James Taranto: The D.C. sniper, Fort Hood and the post-post-9/11 mentality
[James Taranto is a Manhattan-based columnist for The Wall Street Journal and editor of its online editorial page, OpinionJournal.com.]
John Allen Muhammad, the "D.C. sniper" of autumn 2002, is no more. The commonwealth of Virginia put Muhammad to death last night for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Northern Virginia. Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also convicted of six murders in Maryland and suspected of three killings in other states. Malvo, who was under 18 at the time, will live...
... Yet although the connection between Muhammad's religion and his crimes was much less clear than appears to be the case at Fort Hood, our cursory review of the 2002 press coverage suggests that reporters back then, including the author of the Times piece quoted just above, were more straightforward in dealing with it. And although Muhammad was a veteran--and had, unlike Hasan, actually seen combat--journalists do not seem to have rushed to fit the story to the usual crazy-veteran narrative, as they have been doing with Hasan.
Some have detected in the Fort Hood coverage a return to a pre-9/11 mindset, and there is some truth to this. In particular, the left-liberal tendency to stereotype servicemen and veterans as psychopaths, suckers and victims is a return to form. But the bending over backward to explain away the role of religious fanaticism in the Fort Hood massacre is, it seems to us, something new--something distinctly post-9/11, or post-post-9/11.
Politically correct sensitivities have, of course, long been with us. But as we noted Monday, journalists and political leaders really seem to be going to extremes to avoid acknowledging the evident religious motivations for Hasan's alleged crimes. We'd suggest that there are three reasons for such denial, all of which grow out of 9/11:
First, the liberal left has embraced the notion that America overreacted after 9/11, was beastly toward Muslims, and now needs to "reach out" and atone. There is very little truth to this. President Bush constantly reminded the world that we were not at war with Islam, which he called a religion of peace. But Bush-was-too-aggressive rhetoric is a much better fit with liberals' natural inclination toward inaction than the Bush-wasn't-aggressive-enough rhetoric that Barack Obama occasionally used while still a candidate.
Second, it is comforting to think that 9/11 was a one-off rather than the most horrific example (so far) of a continuing threat. From this standpoint, it's psychologically preferable to emphasize that the Fort Hood suspect appears to have been a lone nut rather than that he seems to have espoused an ideology similar to that of the 9/11 terrorists...
Read entire article at WSJ
John Allen Muhammad, the "D.C. sniper" of autumn 2002, is no more. The commonwealth of Virginia put Muhammad to death last night for the murder of Dean Harold Meyers at a gas station in Northern Virginia. Muhammad and his accomplice, Lee Boyd Malvo, were also convicted of six murders in Maryland and suspected of three killings in other states. Malvo, who was under 18 at the time, will live...
... Yet although the connection between Muhammad's religion and his crimes was much less clear than appears to be the case at Fort Hood, our cursory review of the 2002 press coverage suggests that reporters back then, including the author of the Times piece quoted just above, were more straightforward in dealing with it. And although Muhammad was a veteran--and had, unlike Hasan, actually seen combat--journalists do not seem to have rushed to fit the story to the usual crazy-veteran narrative, as they have been doing with Hasan.
Some have detected in the Fort Hood coverage a return to a pre-9/11 mindset, and there is some truth to this. In particular, the left-liberal tendency to stereotype servicemen and veterans as psychopaths, suckers and victims is a return to form. But the bending over backward to explain away the role of religious fanaticism in the Fort Hood massacre is, it seems to us, something new--something distinctly post-9/11, or post-post-9/11.
Politically correct sensitivities have, of course, long been with us. But as we noted Monday, journalists and political leaders really seem to be going to extremes to avoid acknowledging the evident religious motivations for Hasan's alleged crimes. We'd suggest that there are three reasons for such denial, all of which grow out of 9/11:
First, the liberal left has embraced the notion that America overreacted after 9/11, was beastly toward Muslims, and now needs to "reach out" and atone. There is very little truth to this. President Bush constantly reminded the world that we were not at war with Islam, which he called a religion of peace. But Bush-was-too-aggressive rhetoric is a much better fit with liberals' natural inclination toward inaction than the Bush-wasn't-aggressive-enough rhetoric that Barack Obama occasionally used while still a candidate.
Second, it is comforting to think that 9/11 was a one-off rather than the most horrific example (so far) of a continuing threat. From this standpoint, it's psychologically preferable to emphasize that the Fort Hood suspect appears to have been a lone nut rather than that he seems to have espoused an ideology similar to that of the 9/11 terrorists...