the movie with your own eyes," said the statement, signed in the name of the group's [Ansar al-Sunna Army] leader, Abu Abdullah al-Hassan bin Mahmoud.

Well, it’s a good thing that my slight case of blogger-burnout was raging at its height then. As it turns out, Corporal Hassoun is free and in the custody of the US military (registration required) after a strange and suspicious sojourn that ended with his voluntary entrance into the US Embassy in his native Lebanon.

What occurred between the time of Corporal Hassoun’s alleged abduction and that of his return to US custody will likely present a fascinating story, complicated by the following:

Hassoun had disappeared from his Marine base near Fallujah on June 19 and later was shown on al-Jazeera satellite television, blindfolded, with a sword hanging over his head. A group calling itself Islamic Response asserted responsibility for his kidnapping and threatened to kill him.

A militant group claiming to be the Ansar al-Sunna Army said on a Web site Saturday that it had beheaded the Marine. But the group said Sunday that it had not issued the statement, and a posting on another Internet site said Hassoun was alive.

On Monday, al-Jazeera reported that it had received a report from Islamic militants saying that Hassoun was in a safe place and had promised to quit the Marines.

On Wednesday, reports surfaced that he was in Lebanon.[SNIP]

But in Tripoli, 50 miles north of Beirut, where Hassoun's family lives, a fight broke out and a relative of Hassoun shot and killed two people and injured a third person, Lebanese officials reported. Other Tripoli residents had accused Hassoun of being a traitor because he left Lebanon and fought with the Marines in Iraq, his brother said.

The family member, Mohamad Said Hassoun, was arrested in the killings, according to internal security forces in Tripoli.

"Everybody here is calling us traitors," Sami Hassoun said. "I think somebody pushed those people to this to try to hurt my family and my relatives. There's no background for these things." [SNIP]

Hassoun was reported not to have returned to Utah since joining the Marines. He had been married to an American, but they divorced. His family said he married his new wife, a cousin, by proxy several months ago. His father signed the marriage contract for him, under Islamic law.

According to other reports read, the new wife is in Lebanon. Curiouser and curiouser.

My prediction: what we have here is a simple case of a marine with divided loyalties and with a "Love Jones" thrown in for good measure. As a marine, Hassoun swore to fulfill his oath, but as a Muslim he feels himself bound to another allegiance. Do the two allegiance’s clash? Possibly—at least in the mind of Hassoun--especially when the designated enemy is Muslim as well. Pour into the mix a portion of the family still residing in Lebanon, catching Hell, literally, for Hassoun’s marine service, along with his Islamic and husbandly duties toward a presumably sight-unseen Lebanese wife. But then, what does Hassoun do? He turns himself in, likelybeing pulled by his other sworn allegiance in the opposite direction.

There’s a full pot of mystery and feces boiling over here, for sure.

What's a nation to do, one that prides itself on freedom of and from religion?

UPDATE: Corporal Hassoun's family sends a message to their fellow Muslims, attempting to explain the US military service of their kinsman.

In Hassoun's native city of Tripoli, his family issued a statement saying he was forced to go to the United States and join the Marines because of the deteriorating economic situation caused by Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war.

The statement appeared aimed at countering criticism by some fundamentalist Sunni Muslims in Tripoli who accused Hassoun's family of being "American agents and collaborators." It stressed the family's Arab and Islamic ties, and its loyalty to Lebanon.

"We are a family of Lebanese Arab Muslims. We are not seeking to defend ourselves," the Hassoun family's statement said. "But we would like to thank the Lebanese for sympathizing with one of their sons (Hassoun) who was pushed by the difficult living conditions in their home country to emigrate and forced to work in a position that they may not like."

Divided loyalties, indeed.

(Thanks to LGF)

Comments

[Peter]

It's simple. We fall back five yards and punt. Then we play for field position while the folks charged with investigating this sort it out.
Once we have a pretty good idea of what actually happened we then do what we in the Blogosphere do with everything else, choose up sides and hurl calumny and invective at the other side.
For the moment, I'm glad that his head and his butt are still wired together. Whether or not he was picked up by the bad guys on a ruse, decided to desert or just went AWOl with the intent of coming back or just snapped from accumulated stress, nobody knows. We'll find out, though. Then the Marine Corps will decide what to do with that butt that is still, thankfully wired to the head.

[baldilocks]

Agreed about the head-butt thing. However, people are dying everyday, either with their head attached to their butt or not.

I want to know more about this particular head.

"Free your mind and your a** will follow."

--George Clinton

The reverse is true as well.

[Dex]

okay not knowing the facts of this situation. But we all know the facts of past things such as traitors in the Navy (Walker Family),spies FBI,CIA, sleeper cells hijacking planes while living among us, start of the Iraq war solider assaults fellow soliders the very same night of the war ie throwing a grenade into tents. But the thing that troubles me with this case not knowing all the facts is why this guy did not return to any American unit upon his release. Shows up not only miles away but in another country. Yeah right.

[teal marie]

I'll keep my nefarious speculations to myself for the present. I will say it's in his favor that he turned himself in. There's honor in that.

[Rae]

I was immediately suspicious when I read that he was UA. It is a rare Marine, indeed, who goes UA while on mission. Then, truthfully, combine that with his religion and ethnicity, and I was beyond suspicious, I was convinced.

"Pushed," indeed. (Snort!)

[molotov]

Oh, please! Who forced him to (1) emigrate to USA, versus the array of countries in the world; and (2) VOLUNTARILY join the army?

From the jump, on our website we've been saying that this Hassoun story stank more than Fisherman's Wharf. His "disappearance" looks like AWOL, if not possible collaboration with his Muslim brethren. The Pentagon best keep tabs on him.

[Cerberus]

The whole thing stank from the beginning. He was missing days before it was made public by the Marine Corps and the alleged terrorist group. When HMC made the announcement it said he had been declared UA, and the few things we have learned since have only strengthened that view. Of course he deserves a fair trial, and the facts may support his side, but I think we will learn that at the very least he left his post of his own free will.

To a Marine, Honor is defined as loyalty and dedication to God, Country, Corps, Family, and Self. When that was defined I don't think anyone was worried about Marines who are Muslims being led astray by a religion hijacked by corruption and false prophets. But, our loyalty is to God, not an Imam. If he made bad decisions because he misunderstood God's will then that was his choice to make and he should suffer the consequences.

If honor was easy everybody would have it.

[Helen]

I'm still in waiting mode on this guy. Even knowing what I do about Islam and Muslims view of the umma and Islam over and above everything else -- remember that Muslims in the U.S. military had to get permission from some Mid East imam to participate in military action against Muslims. Why did they join? -- I'm still willing to give this guy the benefit of the doubt because he may have been traumatised by seeing his sergeant blown up in front of him. Hm, that makes me think, if he lived in Lebanon until his late teens, he must have seen worse. Damn, there goes the benefit of the doubt.

Cerberus, Islam is not hijacked. That is dhimmi talk. What one sees is the expression of Islam as it has interacted, historically, with non-Muslims. It's a bloody brutal ideology.