Thursday, March 26, 2015

Andreas Lubitz, Suicide and Mass Murderer

Andreas Lubitz, Suicide and Mass Murderer

by 

Eric Paul Nolte

As an airline captain for a major international carrier with nearly 40 years experience as a commercial pilot, I take aviation disasters very personally. I wept as I read the horrifying and saddening news of Tuesday’s crash and the death of all souls aboard the Germanwings Flight 9525, from Barcelona to Duesseldorf. 
The key facts here, announced this morning by the French prosecutor, Brice Robin, are these: the crash was without any doubt caused by Andreas Lubitz, the 28 year old German co-pilot. After the captain left the cockpit to use the restroom, Lubitz manually locked the flight deck door, thereby making it impossible for anyone to re-enter the flight deck, and then, in good weather, he disconnected the autopilot and deliberately flew the airplane in a steep dive into the side of an Alpine mountain.  All 150 passengers and crew perished instantly. The cockpit voice recorder preserved the sounds of Lubitz's breathing, the pounding on the flight deck door, and the terrified screaming from those in the cabin right up until the moment of impact.
Obviously, this crash is both a suicide and a mass murder.  The question is why did Lubitz do it?
An article by Morgan Winsor in today’s International Business Times drew attention to a debate now over the question that a reporter asked about the co-pilot’s religion. Winsor wrote that, “Robin said the crash did not show any signs of terrorism. Some were appalled by the reporter’s inquiry.”
A little while later Winsor quoted Elizabeth Shakman Hurd, an associate professor of political science with a courtesy appointment in religious studies at Northwestern University in Illinois, who said, "This line of questioning makes no sense to me whatsoever. I find it disturbing and depressing that at a time like this some people feel compelled to search desperately for explanations that presume religious causation.”
No sense whatsoever?  On what planet is this multiculturalist, politically correct  ideologue living?  Every day we hear of yet another Muslim true believer, sometimes two or even more, who has strapped a bomb vest to his body and gone out and murdered countless random innocent civilian victims.  Until the secular European enlightenment pulled the righteously murderous fangs out of the head of Christianity, the ocean of blood spilled in the name of their religion was just as deep as that of Islam, but today, no other religion on the planet but Islam can be tarred with this godawful fact.  It is perfectly reasonable to wonder about the murderer’s values, including his religious or philosophical motives, which might offer some explanatory power for why he murdered.  It is foolish to dismiss such questions about a mass murderer's motives.
Most suicides, apart from the Islamic suicide bombers, are done in desperate pits of angst and despair, private, and alone.  Sometimes they lash out at those they perceive as having wronged them, usually family members, and here we see murders paired with suicides, but these examples are not of mass murder, as is the case with this atrocity committed on the Germanwings flight.
It would not be unprecedented for an airline crash to be caused by a suicidal pilot.  In 1999, Gamal al-Batouti, the pilot of Egypt Air 999, dove his Boeing 767 into the Atlantic off Nantucket, 30 minutes after takeoff from New York, crying, “Allahu Akbar,” several times during the fatal dive.  But subsequent investigation revealed that the pilot’s motive may have been something more like his deep depression, rather than any religious fanaticism.  So his being a Muslim would appear not to have been a factor here at all.
As I write this, we do not know what possessed this privileged and gifted young German to commit such an atrocity.  Depression?  Righteously religious and suicidal mass murder?  Depression is a thinking disorder, according to the experts, such as Aaron T. Beck and Martin E. P. Seligman.  I am persuaded that otherworldly religion and postmodern philosophy are also thinking disorders.  I will do my best to restrain my judgment until all the relevant facts come in.
My deepest blessings and compassion to the families of the loved ones lost.  Bless us all.  Even you, Andreas Lubitz… what the hell went wrong with you? A lost soul, desperate and starved for life-serving values.  Like so much of the rest of the world.  What the hell went wrong with you, you miserable tumbleweed tangle of insanity!?
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