100% of Your Weekly Dose of Terrorism Panic

See also Barry Crimmins recent post regarding mainstream framing -
< “>http://www.barrycrimmins.com/index.php?page=news&family=&category=&display=8985>

and Mark Benjamin’s comprehensive take on
‘The medias silly Fort Hood coverage’
The cover of Time magazine depicts another befuddling sideshow to the Fort Hood story..
..The passionate determination to hang the “terrorist” label on Hasan, or rail against “political correctness” in the military, are just more symptoms of media stars more excited about hot-headed debate than covering the real story. And the real story may be sadly familiar: It looks like Army medicine blew it, once again
http://www.salon.com/news/fort_hood_shooting/index.html?story=/news/feature/2009/11/12/hasan_coverage

So…Typepad is broken all of a sudden? WTF?

serr8d’s weird posts aside, I think we might be over-reacting. Was Timothy McVeigh a terrorist? A domestic terrorist? The Columbine kids? If so, this guy is too. It comes down to definitions. Is it just mass violence driven by some under-lying dissatisfaction? OTOH if terrorism means using violence to instill fear to achieve a political end, I’m not sure any of these cases count. What we certainly need to resist is a definition a terrorism that only includes violence and Islam. That seems to be what the Right wants to do. And they’re doing it to achieve political ends!

Timothy McVeigh – yes, because he intended to terrorize a population in order to effect a change in political policy. The Columbine kids – no, their actions were a burst of psychotic rage. They were not attempting to create political change.
Every murder is not an act of terrorism. It goes to the motive behind the act. McVeigh came out of a group of political (whacko) discontents who wanted to force the US to bend to their will, while the kids at Columbine were mentally ill. In that vein, the attacks by extremist animal-rights activists against university researchers are certainly terrorist acts, while the assault on Ronald Reagan was not.

There’s more to the Columbine story than we’ve been told. Harris and Klebold didn’t just go off; they meticulously planned the attack and intended it to be much bigger than it was.
Five years after the incident, Dave Cullen, writing in Slate, suggests:
Columbine was intended not primarily as a shooting at all, but as a bombing on a massive scale. If they hadn’t been so bad at wiring the timers, the propane bombs they set in the cafeteria would have wiped out 600 people. After those bombs went off, they planned to gun down fleeing survivors. An explosive third act would follow, when their cars, packed with still more bombs, would rip through still more crowds, presumably of survivors, rescue workers, and reporters . . .
I don’t know the current state of Columbine massacre theory, but mental illness is no longer high up on the list. Were these guys terrorists? Perhaps a Bag reader who’s up on this will check in.

Waaaaay too thoughtful an analysis, Bill.

It appears that this week was full of news and images of “terrorists” with Muslim names:
James MUHAMMAD, the DC region, sniper is executed by lethal injection
Khalid Shaikh MOHAMMED, the accused 9/11 mastermind faces civilian trial
Nidal Malik HASAN is charged with 13 counts of murder. His name is also a variation of the US President’s middle name and George W Bush’s archenemy’s last name.

We trained and promoted him
James Muhammad enlisted in the Louisiana Army National Guard in 1978 and, after seven years of service, volunteered for active duty in 1985. In 1987 he joined the Nation of Islam. While in the Army, Muhammad was trained as a mechanic, truck driver and specialist metalworker. He qualified with the Army’s standard infantry rifle the M16, earning the ***Expert Rifleman’s Badge*** This rating is the Army’s highest of three levels of marksmanship for a basic soldier. He was discharged from military service following the Gulf War, as a sergeant, in 1994. – wiki
Did he see the Iraq’s road of death while sojourning there.
I’m having trouble getting http://www.youtube.com/watchv=3NCLfhmWvJ8 so please google ‘Iraq’s road of death’ > 2 min 23 sec- 22 August 2008 to get video clip
When Bush II got his war on, http://www.youtube.com/watchv=WN6z5xr7EiI
Six months later James Muhammad declared war as well..

The weakest evidence for the terrorism argument is who he shot. Although Hasan had a relatively high rank and a very high security clearance, his victims were random. If he was consciously trying to inflict damage, he could have used his rank to gain access to a secure area and shot a general or two.
More likely, he was just a stressed out soldier who snapped. He worked with soldiers with post-traumatic stress and probably listened to some really horrific stuff. Although he was hearing it second-hand, it might have been overwhelmed. Also, many of the vets coming back say that while they were in Iraq, anti-Arab and anti-Iraqi racist speech was very common. Certainly he heard about that, too. If it didn’t politicize him, it added to his depression.