Month: November 2009

I arrived in America on September 18th 2002. Two weeks later, on October 2nd, John Allen Muhammad – the Beltway Sniper, as he quickly became known – murdered his first Washington victim.

The following day, October 3rd, Muhammad’s killing spree peaked, with the shooting dead of five more innocent people. Over the next nineteen days seven more fell victim to this lethal psychopath, though three of them survived.

I remember wondering just what sort of country I had come to. For fifty years of life in Britain I’d never once paused to consider the possibility of being shot dead while filling up my car, walking the dog, or nipping down the road to pick up a newspaper. Suddenly, it seemed a real possibility, reinforced by weekly visits to a Walmart supermarket that openly displayed rifles and ammunition on sale.

Muhammad’s killing spree, along with his young accomplice, Malvo, continued until their arrest on October 24th. America breathed a sigh of relief it was all over. So far as I was concerned, it had only just begun.

Living in a country that allows anyone and everyone to own a firearm is disconcerting when one’s previous abode does not. There is probably a similar percentage of psychopathic maniacs in Britain as are at large in the United States, but virtually none of them have access to any weapon with the sheer killing power of the Bushmaster rifle chosen by John Allen Muhammad.

Today, seven years on, it’s John Allen Muhammad’s turn to be murdered. He is to be executed by the State of Virginia. I hope they’re proud to sink to his level.

As for me, I’ve lived through so many massacres and shootings since the days of the Beltway sniper, even documented some, and I still never fail to be horrified at how quickly Americans put it all behind them, and pretend it will never happen again.

Personally, I’d much rather John Allen Muhammad lived out his days in a prison cell, where he could mull over the heartache and mental agony he caused so many to suffer for the rest of their lives. It hardly seems right to deny him that.

Meanwhile, I no longer own a dog, or read newspapers, but I’ll still glance nervously over my shoulder every time I gas up the car.

Filed under: Sick people

Take one devout Muslim of first generation Palestinian descent, clad him in a U.S. soldier uniform, and pretend he’s a full-blooded American hero who’ll fight for his country against all comers. Subject him to harassment from his fellow soldiers because of his religion, then tell him he’s being sent to kill his relatives in the Middle East, and there’s nothing he can do about it. Appear aghast when he goes berserk and shoots people.

That’s the potted history of Nidal Malik Hasan, MD who this week killed thirteen and wounded thirty at Fort Hood in Texas.

Senator Joe Lieberman, on Fox News, said of the incident:^[1]

A couple of years ago, after a two-year investigation, my committee put out a report that said the new face of terrorism in America would not just be the attacks as 9/11, organized abroad and sending people in here. It would be people within this country, home- grown terrorists, self-radicalized, often over the Internet, going to jihadist Web sites.

And there’s concern from what we know now about Hasan that, in fact, that’s exactly what he was, a self-radicalized home-grown terrorist.

Lieberman, and probably most other US politicians, would be happy to turn this incident into a simple case of ‘home-grown’ terrorism. It’s a nice, convenient, solution. It exonerates the US military, the US ‘system’, of any blame whatever.

Sure, there’ll no doubt be some internal inquiries; knuckles will be rapped for not paying closer attention to the warning signs emanating from Major Hasan in the months prior to the massacre. But, a verdict of ‘terrorism’ will mean the matter can be pigeonholed, Hasan locked away for the rest of his life – or, put to death as a sop to the relatives – and everyone can breathe a sigh of relief and get on with their lives.

Senator Joseph Lieberman, as usual, was wrong. It was no act of terrorism. Rather it was the direct result of one man’s agony; ripped apart mentally in multiple directions by a cold, uncaring, system that expects every man to become a robot dedicated solely to the “Flag”; to put aside all other loyalties, no matter how important to the individual, and replace them with absolute devotion and obedience to the ‘Motherland’.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, MD was no terrorist. He was a man placed in an impossible situation and taunted constantly by his fellows. He was a sick man whose mind snapped.

He long ago ceased to believe in the righteousness of American military actions abroad.

In that, at least, he was certainly not alone.

^{[1] “Sen. Lieberman on ‘FNS'” Fox News Sunday, November 8th 2009}

Filed under: Taking the easy way out