As US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan faces his first court hearing in a
San Antonio hospital, America is split over a fundamental question: Is
Hasan an Islamic terrorist?
Maj. Hasan, who allegedly killed 13 and wounded dozens during a Nov.
5 rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, is charged with 13 counts of murder,
which could lead to a death penalty conviction at an Army court
martial. Terror charges have not been filed.
Pending a series of legislative, Army, and Defense Department
investigations into the rampage, the Obama administration has resisted
the “terror” label. And one new poll shows slightly more Americans
agreeing that the Fort Hood shooting was a “killing spree” rather than
“an act of terrorism.”
But some US lawmakers see the terrorism analogy as fundamentally
important to the inquiry — not just into Hasan’s motivations, but to
national security generally in the Fort Hood aftermath.
At Senate hearings this week, some witnesses testified that
“political correctness” undermined efforts to pinpoint Hasan and
neutralize him before the shooting.
“The difference between the White House’s determination and many
lawmakers’ perception is that President Obama and his advisors do not
want to consider the massacre as an act of terror ‘yet’ while Senator
Joe Lieberman and other legislators in both houses do see it as an
ideologically motivated terror action,” says Walid Phares, an expert on
Islamic jihad at the Foundation for the Defense of Democracies, a
conservative think tank in Washington.
“It will be ‘terrorism’ per Obama’s teams only if it is proven that
there was a terror organization or a regime involved,” Mr. Phares adds.
“In the eyes of lawmakers, it is about what inspires the action, not
how it is conducted. Lieberman’s probe will eventually touch the
ideological substance of the terror act.”
The search for Hasan’s inspiration is fodder for scoring political points as well as a genuine investigation.
“The [terror or not] argument sounds a lot like the argument taking
place over hate crimes — only, liberals, in general, seem to be in
favor of hate crime legislation but against calling the Fort Hood
shooting a terrorist act, with conservatives, in general, taking the
opposite tack,” writes Nicole Stockdale, of the Dallas Morning News.
So far, two Senate investigations — one led by Sens. Joe Lieberman
and Susan Collins, the other by Sen. Carl Levin — have said their
purpose is not to undermine a series of internal investigations,
including one by the White House, but to see how such tragedies can be
prevented in the future, possibly through new regulations and
guidelines for the Army and the Attorney General about how to define
and deal with Islamic dissidents.
Three out of five witnesses testifying at a Senate Homeland Security
Committee hearing this week called Hasan’s alleged rampage an act of
terror, with the other two deferring to the judgment of prosecutors.
“We’ve got him on murder, that’s good enough,” Brian Jenkins, a RAND
Corp. terrorism expert and former US Army Special Forces officer, told
the Senate Homeland Security Committee on Thursday.
But it’s not a completely partisan divide: “There are some who are
reluctant to call it terrorism but there is significant evidence that
it is,” said Sen. Levin, a Democrat. “I’m not at all uneasy saying it
sure looks like that.”
Some commentators argue that in this case reluctance by the administration to call Hasan a terrorist is wise.
“Given what looks like the security authorities’ wretched
mishandling of the Hasan case — the guy appears to have done everything
but paste an ‘Osama bin Laden Rocks’ bumper sticker on his car —
there’s every reason for the administration and the FBI to want to put
off a legislative reckoning for as long as possible,” columnist Tim Rutten writes
in the Los Angeles Times Saturday. “ ‘We want to guarantee everyone a
fair trial’ is always good cover. But in this case, it has the
additional virtue of being true.”
There’s strong evidence on both sides of the debate — and growing worries that Hasan’s ultimate motive may never be known.
Hasan’s frequent contacts with US-born Al Qaeda recruiter Anwar
Al-Awlaki and Hasan’s “Soldier of Allah” business cards seem to point
to a political motivation that would fall into the terror definition.
At the same time, others have found evidence that his psychological
state, not political leanings, were the primary reason for the attack.
National Public Radio’s Daniel Zwerdling found an Army memo that showed
Hasan, according to Mr. Zwerdling’s report, “proselytized patients …
mishandled a homicidal patient [allowing] her to escape from the
emergency room … and when he was supposed to be on call for
emergencies, he didn’t even answer the phone.”
Americans are split on the question. A new Fox News poll
has 49 percent calling it a “killing spree” and 44 percent calling it
“an act of terrorism.” Sixty-three percent of Democrats call it a
“killing spree” while 58 percent of Republicans call it “an act of
terrorism,” according to the poll.
Predictably, online comments put the debate in its sharpest perspective.
Commenting on a Dallas Morning News blog
whether the rampage was terrorism, “Jen” writes, “Those who are eager
to label this an act of terrorism seem to be motivated out of a desire
to generalize Hasan’s actions and (possible) motivation to all Muslims
in the US or armed forces.”
Commenter Michael McCullough sees it from the other side of the fence.
“Those who are eager to label this a random act of violence seem not
to want to admit that the worst terrorist act on US soil since 9/11
happened under Obama’s watch and could have been stopped if the
government were not obsessed with political correctness,” he writes.
Calendar
Subject: 13 Killed and Dozens Wounded at Fort Hood, Texas 
I wish shootings and everything would just stop once and for all.