Stop Making Excuses for Hasan

Murderous Islamic extremism was his motive, not PTSD

By Rob Quinn, Newser Staff

Posted Nov 10, 2009 7:11 AM CST

(Newser) – Commentators are working overtime to explain away the Fort Hood shootings as a personal breakdown rather than what it obviously was, three conservative columnists argue today: a terrorist assault by an Islamic extremist.

The explanation for Major Hasan's actions should be crystal clear to anybody not afraid of offending Muslim sensibilities, Dorothy Rabinowitz argues in the Wall Street Journal. "It was an act of terrorism by a man with a record of expressing virulent, anti-American, pro-jihadist sentiments."

The "national rush to therapy," the effort to portray Hasan as "a disturbed individual under a lot of stress," rather than Muslim militant in the US military ranks, is understandable but patronizing, David Brooks writes at the New York Times. "If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage."

There's a real problem when the media "is eager to jump to the conclusion that peaceful political opponents are in league with violent extremists, but is terrified to consider the possibility that violent extremists really are violent extremists if doing so means calling attention to the fact that they are Muslims," argues Jonah Goldberg at the Los Angeles Times.

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A pedestrian walks in front of 13 crosses and flowers in front of a church outside of Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas yesterday. (AP Photo/Paul Sakuma)

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Larry King discusses the Fort Hood shooting with Dr. Phil. (joegerarden)

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The conversation in the first few days after the massacre was well intentioned, but it suggested a willful flight from reality.
- David Brooks, New York Times

For a very large number of people, the idea that he is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics, was—at least initially—too terrible to contemplate.
- Jonah Goldberg, Los Angeles Times

It has taken Maj. Hasan, and the fantastic efforts to explain away his act of bloody hatred, to bring home how much less capable we are of recognizing the dangers confronting us than we were even before September 11. - Dorothy Rabinowitz, Wall Street Journal

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Stop Making Excuses for Hasan