Two Cents Worth on Ft. Hood

My take on the Ft. Hood shooting, as of this morning, is that there are still not enough solid details yet about what happened to say much worth saying. Every Islam-monitoring blog and news commentator will say plenty for now.

Michael Yon wrote yesterday:

First reports are notoriously wrong. The shooter already has been killed then resurrected by the media. Some media are in a frenzy and so the reports are particularly untrustworthy at this time. Now is not a time to psychoanalyze the attacker by using a media-supplied telescope that already said he was dead, and that there were multiple attackers. Media: STOP, please. There will be time to pursue answers and justice after Christmas. We must remember that family members lost loved ones just before the holidays. Justice and answers will come with time.

I did just hear an interesting exchange between Chris Wallace and Mike Gallagher over whether or not Major Hasan’s murders yesterday were an act of terrorism. (Gallagher: Isn’t this just as upsetting as 9/11? Wallace: No). BTW, I’m with Wallace on this one. This is not another 9/11.

I am ready to say that the correct question isn’t whether or not Hasan’s murders were an act of terrorism; the correct question is whether or not they were an act of jihad.

Asking the correct question may help clarify the muddy issue, (muddy since 9/11), as to whether our enemy is “terrorism” whatever that is, or Islamic jihadism. (Redundancy alert: all jihadism is Islamic jihadism, as only Islam practices jihad. But I’m trying to emphasize a point).

As far as I’m concerned, the few solid details I’ve heard about Ft. Hood so far indicate that Hasan was engaged in jihad when he murdered American soldiers. That's two cents, and you can keep the change!