Behind the Fort Hood mass murder fo Allah attack

NY Times:

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Depression and stress alone can set off lethal attacks. In Baghdad last May, for instance, a despondent Army sergeant was accused of killing five fellow soldiers at a clinic.

But Dr. Michael Stone, a forensic psychiatrist in New York and an expert on mass murderers, said the emerging picture of Major Hasan suggests that militant religion “seemed to provide answers to a lot of the psychological problems already stirring around in him.”

Some experts on terrorism believe that Major Hasan may be the latest example of an increasingly common type of terrorist, one who has been self-radicalized with the help of the Internet and who wreaks havoc without support from overseas networks and without having to cross a border to reach his target.

Bruce Hoffman, a Georgetown University professor who studies terrorism, said such cases had appeared at a growing rate in the last year, most of them involving people with no direct ties to foreign terrorists. The trend of self-radicalization, which leaders and allies of Al Qaeda have encouraged with a steady stream of inflammatory messages on the Web, is gaining momentum, he said.

“You’ve had all shapes and sizes, which is a challenge for law enforcement,” Mr. Hoffman said, citing a shooting at a Little Rock military recruitment center, synagogues targeted for attack in the Bronx and foiled bombing schemes in Illinois and Texas, among others.

While investigators are combing intelligence files for any foreign contacts Major Hasan may have had, the only significant connection the authorities have confirmed so far are a dozen or so e-mail messages he sent to a radical cleric now in Yemen, Anwar al-Awlaki.

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Mr. Awlaki, who was born in New Mexico and served as an imam in two mosques attended by three of the Sept. 11 hijackers, is known as a compelling speaker in English and Arabic whose influence has been documented in several recent cases of homegrown terrorism, including a plot to bomb government buildings in Canada and another to shoot up Fort Dix, N.J.

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The term I used in the headline, mass murder for Allah, is very descriptive of not only Hasan, but most other al Qaeda terrorist. It avoids getting bogged down in legalistic definitions that tend to confuse what is happening.

It should be noted that Hasan's problem with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan stemmed from his religious bigotry when it comes to warfare. Muslims do not have any angst when it comes to Muslims killing each other without the intervention of non Muslims. When Hamas and Fatah are fighting each other you do not see any of the emotion seen when Israel is defending itself. The same is true in Lebanon when the army destroyed several al Qaeda operatives who had tried to take over an area.

Hasan does not seem to object to the Taliban killing other Muslims in mass murder for Allah attacks. The same can be said for al Qaeda in Iraq attacks on Shia Muslims in Iraq. His problem is with non Muslims that make up the US forces. In other words his problem stems from his inherent religious bigotry.