To quote the New York Time's article:
"The officials said the Departments of Defense and Justice had decided Major Hasan would be prosecuted in a military court, an indication that investigators believe he acted alone."
It is very easy to paint a strange and unknown culture and those who live within it with a broad brush, but we must all strive to remember that as Americans, we are supposed to judge each individual on his own merits and qualities. Major Hasan was deeply against being deployed and had apparently been speaking with his family about those fears. According to this Guardian U.K. article, he has faced harassment over his faith and ethnicity and made numerous statements about his conflicts with the fact that U.S. Muslim soldiers were being forced to kill other Muslims.
The Washington Post story on his 2007 presentation, "The Koranic World View As It Relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military", is disjointed and obviously a group of talking points, but no where does it imply that attacking U.S. soldiers is justified. I looked at each slide. To me, his presentation seems to lay out the idea that devout and faithful Muslims will find themselves conflicted if they are forced to attack other Muslims in a way they see as unjust. I think that many devout Christians would find this a similarly difficult thing to do.
While it is tragic that he chose to deal with his internal issues in this horrible way, this is not the first time even this year, that a U.S. soldier has fired upon other soldiers on base. Both of these shootings are terrible events, that I wish had never happened, but I believe they are merely more visible symptoms of the pervasive combat fatigue that is growing ever more entrenched. Suicides in the U.S. military have never been higher than now, as we continue to remain bogged down in this "war on terror":
"The Army said the total number of potential or confirmed suicides since January stands at 82. Last year the Army recorded 133 suicides, the most ever. Earlier this year, Army officials saw the suicide numbers moving up, and by February said the service was on track for a record year for suicides."Our military is at the breaking point. I fear that if we continue to put our troops into combat without proper rest and therapy, tragedies such as Major Hasan's rampage will happen at an increasing rate. Do not let those who would paint all Muslims as the enemy distract you from the real issue, the horrible stresses that our fighting men and women are under. Stresses for which they see no end in sight.
I in no way believe that Hasan's actions were justified and I hope that he is punished to the full extent of the law. What I do not want to see is this incident becoming the impetus for a witch hunt against Muslims and Arab-Americans in general.
