Fort Hood Murders Evoke Racist Reactions By Vijay Prashad

The media’s blame of Major Hasan's religion is a convenient way to avoid everything else.

November 19, 2009

This commentary was first published by CounterPunch.org.

Words have ensnarled the rampage at Fort Hood. Nothing more needs to be said. Thirteen dead and 31 injured. What sets this massacre apart from the bombing at Oklahoma City (with 168 dead) and Columbine High (with 12 dead) is that the assailant here is a Muslim at a time when the United States is at war in two Muslim-majority countries (Iraq and Afghanistan). Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols, as well as Eric Harris and Dylan Kiebold, were all white. Their acts brought forth revulsion but not condemnation of Christianity; that would have been ridiculous.

All these acts have indeed once more refreshed the necessary, but repetitive, debates over gun control and mental health care for war veterans. It is fitting to remember that the father of Columbine victim Daniel Mauser (age 15), Tom Mauser, is a leading gun-control advocate. Traction has not come his way, as it has not for many of those parents and loved ones of those who were killed by assault rifles that do not belong where they find themselves (such as in places like Guns Galore, in Killeen, Texas, home to Fort Hood, and where Major Nidal Malik Hasan bought his FN Herstal tactical pistol, a standard issue gun used by NATO troops in Afghanistan).

Fort Hood, like other bases that send young people to ghastly wars, has seen a spate of suicides (10 in 2009 and 76 since 2003) and cases of violence against women (up by 75 percent since 2001). Post-traumatic stress disorder has become a routine problem. Multiple deployments don't help. Nor does recalcitrance to admit to mental illness as a real injury, as much as a physical one. All this is on the table. Including the failure by the military to identify serious problems in the well-being of Major Hasan. He was obviously not suited to the military and should have been discharged rather than be shunted from Walter Reed to Fort Hood. Large bureaucracies are like this: rather than take action, the envelope is pushed down the counter. This envelope contained a letter bomb.

Major Hasan's own reasons for action will probably never be known. He has acted. The action has provoked analysis. Some of the ideas are useful, and hopefully productive; others are toxic. The deployment of the idea of "political correctness" and the shifting of the burden of explanation to Hasan's religion is a convenient way to avoid all else. Muslim Americans anticipated the backlash immediately (One might remember CBS's Connie Chung right after the Oklahoma bombing in 1995: "According to a government source, it has Middle East terrorism written all over it." It turned out to be an Iraq War veteran and his friend; that's the closest the attack came to the Middle East).

All the requisite Muslim American organizations hastily put together press releases to condemn Major Hasan's attack, even before the smell of cordite left the processing center where he went on his rampage. This was mete. After all, it was important to make the point against the kind of assumptions that would float out of the slime of FOX and its various friends. As it turned out, it didn't stop anything. Nor could President Obama's plea to keep religion out of it. Nor could General George Casey, who told CNN that the backlash against Muslims and Muslim American soldiers "would be a shame as great a tragedy as this was, it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well." The Army has been particular about diversity (for more on this see George Baca's forthcoming book from Rutgers University Press, Conjuring Crisis: Racism and the Struggle for Civil Rights in a Southern Military Town). This is why it joined the amicus brief against the end to affirmative action at the University of Michigan (Grutter v. Bollinger). The text is instructive: "[the case's] outcome could affect the diversity of our [N]ation's officer corps, and in turn, the military's ability to fulfill its missions." When asked about this support, Lt. General Becton told NPR that diversity was a "combat multiplier. It brings about unit cohesiveness." The brief was signed by all the senior officers, each one battle-tested. Nothing pious here.