An open question with regard to the Dallas sniper has to do with his motivation.
IMO we need to know how this man who is variously described as having been; goofy, a clown, interested mainly in his Engineer Corps duties as a carpenter and mason in an Engineer Corps Army Reserve construction unit became an enraged Black nationalist who "hated white people."
How did that happen? This is not the usual trajectory of development for Army Reserve or National Guard soldiers. These part timers normally become quite attached to and indeed rather maudlin about their units and comrades.
So, what happened? The idiot MSM does not seen interested in this. They prefer to go weepy and wet over the funerals instead of finding out WHY this man went bad. Their reaction is just about as brainless about this as was their fascination with the hunt for the particular "guilty alligator" at the Disney resort in Florida. Apparently any shiny object can hold their attention. Ben Rhodes is right. They are ignorant, uneducated and easily led.
My own theory of the case is that there was something wrong about the way an accusation of sexual harassment was made about him in Afghanistan and then the way some officer or officers handled the case.
IMO it is quite possible that an ambitious officer or officers covered his/their ass by dropping the hammer on this guy.
That would do it. pl
And what about those initial reports from the scene that there were 4-5 snipers, not just one? Does anyone know what became of them?
Seamus Padraig
Cops are civilians. they were totally surprised. Fog of war stuff. pl
I fond it quite interesting that the guy was not only upset about white policeman, but was upset about BlackLivesMatter
/quote/
During the standoff, Mr. Johnson, who was black, told police negotiators that “he was upset about Black Lives Matter,” Chief Brown said. “He said he was upset about the recent police shootings. …”
/endquote/
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/09/us/dallas-police-shooting.html
The BLM people were too peaceful for him? Not radical enough?
It must have been part of his motivation that he felt that no one else was taking the case in a way he would have agreed with.
not uneducated though
It appears to have been established that Micah Johnson was in ROTC in high school. Thus, being in the reserves was likely not just to get extra income or benefits or something like that. He had some interest in the military.
rakesh wahi
If you mean the media people. You are quite wrong. I know a great many, on-air people, producers, bookers, etc. and they are 99% the product of vocational “education” in communications arts or journalism school. In other words they are uneducated in any sense that I would recognize. They know no history, no philosophy, no geography. they are technicians. pl
Robert willman
High school JROTC has nothing to do with becoming an officer in spite of the name. It is basically a patriotic Armed Forces sponsored youth group in which enrollees are taught a few of the skills of the soldier in the hope that some will enlist after graduation from secondary school. I agree that he must really have been interested in military service. pl
Seamus,
There were several people on the march who were carrying rifles – ‘open carry black’ – it was Texas after all, and when the shooting started they took off running with the rest of the crowd.
Chief Brown said ‘They started running, and we started catching.’
So that, combined with the shooters tactic of shoot and move, which resulted in shots coming from different places led the police to think there was more than one.
My take was that there were several reports of an individual carrying a weapon to show his support for the right to bear weapons: http://tinyurl.com/h4zufhe Caveat: consider the source on this.
I also believe that we Americans are fed a steady diet of fear and have been for many years. Anything to do with guns, pedophilia, rape, scandal, and general worry is picked up immediately and magnified by the MSM.
I have lived in Europe for 38 years, and over many of them I returned to the US in the summer to work for dollars to pay my student loans off and earn USD when currency controls were in effect in the late 70s to the early 90s. Every summer, there was another set of fear-inspiring reports from killer bees to child abductions to rabid raccoons and skunks in my little village on the upper Hudson River.
He could have had a psychotic break. He was at the right age 18-25 for 1st schizophrenic episode. He apparently had become reclusive and possibly paranoid. The situation you suggest could have triggered such episode.
Col,
These are fascinating questions raise, precisely because too many people think that the answers to these question are “obvious” and will not rethink them for a minute.
For all the superficial dissimilarities, I suspect that this Johnson person has more in common with Tim McVeigh than not.
KHC
McVeigh? That is probably true. If McVeigh had not failed of selection for the Green Berets? Who knows? pl
This Daily News article offers some fragments of insight:
http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/dallas-shooter-accused-sexual-harassment-army-tour-article-1.2705323
‘A former bunkmate who served with Johnson wrote on Facebook that the hateful menace was a sicko.
“We all knew he was a pervert cuz he got caught stealing girls’ panties but murdering cops is a different story,” Wells Newsome wrote. “You never know what someone is capable of until too late.”’
The article has some pictures, one of which appears to show Johnson with (out of regs) extra-long fingernails which is some kind of hood/thug thing. There is also a photo of the attractive female soldier he harassed.
JMH
She looks East Asian. He liked the smell of woman? Yes, what an obvious pervert he was. pl
Colonel Lang,
Ah yes. How the world has changed.
In ‘my day’ – as we old fogies tend to say – very few who wanted to be journalists would have gone near ‘communications or journalism school.’
A normal route to ‘Fleet Street’ was to serve ‘indentures’ on local or ‘provincial’ papers.
So, commonly, either people left school after ‘A-levels’, and joined a weekly paper, or they did a degree in something unrelated to journalism, and became a ‘graduate trainee’ on a paper in a large city outside London.
I ended up as a ‘graduate trainee’ out of a curious chapter of accidents.
It involved being a – peculiarly inept – unskilled labourer in London, and then a tutor in a conservative Catholic (and pure Spanish) family in Mexico City.
My start in journalism came by pure accident, and turned out to involve working on something close to an extreme right-wing monthly magazine which was in the process of going bankrupt.
After ‘jumping ship’, and spending some months on the ‘dole’ in London, this ‘CV’ got me taken on as a trainee by the ‘Liverpool Daily Post & Echo’.
And then, I was plucked out of obscurity, when the editor of the ‘Echo’ – the evening paper – decided I was an appropriate person to write his leaders for him. So between 8 and 10.30 am in the morning, I ‘opined’ about all kinds of issues in Liverpool and the world, and then went off to sub-edit features.
It was a happy time.
I would not normally have gone into this kind of excursus into autobiography.
But it does point to an enormous difference.
While my own route into journalism may have been more idiosyncratic than most, back in the ‘Seventies and early ‘Eighties very many of us in the ‘MSM’ either did not come from a cocoon, or if – as I had – they came from a ‘privileged’ environment, wanted to know something about wider worlds.
When I failed my shorthand examination first time round, I practised from a passage from Kipling’s ‘The Man Who Would be King’ dictated onto a cassette recorder.
“Ma” is a Chinese last name – “horse” – I think – it means.
Harlambos,
yes the brother of the organizer of the BLM protest march. Just coincidentally supports open carry in Texas and – just coincidentally – was doing that when Micah Johnson started his terrorist attack. A curious person would ask who are the social media contacts on Micah Johnson’s electronic devices to determine if there was any coordination of his actions with the organizers of the march. (regardless of their knowing of his expected course of action). Curious minds want to know, especially if they have an interest is stopping other such attacks. Perhaps the Johnson family will follow the Clinton families example and have their lawyers clean these devices in a fashion that prevents finding anything because you know she had nothing to hide and but this now deceased killer certainly should be allowed to do so. I’m sure that AG Lynch has her best man on the job.
Babak
Yes “horse” “ma” in a name often means Chinese Muslims. she looks a bit like that. pl
“Their reaction is just about as brainless about this as was their fascination with the hunt for the particular “guilty alligator” at the Disney resort in Florida. Apparently any shiny object can hold their attention. ”
Colonel LANG
Sir, IMHO I think majority of US MSM’ news “performers” truly know what’s going on, and how far and how deep they are allowed to go if they care to keep their jobs, be read, heard or seen, again. IMO, they very well know who their bosses are, we the people,or the Borg Inc. At the end of the day they rather keep their jobs, and “perform” to the Borg’ direction, rather than reporting the truth to us.
As Walter Cronkite use to say, that’s the way it is today.
On another note, although the pols show the gap between the Trump, and The Borg’ queen of deceit is closing, but, IMO and my experience, the queen will be our next presidente, deep in hearth this is one opinion of mine, that I love, hope and pray to be wrong.
kooshy
“truly know what’s going on” Sorry, but you are wrong. this is your ME conspiratorial nature showing again. They are incredibly ignorant. I know them and you do not. pl
It has many meanings depending on tone. It can mean mother as well.
I also wondered about the sexual harassment case — whether the allegations were true and what effect it had on Johnson.
Separate from that though, I’m going to share a few things I saw over the weekend about Johnson and a group that he had contact with. I saw this early Washington Post article that filled in some information about Johnson.
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-dallas-police-shooting-live-suspect-joined-facebook-groups-that-1468001887-htmlstory.html
Within that story was a reference to someone named Omowale [real name: Dwayne Johnson] who is a leader in two Dallas area groups:
“Omowale, of the People’s New Black Panther Party, said he last saw Johnson a few months ago, when he attended what Omowale described as a “social event” at the Pan-African Connection.
…
““We want every black man and woman throughout the country to legally arm themselves,” he said. But Omowale said that Johnson never attended any of those events and that he never saw Johnson carrying a weapon.
The People’s New Black Panther Party and its supporters see the police as “basically a military unit inside the black community,” Omowale said, so when they are in public facing off in a protest against a white supremacist group, as Omowale said they did a few months ago to defend a local Nation of Islam mosque, they carry guns.
Omowale and other party members and supporters, some bearing arms, were marching Thursday before Johnson’s shots sent everyone running.”
Here’s a link to the page at Huey P. Newton website, which says what they’re all about and what they want. It’s quite a stew of goals, resentments and assertions:
http://hueypnewtongunclub.org/about
I have to wonder what exposure to all this did for Johnson. Did it inspire or encourage him to do what he did, or did reinforce anger he already had? I also have to wonder if we’ll be seeing more groups like these spring up and get members that they never would have gotten before. The frustrations out there are real and growing.
I have seen people changing in Afgha,becoming anxious,secretive, asocial, insensible, afraid of everything.You don’t have to be in a platoon or squad to have PTSD. Anxiety and fear are enough.Seen people 3 or 6 months back home checking if they have weapons and flag jacket before leaving their home,avoiding any kind of gathering, jumping to every noise akin a CHICOM, giving no attention to wife and chidren, seeing taleb and terrorist everywhere, devoured by anger and so on.
Who knows what happened to this guy ?
Not me.
aleksander
Who were you with in Afghanistan and when? your thing sounds like the fiction of a troll. pl
His problem was stealing the panties, but not wearing them, otherwise he would become doubleplusgood media protegé, what with black transniper martir and all.
I sense you may try a joke on me on account of me being a disturber of serious matters. I apologize in advance, and in reply to a possible question… yes, I think in today’s world the better thing to do when caught stealing panties is to wear them on the spot and call yourself Caitlin. Whole careers in the media can sprout from that virtuous choice, certainly an easier and more “virtuous” way than the complex tortuous paths true journalists happen to be forged along, as we can see in Mr. Habakkuk’s trajectory.
The girl looks mixed race to me. From that picture I would say chinese-black. Asian father with cute black mother. Perhaps she was slutty towards whites, but less so towards blacks. Her east-asian component would prefer to be upward mobile (at least in public) and perhaps she thought he wasn’t as professionally aggressive as he was flirtatious (I’m not sure I’m using the right words here, I’m sorry.)
The Old Microbiologist said, as I understand it, that Sappers are trained till 500 meter accuracy, which seems to me rather hard, without telescopical sight. I wonder if his shooting spree was a way of showing he was up to the task of an accomplished Sapper.
My theory is that the shame of being caught stealing panties started him down the wrong road. He seems to have started out fine and was proud of being in the Army and of his MOS skills. If all he did was hit on that female and get rebuffed, he probably could have moved on with his 1st Sergeant telling him to,”knock it off, Romeo.” But the personal shame of being derided as a perv pantie stealer caused him to look elsewhere for some reason to regain his self-worth. (This is starting to sound like psycho-babble.) He became more withdrawn and spent too much time reading black militant sites. He started to believe their rantings and imagined himself regaining his self pride as a black militant. He tried to join a black militant group but was blacklisted when they did a background check and found he was essentially dropped from the Army for stealing panties. He then went out to prove to himself and others that he was the biggest, baddest black militant in Texas. And we have five dead cops in Dallas. All to reestablish his self-worth and self-pride.
b,
You’re parsing his words purposefully to make it seem like he had a problem with Black Lies Matter. Stop being mendacious.
Nancy,
Or he wanted to murder YT and did it.
Some of the same people ready to believe the disproven rumors of Omar Marteen being a closet case based off of homosexual fabulism are back again, ready to believe that ol Malik wasn’t out to kill as many whites and cops as possible because it doesn’t jive with your messiah figure of the pure black innocent ready to redeem you of your white sins.
Sad!
Aleksandar, I have five tours in Afghanistan between 2002 and 2013, and I have no clue what you are writing about.
As to Johnson, the media will not ask about his military service and reported personality changes, as those questions don’t fit any of the various narratives being pushed. The DoD certainly doesn’t want any questions asked about Johnson’s background. Whether he was treated too harshly or not harshly enough, the answer does nothing good for careers within DoD.
As an aside, Colonel Lang brings up McVeigh’s quitting SFAS. Edward Snowden started the SFQC, but did not finish. Ali Abdul Saoud Mohamed also tried to serve in SF but was prevented…COL(R) Pete Blaber writes about the true meaning of the word “maverick” in his excellent book “The Mission, the Men, and Me.”
DOL
JMG
JM Gavin
IMO you are correct. His fall from grace may have started with his interest in lingerie but there has to be more about this in terms of the reason for his evident expulsion from service. something is wrong here. TTG may be right. Once his pride was so badly wounded the descent into hatred is easy to understand if he thought whites as a group had done this to him. A good CO would not run this guy off for no more than panty raids. I didn’t realize that McVeigh had QUIT the SFAS course. I thought they threw him out but it would be the same psychological phenomenon either way. DOL pl
I was witness to a similar event in Cleveland in 1968 at the center of which was the Black Nationalist Ahmed Evans. The Korean War vet and Ranger NCO was kicked out of the army for striking a superior officer, non combat head trauma a possible factor. After training and arming a number of militants and while under continuous police surveillance it was initially reported he staged a carefully orchestrated ambush though the facts are murky, the police may have fired first. A wild running gun battle over several hours took place with three cops KIA. Unlike Dallas, a major riot then ensued. Things were so much worse in the sixties, this is not the start of a race war.
Curious if he was with the Soviet Army in Afghanistan, given his name/handle, assuming he really was there that is…
All
The US Army’s reaction to Micah Johnson’s death and crime is to investigate to see if it did not punish him hard enough for the crime of panty sniffing. http://www.cnn.com/2016/07/14/politics/dallas-shooter-military-record/ His mother BTW says that the woman in question often visited him before they deployed and slept with him in her house. pl
Alright. Thanks to everybody who replied.
Col. Lang,
YOU are CORRECT!
http://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/headlines/20160715-soldiers-criticize-army-s-handling-of-dallas-shooter-after-underwear-incident.ece
JMGavin,
I thought his story reeked of fabulism as well.
I was in Afghanistan from 03-04 at Salerno.
Cee
Yes. I am not excusing Micah Johnson but here is my theory of the case (expanded). Boy goes to HS. Joins JROTC with girlfriend (sleep-in girlfriend)Every straight kid’s dream, almost as good as Miss Dombrowski the gym teacher wanting your body. Young man joins Army Reserve WITH girl-friend, deploys WITH HER to Afghanistan where this CofE unit is employed in building some facility out in the boondocks. Man has own woman on site. Intense jealousy results. Other women not available. This is not like Europe in WW2, Korea, VN where there were compliant indeed eager women everywhere. Johnson indulges his olfactory fascination with his mistress’s bodily fluids. Gets caught with her undies. Sergeants lay it on him with the chain of command. CofC of this Reserve unit decides that having a case like this in their midst may reflect badly on them in this atmosphere of zero tolerance for human failing (Cromwell’s Army Syndrome) They throw the book at him. He gets sent home early and set up for Bad Conduct Discharge. His government provided lawyer gets that changed to an Honorable Discharge. Is he pissed? You bet. What happened to him wasn’t racism. It was poor leadership. pl