Administration says Hasan was a terrorist

Two months and ten days after the Fort Hood massacre, the Obama administration has officially dispensed with all the absurd non-Islam theories of Islamic extremism that were proffered to explain why a Muslim officer in the U.S. Army, shouting, “Allah is Great,” shot dead 13 Army personnel and wounded scores of others. Presenting to reporters the findings of a White House review into the assault, an unnamed senior U.S. official said that the massacre was a “terrorist tactic…. It certainly in my mind was an act of terrorism.”

Now that the obvious truth—that the massacre was the act of a Muslim acting in the name of Islam—has been admitted by the administration itself, will the legions of obfuscators who said that Hasan committed mass murder because he had been harassed and insulted as a Muslim (as though he were a private instead of a major and a doctor), or because he was traumatized by the prospect of serving in Iraq (as Daniel Pipes has said, if that was his problem, why didn’t he shoot his toe off instead of committing mass murder?), or because he was stressed from counseling Iraq veterans, or because he was crazy, feel embarrassed? No, they won’t feel embarrassed. Because being a liberal means never having to say you’re sorry. Because being a liberal means demonstrating the correct liberal attitude in all circumstances. And in that project, the liberal never fails, and is never wrong.

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James P. writes:

But what does this mean for the Roissy-ite types like Mangan (and here and here) who believe Hasan went nuts and shot the place up because he was a sexually frustrated loser who couldn’t get a woman? Will the government now address the root cause of such acts of terrorism?

I notice that the article persists in the fatuous “logic” that it’s not “terrorism” unless there is a link to “outside extremists.” If the bad guy doesn’t have his Al Qaeda membership card on his person, he is not a terrorist, and if he is not actually in the process of committing a terrorist act, the authorities have no business hassling him when he gets on a plane. Why, if we try hard enough, we can define “terrorism” out of existence, and all we will have is the manageable problem of isolated individuals committing incomprehensible “random acts” of mass murder!

LA replies:

I think you’ve hit on something new. Yes, someday soon, the government and media will start describing Muslim terrorist attacks on non-Muslims as “random acts of mass murder,” just as the police and media currently describe virtually all nonwhite-on-white murders as “random” murders.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at January 16, 2010 09:10 AM | Send