Sarah Smith asks why Americans are reluctant to believe that the killing of 13 people by a lone gunman at Fort Hood last week could be the work of a “clean skin” terrorist.
We all know that one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter. But do we know how to recognise an act of terrorism when we see it?
The massacre at Fort Hood is definitely not being treated as terrorist attack in the US. Investigators have concluded that there were no co conspirators either inside or outside the US military and so they are content to treat this as the act of a crazed lone gunman.
The fact that they intend to try Major Nidal Malik Hasan in a military court, not a civilian one, further confirms that they don’t think anyone else will be charged and that they don’t consider this terrorism.
In the UK we clearly find the idea of anyone running rampage with guns terrifying in any circumstances. But in the US it’s too horribly familiar. There are all the very high-profile incidents we can instantly recall – from Virginia Tech to Columbine – and there are other incidents that don’t make huge headlines happening all the time.
Even whilst we were reporting the Fort Hood killings on Friday, there was another gunman on the loose in Florida – but I bet you hardly even heard about that one. And the Texas town where Fort Hood is located, Killeen, has seen this before. In 1991 a gunman killed 24 people in a cafe there for no apparent reason before he shot himself.
Mad men who are – legally – armed to the teeth shooting innocent victims is not unremarkable in America. Because it’s not unusual, it isn’t too scary. Not like terrorism – the most frightening word in American-English language.
But why is what happened at Fort Hood definitely not a terror attack? The more we find out about Major Hassan’s internet posts and emails to a radical jihadist, the more it seems there is at least the possibility he was politically motivated.
The Collins dictionary says terrorism is the systematic use of violence and intimidation to achieve some goal. And that a terrorist is a person who employs terrorism, especially as a political weapon. It doesn’t say they have to come from abroad, be working with others, have met Osama Bin Laden or have strapped on a suicide vest before they attack.
According to the New York Times, investigators have not ruled out the possibility Major Hassan “believed he was carrying out an extremist’s suicide mission,” but so far they have no evidence he was directed into violence or “ever travelled overseas to meet with extremist groups”.
Senator Joe Lieberman is the only person I’ve heard in America call Hassan a terrorist. He calls him a “self-radicalised, home-grown terrorist” and therefore concludes this was “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11”.
I suspect the reason you have not heard others condemn this as a heinous terrorist act is because America is very uncomfortable with the very idea of home-grown terrorists.
They can’t deal with the idea that people born and raised in the US want to attack it. Or work out how to identify the so called “clean skin” operatives who carry passports with the Stars and Stripes on them.
Najibullah Zazi, the terrorist suspect arrested just before 9/11 this year and accused of plotting to bomb New York, is a naturalised US citizen but he is originally from Afghanistan.
If the authorities are right about what he was planning, then that would have indisputably been a home grown terror attack on America, carried out by a man who passed the vetting process to work as a shuttle driver at Denver airport.
But at his trial I am sure we will hear plenty about his Afghan and Pakistani connections, as well as his life in the US.
The idea that a major in the US army could have become radicalized to the point of committing terrorism is too much to bear. Much easier to conclude that no-one noticed he’d been driven to such desperation that he committed an act of mass murder than to think of using the “T” word.
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