{"id":389,"date":"2009-11-09T12:02:30","date_gmt":"2009-11-09T19:02:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.harvardnsj.com\/?p=389"},"modified":"2009-11-09T12:02:30","modified_gmt":"2009-11-09T19:02:30","slug":"nsj-analysis-fort-hood-shooting-ripe-for-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/2009\/11\/nsj-analysis-fort-hood-shooting-ripe-for-controversy\/","title":{"rendered":"NSJ Analysis: Fort Hood Shooting Ripe for Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"

By NSJ Staff Writer<\/strong><\/p>\n

The November 8th shootings at Ft. Hood are less than a week old, and yet investigators and pundits are already interpreting what they see to be their deep-seated meaning.\u00a0 Officially, after two days of investigation, the FBI and the Army Criminal Investigation Command have come to the tentative conclusion<\/a> that the attacks were not part of a terrorist plot.\u00a0 However, they have also suggested that U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan \u201cacted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures,\u201d and \u201chave not ruled out the possibility that [Hasan] believes he was carrying out an extremist\u2019s suicide mission.\u201d\u00a0 In looking at Major Hasan\u2019s computer records, as well as interviewing family members, co-workers, and neighbors, investigators have learned that Hasan was an emotionally troubled individual who logged on to radical Islamist websites, where he exchanged e-mails with like-minded people.\u00a0 While some of those messages contained language justifying suicide attacks, no evidence has been uncovered indicating that Hasan ever had contact with known terrorists or anyone else encouraging him to launch the attack.<\/p>\n

That Hasan was not directly influenced by Islamic terrorists, but may have been indirectly motivated by their ideology, provides potentially fertile ground for commentary and debate. \u00a0Indeed, pundits have already started to draw far-reaching conclusions on the matter.\u00a0 Over at National Review, Mark Steyn posits<\/a> that the cautious reaction thus far to the shootings is indicative of an American public that is \u201cscrupulously non-judgmental about the ideology that drives a man to fly into a building or self-detonate on the subject.\u201d\u00a0 Steyn goes on to opine that the refusal to acknowledge that \u201cIslam inspires enough of this behavior to make it a legitimate topic of analysis\u201d represents a \u201chole at the heart of our strategy.\u201d\u00a0 He cites the absence of the word \u201cIslam\u201d or \u201cAllah\u201d in the initial mainstream reporting on the topic as evidence that the ideology of \u201cmulticultural diversity\u201d has handicapped America in addressing head on the problem it faces with Islamist terrorism.<\/p>\n

To the contrary, Glenn Greenwald of Salon blasted the mainstream media<\/a> for reporting, without adequate verification, several \u201cglaring errors\u201d implicating Hasan\u2019s Islamic background.\u00a0 Greenwald contends that \u201cparticularly in a case like this\u2013which, for obvious reasons, has the potential to be quite inflammatory on a number of levels\u2013having the major media \u2018report\u2019 completely false assertions as fact can be quite harmful,\u201d because \u201c[i]t\u2019s often the case that perceptions and judgments about stories like this solidify in the first few hours after one hears about it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That Steyn and Greenwald are both able to look at the media\u2019s coverage of the Hasan shooting and pick out examples of what they find deplorable in \u201cthe country\u2019s\u201d or \u201cthe media\u2019s\u201d reaction to the event is not surprising.\u00a0 But with an event such as this\u2013treading, as it does, on so many sensitive issues\u2013such polarization may prove more troubling.\u00a0 Already, Army Chief of Staff General George Casey Jr. has expressed concern<\/a> that the rampage could \u201ccause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.\u201d \u201cIt would be a shame,\u201d General Casey cautioned, \u201cif our diversity became a casualty as well.\u201d\u00a0 At the same time, Senator Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut called the shooting spree \u201cthe most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9\/11\u201d and urged a further investigation into Major Hasan\u2019s motives, as well as the Army policies that \u201cmissed warning signs that should have led them to essentially discharge him.\u201d<\/p>\n

That investigators have unearthed evidence lending credence to both concerns<\/a>\u2013Hasan received counseling and legal advice concerning continuous anti-Muslim harassment he experienced in the Army, and for years espoused controversial views that raised eyebrows among those with whom he came in contact, including the nation’s intelligence agencies<\/a>\u2013only serves to reaffirm the incident\u2019s place as a sort of Rorschach test for one\u2019s views on the underlying issues.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By NSJ Staff Writer The November 8th shootings at Ft. Hood are less than a week old, and yet investigators and pundits are already interpreting what they see to be their deep-seated meaning.\u00a0 Officially, after two days of investigation, the FBI and the Army Criminal Investigation Command have come to the tentative conclusion that the attacks were not part of a terrorist plot.\u00a0 However, they have also suggested that U.S. Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan \u201cacted out under a welter of emotional, ideological and religious pressures,\u201d and \u201chave not ruled out the possibility that [Hasan] believes he was carrying out […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"site-sidebar-layout":"default","site-content-layout":"","ast-site-content-layout":"default","site-content-style":"default","site-sidebar-style":"default","ast-global-header-display":"","ast-banner-title-visibility":"","ast-main-header-display":"","ast-hfb-above-header-display":"","ast-hfb-below-header-display":"","ast-hfb-mobile-header-display":"","site-post-title":"","ast-breadcrumbs-content":"","ast-featured-img":"","footer-sml-layout":"","ast-disable-related-posts":"","theme-transparent-header-meta":"","adv-header-id-meta":"","stick-header-meta":"","header-above-stick-meta":"","header-main-stick-meta":"","header-below-stick-meta":"","astra-migrate-meta-layouts":"default","ast-page-background-enabled":"default","ast-page-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-5)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"ast-content-background-meta":{"desktop":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"tablet":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""},"mobile":{"background-color":"var(--ast-global-color-4)","background-image":"","background-repeat":"repeat","background-position":"center center","background-size":"auto","background-attachment":"scroll","background-type":"","background-media":"","overlay-type":"","overlay-color":"","overlay-opacity":"","overlay-gradient":""}},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-389","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/peZtUX-6h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=389"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/389\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=389"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=389"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/journals.law.harvard.edu\/nsj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=389"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}