I think on the one hand we will see the familiar therapeutic exegesis, in which we hear of traumatic stress syndrome, justified and principled opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars, generic mental illness, anger at being deployed overseas, or maltreatment from fellow soldiers due to his Muslim faith and various other efforts to \u201ccontextualize\u201d the violence. (I am watching Major Hasan\u2019s cousin on the news right now [I think], on spec, explain that the otherwise normal killer was a victim of bias and was ill at ease with firearms (after shooting over 40 victims and surviving the carnage). I cannot imagine the trauma of family members of the dead hearing such sentiments aired, or knowing that the killer apparently had voiced prior extremist sympathies.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
There are times I think America’s fixation on the therapeutic culture is itself a disorder.<\/p>\n
On the other hand, one could instead see Hasan in a long line of killers and would-be murderers of the last decade that in some loose way express an Islamic anger at either American culture or the United States government or both, as a way of elevating their own sense of failure into some sort of legitimate cosmic jihad.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
“But wait – don’t be ripping Islam!\u00a0 It’s an isolated incident!”<\/p>\n
I’m not – and it irritates me to have to clarify this, since if I don’t someone will accuse me of anti-Moslem bias – bagging on Islam.\u00a0 Many Moslems, including many of my neigbhors, are loyal Americans.\u00a0 Many serve this country, and not a few have died in action.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/p>\nBut it is, unfortunately, not all that isolated:<\/p>\n
Prior to 2009, there have been at least 20 terrorist plots broken up after September 11, 2001\u2014aimed at subways, malls, military bases, airports, bridges, and synagogues. Those foiled cabals are in addition to more common scattered murdering by freelancing angry killers, who in some very general way either evoked radical Islam, their own faith, the Palestinian cause, al-Qaedistic Islamism, or solidarity with worldwide Islam (from the Beltway sniper to the UNC and the San Francisco car murderers), and a number of lethal attacks on Jewish centers and temples resulting in numerous deaths (from the LAX attacks to the San Francisco and Seattle shootings)…In this year alone, aside from the recent mass murdering at Ft. Hood, there have been four more terrorist plots uncovered. Colorado resident Najibullah Zazi was recently indicted for conspiring to use explosives in the U.S., apparently as part of a plot to let off a bomb in New York on the anniversary of 9\/11. In addition, North Carolina residents Daniel Patrick Boyd and Hysen Sherifi were arrested and charged with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel at Quantico, Virginia. In Texas, Hosam Maher Husein Smadi\u2014a 19-year-old Jordanian citizen who was in the U.S. illegally\u2014was arrested and charged after he placed a would-be bomb near Fountain Place, a 60-story office tower in downtown Dallas.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Most recently in Boston, a Massachusetts man was arrested in connection with terrorist plots that included attacks on U.S. shopping malls and on two White House officials. Tarek Mehanna, 27, of Sudbury, Mass, was charged with plotting with other terrorists from 2001 to May 2008 to carry out overseas and domestic terrorist attacks\u2014 including killing shoppers and first responders at malls.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
Read the entire piece.\u00a0 And send whatever your worldview calls for – prayers, hopes, karmic imprecations or whatever – to the folks at Fort Hood.\u00a0 And, while you’re at it, for the Moslems in this country who did come here for a better life, and found it, and are as loyal to this country and what it stands for as any of us, and who are going to put up with all manner of (I say this with clinical precision) raving bullsh*t today.<\/p>\n
And of course, for the people out finding the real terrorists, of whatever worldview, at home and abroad.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s hard for me to know what to say about atrocities like Fort Hood, other than the obvious; I pray for the people of Killeen, the troops in the First Cav and the Third Armored Cav and the 41st Artillery and the other units stationed there.\u00a0 Getting shot at in a combat zone is something […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6001","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-war-on-terror"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6001","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6001"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6001\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6016,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6001\/revisions\/6016"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6001"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6001"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6001"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}