By Lawrence White

So what do we know about the massacre at Fort Hood? Emotions and polemics are running at full volume. Reliable information is hard to come by; we are hearing mainly rumors. Nonetheless, we can tease out various facts.

First, there is the official story. A major in the US army went on a killing spree in which he murdered 13 and wounded 38 soldiers at Fort Hood. All the news reports have put the emphasis on a medicalized interpretation. According to them, this is about the emotional stress our soldiers are under. The discussion has focused on PTSD, and about how Hasan did not want to be deployed overseas. And at first, few of the media even referred to the fact that he was a Muslim.

According to Victor Davis Hansen, we are seeing "the familiar therapeutic exegesis, in which we hear of traumatic stress syndrome, justified and principled opposition to the Iraq and Afghan wars, generic mental illness, anger at being deployed overseas, or maltreatment from fellow soldiers due to his Muslim faith and various other efforts to “contextualize” the violence".

President Obama said "I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."

However, there are certain inconvenient facts that we do have.

1. Nidal Malik Hasan was an MD. Moreover, he was a psychiatrist, the very specialty that deals most with PTSD and emotional issues related to combat. How many mental health professionals have become mass murderers?

2. Hasan had never been in combat. He had been exposed to none of the pressures that lead to PTSD. In a long career as an Army psychiatrist, Hasan had never been deployed overseas.

3, Though Hasan was born in Virginia, on various forms that he filled out he listed himself not as “American” but as “Palestinian.”.

4. According to Phyllis Chesler, Major Hasan allegedly tried to convert his infidel patients <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=120138496> and colleagues to Islam (for which he was repeatedly reprimanded). Or, he insisted on lecturing students, colleagues, and patients against America and for Islamic rights. While training as a psychiatrist, he was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues

5. According to the AP, quoting Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, the base commander,
soldiers reported that the gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" — an Arabic phrase for "God is great!" — before opening fire.

6. Hasan has been referring to the US as the "aggressor" in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

7. Andrew Bostom has identified internet postings by Hasan that defend suicide bombing.

8. He had been under investigation for six months because of anti-American and jihadist rage.

Despite these facts, easily uncovered, the news media put its collective head in the sand. For example, there is "no concrete reporting as to whether Nidal Malik Hasan was in fact a Muslim or an Arab" (Huffington Post), the "motive behind the shootings was not immediately clear," (NPR)

And even Fox news, often referred to as "that right wing channel", stated that investigators were looking for a motive. Come again? Have we all become such victims of political correctness? Should it not even be mentioned, as recommended by The Nation, that he is a Muslim? Or that he identifies as a Palestinian? Are the facts that I have listed above indicative of "Islamophobia"?

And then of course, it needs to be asked whether or not this was an isolated episode. Between September 11, 2001 and the end of 2008, there have been over 20 terrorist plots uncovered and prevented in the US. These have been aimed at subways, malls, army bases, and synagogues.
In 2009, there have been a number of additional plots uncovered. A Colorado resident, Najibullah Zazi, was indicted for a plot to detonate a bomb in New York on the anniversary of 9/11. Two North Carolina residents were charged with conspiring to murder U.S. military personnel at Quantico, Virginia. A Texas resident, (but Jordanian citizen), Hosam Maher Hussein Smadi was arrested after placing a would-be bomb near a 60-story office tower in Dallas. In Boston, Tarek Mehanna, was arrested in connection with terrorist plots against U.S. shopping malls. What are we to make of this? According to our media, not much.

So which is the greater danger? Islamophobia or jihadist attacks on American soil? As Vitro Davis Hansen has asked, should the narrative be "that Americans have given into illegitimate “fear and mistrust” of Muslims in general, or should it be that there is a small minority of Muslims who channel generic Islamist fantasies, so that we can assume that either formal terrorist plots or individual acts of murder will more or less occur here every 3-6 months.?”

Roger Simon has referred to political correctness as the murder weapon, as much as the two pistols. He states that PC is "a pathology and a quite virulent one – in this case, arguably the cause of death of the thirteen men and women murdered at Fort Hood" Can we get past this?

As Robert Spencer has pointed out, "The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nodal Hasan". And again, Roger Simon "the most fitting memorial to them (the 13 killed) would be that their murders would signal the death knell of political correctness".

How long will Americans tolerate their media telling them what they should think, when the evidence points in another direction? How far shall we go in our attempt to "just get along?" Shall we continue to deny that there is real evil in this world, and that sometimes it exists within the borders of the US?