What I don’t want is to be told that this is yet another example of a mass murder by a Muslim that “has nothing to do with terrorism.” For such a small minority of the American population, Muslims have had quite a few of these incidents.

The driver in North Carolina, the one in California (San Fransisco?) both intentionally running over random pedestrians. The Washington snipers. The shooter at the Jewish Center in Seattle. The shooter at the El Al counter at LAX. Now this.

When you grow up seeing masses of Muslims on television shouting “Death to America,” and then you see what’s happening now it’s hard not to make a connection.

Perhaps they are not interested in changing America’s foreign policy so much as they are interested in slaughtering Americans?

Mark Steyn wrote some very poignant stuff after the Virginia Tech murders. He didn’t focus on the killer, he focused on the men on campus who fled, or did nothing, and allowed the killer to keep shooting. I don’t even remember that whackjobs purported motive, and that’s part of my point, even if Mohammed never walked the Earth and Islam didn’t exist we’d still occassionally have someone shoot up a school, or a McDonalds or a post office. There are 300 million of us here. Even if less than 0.0000001 of us are homicidal maniacs that still means we currently live among 3 homicidal maniacs. Who are they? What will set them off? Where will they be when they snap?

We can try to succesfully answer all those questions, and have cameras photographing us every day, like they do in London, and increase the number of questions we’re asked during job performance appraisals, and disrobe and allow our clothing to be chemically analyzed every time we enter a building, or we can be grown men and women, decide to not live our lives in fear, and agree that when we are faced with insanity/evil we will charge at it and do our best to minimize the effects to our fellow countrymen and women. I’m sure more people on Fort Hood were running towards this guy than away. I hope I would do the same.

Ron Howard is overrated as a director. I know it’s a matter of taste and hey, he was Opie and all…but his work as a director is really hit and miss for me. I was underwhelmed by “Apollo 13″. Howard made a grand story seem like a TV movie of the week. I think his best work was “Grand Theft Auto”

The question, from a legal point of view, is: are they capable of understanding what they did was wrong? If they are living in some pretend fantasy world, listening to voices in their head and truly believe that the man across the street is a werewolf and thus blew him away with a silver bullet, then we have identified a (possibly) curable psychological condition that resulted in murder.

The McVeighs, homicide bombers and serial killers do not fit into this profile. In each case, they knowingly – and willingly – choose to subscribe to a radical minority view which they understand is abhorrent to the majority of humanity. We know they know because they go to great pains to conceal their actions and to flee from justice. (Well, except for the homicide bombers – not much left with which to flee). The insanity is THE CAUSE ITSELF, whether it be survivalists, Islamofacism or helter-skelter. The person who CHOOSES those courses must be held accountable.

In Hasan’s case, if he is shown to have acted in support of a radical wing of Islam – one that we are told over and over again does NOT represent the majority view in Islam – than he must be held accountable, as a sane person making a choice to join an insane cause. If he claims to have been acting in support of Islam in general, that is, if he says he was acting on behalf of what the entire religion stands for, then the legal system (and the Administration, by the by) has a choice: 1) take him at his word, and rethink what Islam stands for, or 2) declare that he is wrong, that he in fact has given comfort and aid to the radicals and is therefore another enemy as well.

In the event that he convinces the court that the Sta-Puf Marshmallow Man made him do it, I would be willing to go along with the insanity defense. Beyond that? Nope.