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Jewish World Review Nov. 12, 2009 25 Mar-Cheshvan 5770 Same Old, Same Old at Fort Hood By Victor Davis Hanson
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is accused of murdering last week 13 people (12 of whom were soldiers) and wounding another 30 at We now see that authorities had, or should have had, reason to be suspicious of Hasan — including his contact with a radical cleric and a bizarre "medical" presentation he once gave to Now, we're also learning that someone going by the name Yet no one acted. Was, as there appears to be, a fear among would-be accusers of being charged with politically incorrect bias? That worry has certainly been evident in the postmortem Many commentators were more likely to cite the stresses of hearing patients discuss two wars in In truth, the First are the formal terrorist plots. Radical Muslims have attempted, in coordinated fashion, to blow up a bridge, explode a train, assault a military base, and topple a high-rise building — in ways al-Qaida terrorist leaders abroad warned us would follow 9/11. This year alone, three terrorist plots have been foiled.
In all these cases, the plotter (or plotters) either had ties to terrorists or voiced Islamic-fueled anger at the U.S. More than 20 other domestic terrorist plots have been stopped by law enforcement agencies since 9/11. On average, in the 98 months since the There have also been "lone wolf" mass murderers in which angry radical Muslims sought to channel their frustrations and failures into violence against their perceived enemies of Islam. Since After the initial hysteria died down, we were usually told that such acts were isolated incidents, involving personal "issues" rather than radical Islamic hatred of the U.S. Yet a few examples show that was not quite the case. The just-executed sniper
No doubt in each case, experts could assure us that there were extenuating personal circumstances — stresses and mental illnesses that better explain what happened. Mere mention that such killers typically voiced radical Islamic or virulently anti-Semitic themes often can earn one charges of Islamaphobia, racism or other illiberal biases. Indeed, I expect dozens of angry, accusatory letters in response to this column. Nevertheless, the facts since 9/11 reveal an undeniable reality. Every few months either an Islamic-inspired terrorist plot will be foiled, or a young Muslim male will shoot, run down or stab someone while invoking anger at non-Muslims. In other words, the attack on Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here. Victor Davis Hanson, a classicist and military historian, is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and a recipient of the 2007 National Humanities Medal. Comment by clicking here. © 2009, TMS |
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