The further to the left or the right you move, the more your lens on life distorts.

Thursday, November 12, 2009

Homegrown

As media coverage of Major Nidal Malik Hasan continues to unfold, it’s fascinating to observe how the majority of mainstream media continue to present Hasan in a quasi-sympathetic light. Consider this excerpt from an article entitled “The Fort Hood Killer: Terrified or Terrorist” in this week’s edition of Time Magazine:
Hasan was a walking contradiction: the counselor who himself needed counseling; the proud soldier who did not want to fight, at least not against fellow Muslims; the man who could not find a sufficiently modest and pious wife through his mosque's matchmaking machinery but who frequented the local strip club. A man supposedly so afraid of deployment that he launched a war of his own from which he clearly did not expect to return alive. "Everyone is asking why this happened," said Hasan's family in a formal statement, "and the answer is that we simply do not know."

Tens of millions of Americans do know.

We have not “jumped to conclusions” but rather have examined the reported evidence and past history and find absolutely nothing sympathetic or exculpatory about Hasan’s Jihadist rampage. We care little about his contradictions or his need for counseling. We do not view him as a “proud soldier”—a characterization so insulting to our military that it’s breathtaking.

Because it’s becoming increasingly difficult to stick to the “deranged victim” meme, the left-leaning MSM has begun to modify its story. Among the more ‘edgy’ MSM commentators, Hasan is being characterized as a “homegrown Jihadist.”

But there’s a subtle critique of the United States in this characterization. Somehow, they imply, we’ve created these murderous thugs through our actions, and we’re responsible for the mayhem they cause. If we had just been more understanding (as they killed 3,000 of our citizens on 9/11); if we’d just used negotiation rather than force (as the Taliban raped and murdered woman while at the same time giving refuge to al Qaida), if we had just, well, decided to be Dhimmi, everything would have been okay. It fits perfectly with the Left’s insistence that, as the Reverend Jeremiah Wright (remember him?) might say, “the chickens have come home to roost.”

Hasan was not “homegrown” in the sense that the MSM wants us to believe. He willingly adopted a radical Islamist ideology that has become a virus infecting the fringes of Islamic life in this country. Moslem-Americans need to eradicate it, and to date, they have failed. We need to insist that they try harder.

But while this happens, the MSM and government spokespeople continue to force politically correct nonsense down our throats, justified it by suggesting that they don’t want to encourage violence against Moslems. What violence? The citizens of the United States—to their credit—have shown enormous restraint and understanding. They have not threatened Mosques, have not injured or killed Moslems, and have never, ever, committed the acts that are perpetrated regularly against the “infidel” in Islamic countries. Don’t believe me? Ask a Coptic Christian in Egypt.