Hat-tip
Dave Neiwert...
No sooner was the identity of the Fort Hood shooter —
Nadal Malik Hasan — released a few hours ago than the wingnuts sprang into predictable action: A jihadi embarking on a murderous terrorism spree!
Pam "Atlas Barks" Geller immediately
proclaimed it "an obvious act terrorism" and ran a big, all-cap headline declaring: "IT'S THE JIHAD STUPID." Elsewhere in the right blogosphere, people like the folks at Hot Air
jumped all over the "news" that Hasan was a convert to Islam.
Then, Fox News' Shepard Smith
interviewed Hasan's cousin, and we found out that the "terrorism" angle was a pile of tripe:
• Hasan was American born and educated, but raised Muslim. He was not a convert.
• He had never previously been deployed to Iraq or anywhere overseas, for that matter. (So much for the theories he suffered from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.)
• He had been awarded the National Defense Service Medal, the Global War on Terrorism Service Medal and the Army Service Ribbon.
• He was reportedly abused regularly by his colleagues for being Muslim — called a "raghead" and other such terms — and had been seeking to get out of the military because the environment had become so hostile.
Another interview (on just before
this one) that Smith had with a former colleague of Hasan's indicated that Hasan was prone to making outrageous remarks about Muslims "defending themselves," particularly in reference to last summer's shooting of two military recruiters in Arkansas by a Muslim convert. There are also reports that he had recently been the victim of a hate crime: His car was vandalized, with the word "Allah" scratched into the paint, and he was reportedly extremely upset by it.
It's obviously a terribly complicated and tragic story, and we'd all be well-advised to reserve speculation (and anti-Muslim fervor) as the actual, hard facts continue to emerge.
And no, it's not the Jihad, stupid.
Tags: crime, military, murder, right-wing lunatics
From: Chicago
Mood: 
Troubled
Now Playing: CNN
![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
jblaque's journal
Amused
Previous