Hasan—Premeditated Murder, A Terrorist Act or Insanity?

Hasan—Premeditated Murder, A Terrorist Act or Insanity?

On November 12, 2009, military prosecutors charged the Army psychiatrist with 13 counts of premeditated murder in last week's rampage at Fort Hood, Tex.

In an article published in The Washington Post on Friday, November 13, 2009, Christopher Grey, a spokesman for the Armys Criminal Investigation Division stated, “We're looking at every reason for this shooting." He further stated, "We're aggressively following every possible lead."
The same article went on to say, “Investigators say they think he was the only gunman. Grey, however, left open the possibility that someone else may have helped instigate the attack. He said military prosecutors may charge Hasan with additional crimes.”

And finally,

In the same article, William Cassara, a former Army captain and lawyer who is now in private practice in Augusta, Ga., "I would fully anticipate that the charge sheet in this case will get much longer."

I would presume from this chit-chat, that the Army has not ruled out charging Major Hasan with conducting a terrorist attack. However, in the same Friday the 13th Post article, Guy Womack, a retired Marine lieutenant colonel who practices military law in Houston, speculated that Hasan's defense counsel, retired Colonel John Galligan, probably will argue that Hasan was mentally unstable at the time of the shootings.

Womack postulated that, "The defense argument will be that Major Hasan knew that he would be identified, he knew that he would be captured, and he did it anyway, so clearly he was insane, that his mental defect was so severe that he couldn't control his actions from right and wrong," [My emphasis]

There is no doubt in my mind that Lieutenant Colonel Womack’s assessment as to the possible insanity plea is right on the mark.

Why?

Because we just aren’t able to wrap our mind around the idea that an individual, particularly a follower of Islam, could/would commit an act of terrorism without being part of a larger radical Islamic plot. Unless, of course, the individual was insane. Why else would someone do something as horrendous as this?

In a previous posting, I had listed an article the Scott Stewart and Fred Burton who reported that Nasir al-Wahayshi, the leader of al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula called on jihadists, "…to conduct simple attacks against a variety of targets in the Muslim world and the West.” Stewart and Burton also noted “… how it is relatively simple to conduct such attacks against soft targets using improvised explosive devices, guns or even knives and clubs.”

On November 7, 2009, The New York Times reported in an article by Nicole Bengiveno, that, “After two days of inquiry into the mass shooting at Fort Hood, investigators have tentatively concluded that it was not part of a terrorist plot.” Ms. Bengiveno went on to report, “… the investigators, working with behavioral experts, suggested that he might have long suffered from emotional problems that were exacerbated by the tensions of his work with veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan who returned home with serious psychiatric problems.”

As I noted above, we just can’t get our head wrapped around the idea that Major Hasan intentionally or unintentionally followed al-Wahayshi’s advice to, “conduct simple attacks…” In this case a lone gunman, a fellow soldier, gunned down and killed 13 people and wounded another 30. This was an act of terrorism by a radical Islamist, not the act of someone who did not know what he was doing and could not distinguish right from wrong. Major Hasan thought about this; he bought two guns, he bought ammunition, he bought a laser pistol sight and, according to reports, spent time at a shooting range familiarizing himself with his newly acquired capability. And the idea that you must belong to some terrorist group like al Qaeda or some terrorist cell to commit terrorist acts is passé. Groups or cells are much easier to track; a lone terrorist is invisible to the untrained eye. The sooner we figure this out, the better off we will be.

The act of terrorist or an insane person? The line may be fine. A radical Islamist may certain seem insane to we “non-believers”, yet in at least one instance his act has been proclaimed to be the act of a hero. Surely if Major Hasan had been killed that day, he would have been proclaimed a martyr by radical Islamists.