Maybe "Opus Dei" Did It

OK Marty, I get it. I will give you this one.

Marty: I think you are nit picking. If "A New York Times dispatch tells us that "a suicide bomber on a motorcycle attacked a crowded marketplace" do we need any more information to decide that it is the work of terrorists? Perhaps some credit should be given to the readers to know exactly what is what. I mean, do we really need a newspaper to delineate for us the difference between legitimate resistance and terrorism?

I had a good laugh this morning thinking about the bloodthirsty, gory history of the Catholic Church - often by the ghouls that ran the place. That is one sick institution.

The Vatican is like a haunted house - church sanctioned death everywhere (in addition to beautiful tapestries, frescoes, etc). I especially love the murals everywhere of chained up slaves being dragged up steps, or across dirt, to kiss the ring of the Pope. Those that didn't...well? That was the next mural over. Lots of blood in those.

I assume that you found the irony humorous, neh? Yeah. Apparently these folks never realized that Jesus was never a good Christian. The harder one runs from it the more one is owned by it. Completeness is a contentious goal.

So what are you really saying with all of this convenient maximizing. Minimizing?

Ah well no Jackson. I'm saying fanatics have used religion as a reason to hate, loath and murder since the dawn of time. The Vatican is such a creepy place, I have gotten chills every time I have been there.

But it is important that I say this: I know Jewish folks have not used religion to hate, loathe and murder - they've always been the targets and no I certainly do not buy that the Palestenians (or any other Arab government) have some sort of argument otherwise.

Pograms and Crusades are not part of Jewish history, custom or doctrine. And I respect the adherents and the religion itself deeply for it. They have no slot in human history marked "murderously religious." The very idea is absurd. (The Old Testament can be pretty gruesome and vindictive though, wouldn't you say? I'm just saying...)

I accept that Islam itself has to change and be confronted and that Hassan is a religious fanatic first and foremost. But I have too many close friends who are real Muslims to state that the religion itself is wicked. Quite the opposite in my experience. I won't ever support that thinking.

I know this is just anecdotal, but its hardly unrepresentative. I have a close friend whose two sons are at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York right now, they want to join the FBI and catch these people in a way I'll never be able to feel. Muslim Americans have a proud history of being law abiding, productive and patriotic citizens. Muslims have risked and given thier lives all over he world to help us in this fight.

I have a hard time with the word "terrorist" in this case and certain other ones - it feels imprecise and almost flattering in some sense. I just can't do it. I'm not saying I know what to call Hassan, but terrorist doesn't work for me at all.

But this man on a motorcycle killing people? In the name of his God? Scum, dirt, filth fits for me. Religious Fanatic Scum? I don't know. But I do know that I wouldn't even give him the title of human.

Hassan claims he's driven mad and into the arms of hateful clerics by America killing Muslims in two countries. That's at least a case, a rotten one that justifies nothing - we were attacked first people - but at least a coherent one.

But Mr Motorcycle Scum? Killing his own people in the marketplace? For what? Because they aren't devout enough? Ack, a special place in hell for him (Hassan too, don't get me wrong). Throw him in jail with the rest of the two bit murderers and then hang him.

What noga said: If you accurately describe the persons and actions involved in a terrorist attack, it doesn't matter whether you use the word "terrorist." It will be obvious to all readers of good will that what is being described is a terrorist attack. Things get dicier when, in the course of a report, the writer writes himself into a corner where he needs to use a word like "terrorist" to complete a sentence, and instead uses an agreed-upon code word that means "terrorist" but only with a wink and a nudge to the minority of readers who are in on the game. Such as "militant," which is a silly word whose definition is exactly coterminous with "terrorist" and thus fools no one but confuses some.

Which get back to why it was a mistake to jump to the conclusion that the Fort Hood shooting was terrorism. The event itself bore all the characteristics of a common American workplace shooting -- there have been two more since, neither perpetrated by a Muslim, so of course Marty isn't harping on them as examples of terrorism. Even if Hasan intended his attack as terrorism -- and evidence made public over the weekend suggests he did -- the fact that his crime was not, at the time, obviously apparent as an act of terrorism, rather than a common crime, means that at worst it was a failed act of terrorism. It produced no terror. Leaping to validate Hasan's possible terroristic aims then becomes the instrument by which his run-of-the-mill criminality takes on the aspect of terrorism and induces the response of terror in his victims (the American public and our government). So to label an act that is not obviously an act of terror as "terrorism" is to become a complicit accomplice in perpetrating the terror.