THE CASE AGAINST MAJ. HASAN - AT 8:54 A.M. ET:  Christopher Hitchens, generally a man of the left,  has actually been quite good about the war on terror.  He has, of course, suffered on the left for his clear-headedness, but has been willing to bear the pain. 

Now he gives us the best piece I've read on the case against Maj. Hasan.  Contrast this, please, with other elements of the wine-and-Brie media, which insist on being oh so intellectual, and oh so fair to the major, a fairness they never granted to George W. Bush:

The admonition not to rush to judgment or jump to conclusions might sound fair and prudent enough, perhaps even statesmanlike when uttered by the president, as long it's borne in mind that such advice is itself a judgment that is more than halfway to a conclusion. What it plainly implies in the present case is that the actions of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan should not be assumed in any meaningful way to be related to his Muslim faith...

... In order to demonstrate the absence of a connection, however, the following facts would have to be regarded as relatively random or secondary:

1) Hasan had been in direct correspondence with a notorious preacher of violence, Anwar al-Awlaki...

2) He bought weapons for himself well in advance of a murderous assault on unarmed soldiers awaiting treatment at a clinic...

3) As he unleashed his volleys, he yelled the universal cry of jihad, "Allahu akbar!" or "God is great!" (The eyewitnesses on this point, originally doubted, are especially convincing since some of them didn't understand the meaning of the words and only sought to reproduce them phonetically.) On his business card, he described himself as "SOA" or "slave," or possibly, "soldier of Allah." Neither would be especially reassuring in this context.

4) He had attracted considerable attention by repeatedly using his postgraduate classes at the Uniformed Service University in Bethesda, Md., for the purpose of Islamic proselytizing, for a version of Islam that, to say the least, did not overemphasize it as a "religion of peace."

5) He had, in spoken and written communications, demonstrated a fascination with the love of death and the concept of suicide martyrdom (better described as suicide murder) that is the central concept of Bin Ladenism.

6) Though he may have been upset by the harrowing stories of returned soldiers—as many, many of us have been, incidentally—his overwhelming and reiterated objection to the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan, and al-Qaida in Iraq, is that it is "a war on Islam."

7) He seems to have been especially obsessed with the Quranic injunction that forbids devout Muslims to make alliances with Christians and Jews.

But of course, we must not rush to judgment.  And the White House has pulled out all stops to try to delay Congressional investigations into the Fort Hood shootings.

And a warning from Hitchens:

I wrote some years ago that the three most salient characteristics of the Muslim death-squad type were self-righteousness, self-pity, and self-hatred. Surrounded as he was by fellow shrinks who were often very distressed by his menacing manner, Maj. Hasan managed to personify all three traits—with the theocratic rhetoric openly thrown in for good measure—and yet be treated even now as if the real word for him was troubled. Prepare to keep on meeting those three symptoms again, along with official attempts to oppose them only with therapy, if that. At least the holy warriors know they are committing suicide.

We're not supposed to call what we're doing suicide.  We're supposed to call it multicultural understanding, or, in the world of Obama, outreach.  Notice, please, that those we "reach out to" never reach out to us.

Notice also that the clarity of Hitchens's report is almost entirely lacking in the mainstream media.

November 18, 2009