So logically, the first concern isn't that a Moslem major in the US Army pulled off the most bloody terrorist attack on US soil since 9/11. The first concern is that the long-feared "backlash" against all Moslems will be triggered by this murder spree. Even our president seems to focus more on this unlikely future than the actual attack.
Thankfully, a Moslem-American veterans group in no uncertain terms condemned the attack.
Look, German-Americans in 1917 faced a backlash. Japanese-Americans in 1941 faced a backlash. Moslems in modern America? Not so much. And that's a "not so much" after 8 years of war against jihadis who claim to kill in the name of Islam. But we have not turned on American Moslems--nor should we.
This record is good. Heck, even I worried about a backlash if the war went on long enough when I wrote just after 9/11 about how our war should progress.
But we've been pretty darned good as a nation in not retaliating against innocent Americans who are Moslem. Yet the so-called leaders of American Moslems seem far more worried about a possible "backlash" than in condemning the killer and working to root out the strain of Islam that propels killers to shout "God is Great!" and commence the infidel killing.
We are at war with Islamo-fascists. Major Hasan essentially joined those Islamo-fascists and is guilty of waging war against America. I'm sure the UCMJ has some pretty specific penalties for that involving either a noose or a volley of bullets. And none of them constitute a "backlash" against Moslem-Americans.
All I'm asking is that we should remember who is dead right now and who did the killing.
UPDATE: If you want to know how little of a "backlash" there has been against Moslem-Americans, consider that Hasan was free to go about his business despite suspicions going back months:
Law enforcement officials also faced questions about whether they had missed possible warning signs. Six months ago, investigators came across Internet postings, allegedly by Hasan, that indicated sympathy for suicide bombers and empathized with the plight of Muslim civilians killed in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a federal official briefed on the situation. The official, and another source, said investigators never confirmed whether Hasan was the author of the postings and did not pursue the matter.
The postings were among a handful of possible red flags that preceded Thursday's rampage, in which 13 people were killed and 38 were wounded in the deadliest mass shooting on a U.S. military installation to date. Friends and acquaintances said Hasan had been increasingly agitated over the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and he reportedly said the U.S. "war on terror" was a "war on Muslims." Officials have seized Hasan's computer to determine his role in the blog posts and other writings.
Huh. He didn't believe Afghanistan is the "good" war? Go figure. He has lots of company in America now, I suppose.
So now the government will begin the inquiry into what possibly could have prompted the murder spree. Stress perhaps? Sadly, his upcoming deployment to Afghanistan would have been his first. Still, perhaps the investigators will dream up a pre-traumatic stress disorder to blame rather than explore other inconvenient lines of inquiry.
Oh, and in another funny coincidence, the worlds of Hasan and the 9/11 killers overlapped a bit. And there is more on his motivation:
Fellow Muslims in the US armed forces have also been quick to denounce Hasan's actions and insist that they were the product of a lone individual rather than of Islamic teachings. Osman Danquah, the co-founder of the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, said Hasan never expressed anger toward the army or indicated any plans for violence.
But he said that, at their second meeting, Hasan seemed almost incoherent.
"I told him, 'There's something wrong with you'. I didn't get the feeling he was talking for himself, but something just didn't seem right."
He was sufficiently troubled that he recommended the centre reject Hasan's request to become a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.
Hasan had, in fact, already come to the attention of the authorities before Thursday's massacre. He was suspected of being the author of internet postings that compared suicide bombers with soldiers who throw themselves on grenades to save others and had also reportedly been warned about proselytising to patients.
At Fort Hood, he told a colleague, Col Terry Lee, that he believed Muslims should rise up against American "aggressors". He made no attempt to hide his desire to end his military service early or his mortification at the prospect of deployment to Afghanistan. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there," said his cousin, Nader Hasan.
Again, it bears repeating that Moslem-Americans in our military are an asset. Hasan is responsible for his actions.
And further, I admit that Hasan was possibly a nut not motivated by his view of Islam.
But we must also accept the likelihood that maybe he just fervently believed in a nutty version of Islam that has motivated many more like Hasan to murder in the name of jihad.
If the latter is the case, how can we possibly say that Hasan is insane? Every enemy jihadi would be "nuts" in that case. We can't let our elites' refusal to distinguish between Islamo-fascism and Islam twist our inquiry if it looks like Hasan decided to be a jihadi freelancer. Let's not lessen the guilt of jihadi killers by calling what is surely an alien way of thinking actual insanity.
