Many in the media are arguing there is nothing more to the Major Hasan mass murder than derangement and the various personal "issues" that "set him off."

But there are two considerations that argue against such an interpretation. First, we look for patterns in all cases of individuals' shooting others on a mass scale. Hasan gave every indication that he was channeling his own personal sense of frustration into a larger Islamic writ against the West — as have some 20 other killers since 9/11 who have shot, stabbed, or run over innocents at malls, airline counters, military facilities, and Jewish-affiliated centers.

If we once focused on postal conditions and security at post-office installations when workers (between 1986 and 1997) snapped under the thematic pretense of job stress, and if we investigated the nexus of video games, drugs, cults, and counter-culture alienation when suburban youths went on shooting sprees, then it seems legitimate to look for commonalities when someone self-identifies as a rather radical Muslim and shouts "Allahu Akbar!" as he fires — in the same manner that the mad driver in North Carolina, or the killer in Seattle, or the homicidal driver in San Francisco afterwards said they were acting out of Islamic religious fervor against Jews or Westerners.

Second, if we counted up the number of "lone wolf" incidents and added it to the number of Islamist terrorist plots that have been foiled since 9/11, we would arrive at more than 40 incidents of terrorist killings or efforts to kill on a wide scale. If anyone could find a comparable series of anti-abortion terrorist acts, backlash attacks on Muslims, anti-Semitic attacks perpetrated by non-Muslims, Jewish attacks on Middle Easterners, or radical environmentalist killings, then one could argue that the public was unduly focusing on Islam.

It seems, instead, that about every three to four months, either a single Muslim male will shoot or run over somebody and tie the violence to some sort of jihadist theme, or a group of Muslim males will be caught trying to blow up something or shoot someone, usually on a mass scale.

The general conclusions I would draw, based on the statements of the authorities, those in the military, the media, and the general public, are something like the following:

(1) Most people do not wish to be smeared as bigots, racists, or anti-Muslim, and therefore they will resist suggesting that such violence fits a pattern involving radical Islamic hatred.

(2) Most people assume either that the authorities will break up the plot before it reaches 9/11 proportions, or that the lone-wolf attacker will kill someone else far away, and therefore conclude t

 

Surprise, surprise — that somebody who shouts "Allahu Akbar" as he shoots up a room of soldiers might have Islamist motives in doing that.

 

I think the real moral scandal is the attempt over the weekend to medicalize mass murder. All of a sudden we hear that he [Nidal Hasan] heard these terrible stories from soldiers who had suffered and he snapped.

 

Well, what about the doctors and nurses and counselors and physical therapists at Walter Reed who every day hear and live with the suffering of soldiers? How many of them have picked up a gun and shot up a room of soldiers?

 

What about civilian psychiatrists who hear every day tales of woe and suffering — the indescribable suffering of, say, a psychotically depressed patient — who don't pick up a gun and shoot up people.

 

I was a psychiatrist. I can't remember a single instance of a psychiatrist who went around shooting people. Maybe I missed the epidemic.

 

But all of a sudden if the shooter is called Nidal Hasan, all of a sudden everybody invents this secondary post-traumatic stress syndrome which had never existed until yesterday.

 

It is an example of political correctness. And all the warnings that people had had in advance and not reported is an example of how political correctness isn't only a moral abomination, it's also a danger.