Fort Hood, First Mass-Casualty Attack by a Jihadist on U.S. Soil Since 9/11

Thursday, November 19, 2009

BARACK OBAMA

During the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs hearing this morning, the RAND Corporation's Brian Jenkins offered a statement as to why the Fort Hood shooting, and the analysis of just what motivated Malik Hasan, weighs so heavily on Washington: “We’ve had eight attempted attacks [in U.S.], plus two successful ones in Arkansas and Fort Hood. Many more than previous years.”

You may be shaking your head upon hearing Fort Hood would be the second jihadist or terrorist attack of the year; Jenkins was including Abdulhakim Muhammad, who is accused of killing Pvt. William Long of and injuring Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula in a shooting outside the Army/Navy recruiting center in Little Rock, Arkansas. He faces 17 felony charges, including capital murder.

The Little Rock recruitment center shooter’s philosophy is, in retrospect, a chilling match to the alleged views of Hasan: “A battlefield is anywhere we see you at. And those people in the Army and those families of the people in the Army and the military and personnel all over the country, if you don't want to die or get shot for this so called war on terrorism, war on Islam, then get out of the Army. Get out of the Army and don't walk, run."

When people hear the word “terrorism,” they usually think of 9/11 or bombs going off like in London or Madrid. A shooting rampage is, fairly or not, considered garden-variety crime or mayhem by the homicidally maniacal. While the aim of the Columbine shooters was to inspire terror, few think of them as terrorists.

So perhaps we should shift to discussing jihadist terrorism, and recognize that it increasingly looks like Hasan was the biggest act of jihadist terrorism on American soil since 9/11, the first mass-casualty event within our borders scored by their side in this war in more than eight years.

I say biggest, but not first. Daniel Pipes coined the term “Sudden Jihad Syndrome,” whereby normal-appearing Muslims abruptly become violent, and describes other incidents that, due to thankfully low or no fatalities, barely registered in the public consciousness: At UNC-Chapel Hill, an Iranian immigrant drove a sport-utility vehicle into a crowded pedestrian zone; on July 4, 2002 somebody shot up the El Al counter at LAX in an event the FBI helpfully insisted was not terrorism. In January of 2002, some troubled teen crashed a small plane into a Tampa skyscraper, in another event we were reassured wasn't terrorism, even though the teen said he sympathized with Osama bin Laden.

But these events were largely one-day or two-day stories; they generally didn’t inspire a widespread sense of “we’ve been hit again.”

Fort Hood may be different. Retired general John M. Keane, former vice chief of staff of the U.S. Army, casually remarked during the hearing that the “preliminary evidence” was that the motivation was jihadism, not mental illness.

And if the public concludes that Hasan was motivated by the same radical ideology as Mohammed Atta, it means the jihadist threat to Americans at home is still out there, and that our government is not achieving job one: protecting the American people. Health care, stimulus funds, cap-and-trade — none of that means a darn thing if you’re worried that some guy is going to shoot up your workplace, or a shopping mall, or God forbid, some school because he secretly thinks he’s at war with you.

If American had been enduring a “24” scenario of bombs going off in the streets on a regular basis in 2008, Barack Obama would not have become president. He did not campaign as a wartime president. Now that he is in office, we are told by his cabinet that we are in an era of “man-caused disasters” and “overseas contingency operations.”

President Obama may have wanted to turn the page on the old era of the war on terror. Too bad the jihadists didn’t agree.

11/19 12:52 PM Share