AS TO THE FT. HOOD ATTACK, I HAVE COME TO BELIEVE IT WAS A "TERRORIST ATTACK"

Was Dr. Hasan´s attack an attempt at committing an "acceptable" Muslim suicide?

...DR. Nidal Hasan. An early picture of a US Army Major that should never have been in the military.

Anyone that is a regular reader of mine knows that I am seldom on the same side of the fence as the Pulitzer Prize winning conservative op-ed columnist, Charles Krauthammer. I also usually end up turning him off on the week-end FOX round-table shows as he tends to go along with all the right-wing war mongers on the not so "Fair & Balanced Fox Noise Channel".

This week however, Mr. Krauthammer wrote a column that I must say that I agree with almost 100%.

His column this week was on Doctor-Major Nidal Hasan. This is the Army Major and psychiatrist that was seriously wounded while he shot 51 soldiers and civilians, killing 13 at Fort Hood, Texas. Mr. Krauthammer wrote his article criticizing those writers such as TIME Magazine´s, Joe Klein for arguing that the massacre perpetrated by Dr. Hasan was of an Army psychiatrist driven over the edge by terrible stories he had heard from soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. He wrote that the other writers were saying; "They suffered. He listened. He snapped.". From all the circumstantial evidence that continues to become available, I agree with Mr. Krauthammer that I just can´t accept that as a reasonable explanation for what happened.

I must also at this point, give Mr. Krauthammer much more room for his opinion and attitude because in Mr. Krauthammer´s previous life, he himself was once a board certified psychiatrist that graduated from Harvard Medical School. He had also practiced at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. Under those circumstances, I will give his opinion much more weight than the average op-ed or news magazine writer.

As Mr. Krauthammer wrote; "What about the doctors and nurses, the counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed Army Medical Center [where Hasan had worked] who every day hear and live with the pain and the suffering of returning soldiers? How many of them then picked up a gun and shot 51 innocents?"

"And what about civilian psychiatrists -- not the Upper West Side therapist treating Woody Allen neurotics, but the thousands of doctors working with hospitalized psychotics -- who every day hear not just tales but cries of the most excruciating anguish, of the most unimaginable torment? How many of those doctors commit mass murder?

It's been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic."

Krauthammer also wrote:" Consider the Army's treatment of Hasan's previous behavior. National Public Radio (NPR)'s Daniel Zwerdling interviewed a Hasan colleague at Walter Reed about a hair-raising grand round that Hasan had apparently given. Grand rounds are the most serious academic event at a teaching hospital -- attending physicians, residents and students gather for a lecture on an instructive case history or therapeutic finding. I've been to dozens of these. In fact, I gave one myself on post-traumatic retrograde amnesia -- as you can see, these lectures are fairly technical. Not Hasan's. His was an hour-long disquisition on what he called the Koranic view of military service, jihad and war. It included an allegedly authoritative elaboration of the punishments visited upon nonbelievers -- consignment to hell, decapitation, having hot oil poured down your throat. This "really freaked a lot of doctors out," reported NPR."

This "Grand Rounds" item was not the only issue between Dr. Hasan and his colleagues. NPR reported that "The other psychiatrist said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird?"

I agree that as the information continues to come in, it is appearing that as Dr. Hasan was becoming more and more conflicted and depressed about American troops shooting and killing Muslims (while in Hasan's mind), the US was illegally occupying a Muslim country.

But if his fellow medical workers saw this happening with Hasan, why did no one say anything to his superiors? Was it just because no one wanted to be accused of "Islamophobia" and prejudice against a colleague's religion?

According to some of his fellow workers, Hasan was transferred to Fort Hood because it got him away from the incoming injured US soldiers at Walter Reed and it put him with a large group of other military psychiatrist that could possibly help Dr. Hasan. If that´s the case, how could he have then been targeted to be transferred to Iraq? This was obviously a location to which he seriously should not have been assigned.

It is also appearing that as he was getting more and more involved with his religion, he was changing from being just a "follower of Islam", to becoming a "devout Muslim Islamist". As a devout Muslim, it is against their religion to commit suicide. But if he were to be killed while protecting his fellow Muslims or while killing the infidels, that is acceptable to Islam. Is that why he planned and executed the attack? Did he do this in order to die according to the rules of his religion? And is this why Dr. Hasan purchased and used the civilian automatic handgun known as the armor-piercing "Cop Killer"?

Did Hasan´s mind just "snap" and he then decide that this was the only way he could die while not committing a sin against his religion? Well, if he did, he failed, and he´s paralyzed but still alive, and he will face the consequences in an American courtroom. Unfortunately however, it appears that he is already a martyr to many Muslim extremists around the world.

Here is how Mr. Krauthammer ended his article:

"…we know that Hasan was in communication with a notorious Yemen-based jihad propagandist. As late as Tuesday, The New York Times was running a story on how returning soldiers at Fort Hood had a high level of violence.

What does such violence have to do with Hasan? He was not a returning soldier. And the soldiers who returned home and shot their wives or fellow soldiers didn't cry "Allahu Akbar" [as did Hasan] as they squeezed the trigger.

The delicacy about the religion in question -- condescending, politically correct and deadly -- is nothing new. A week after the first (1993) World Trade Center attack, the same New York Times ran the following front-page headline about the arrest of one Mohammed Salameh: "Jersey City Man Is Charged in Bombing of Trade Center."

Ah yes, those Jersey men -- so resentful of New York, so prone to violence."

Prior to the Fort Hood attack, Dr. Hasan made it very clear to his colleagues that he was against Americans killing Muslims. He had even recommended that American Muslims should be allowed "Conscientious Objector (CO)" status so that they could either leave the service or at least not be required to shoot at other Muslims.

But, whatever happens, I believe that this attack by Major Nidal Hasan will eventually be classified as a "terrorist Muslim attack on American soldiers", and I will personally have a hard time thinking about it otherwise.

Copyright: G.Ater 2009

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