Nidal Malik Hasan

Nidal Malik Hasan killed 14 soldiers the other day, at Fort Hood, Kileen, Texas.

Hasan was an army psychiatrist who was supposed to help frustrated and anxious soldiers deal with their issues before being sent back to war, or civilian life. He was also a devout Muslim. Republicans are sounding the alarm about this-- kind of screeching, really, that you can't trust a Muslim, and that this whole idea of "tolerance" and respect for diversity, should be shelved in a favor of a good, old-fashioned, bitchin' jihad.

Pat Robertson solemnly intoned that Islam is a religion of death. This, from the guy who supports the death penalty and once advocated assassinating Hugo Chavez.

Hasan is a Muslim. He apparently became more and more disturbed about the idea of serving an army that was involved in war against Muslims as it became clear that he himself was going to be deployed to Afghanistan. I suppose he wouldn't have been bothered if we had been making war on fellow Christians, as in World War I and II, or Buddhists, or Hindus or Communists.

Come to think of it-- why was it a problem? In all of the history of the world, has the religion of our enemies ever been a factor in whether or not we were gladly willing to slaughter thousands of them without mercy? My goodness, Mr. Hasan-- what's your problem? Why are you in the military in the first place? If you don't want to kill people....

The real reason we kill people is, usually, money. Oil. What's love got to do with it?

Or is it race, after all? If Germany had continued to fight like the Japanese, would we have used the nuclear bomb on Berlin? Do you even wonder for a moment? Never.

When I first heard about the shootings at Fort Hood, I thought, well, there you go: another trained killer does his job. Why are we surprised? Why is anyone surprised when, occasionally, trained killers "go off" without orders, without a plan, without logic, except that blinding, incoherent fury at the world?

But Hasan is a Muslim. He is a devout Muslim. He went to a strip club. That's right-- several times, shortly before the shooting, where he paid girls to give him lap - dances. So how did we know he was a "devout" Muslim? Because he said so? The way we say so, when we proclaim that we are devout Christians, going off to destroy Iraq even though it had nothing to do with 9/11?

There was usually more than one customer at the strip club, and most of them were not "devout" Muslims.

Senator Joe Lieberman insists that he is going to investigate if the army did a lousy job of assessing the risk posed by Dr. Hasan, since he clearly proclaimed his ethical problems with serving in the American army long before he exploded into the news.

Now let me be clear-- I don't think anybody can know for sure, in advance, just who is going to be the next mass killer in America. If the signs were that clear, you would hear about people being detained because some credible experts believed these persons were about to go on a shooting spree. Never happens. Why? Because we can't know who is about to do it. Well, yes, there is that constitutional issue-- but Bush solved that and Obama doesn't seem poised to change it. Yes, we can arrest and detain and even torture people who have not committed any crimes. Damn right. Bless you, Rudolph Giuliani.

It seems to me that the army was actually quite sensible about dealing with Hasan. I would bet that he wasn't the only Muslim in the army who expressed strong misgivings about the mission to Afghanistan. I would bet that there was not a single "unmistakable" sign that he was about to do what he did. Unless you count the fact that he bought some guns.

But then again, he was in the army. Then again, he was in America.

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