Sometimes A Flower Is Just A Potted Plant

Atlantic's Jeffrey Goldberg makes a good point about Ft. Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan:

It seems, though, that when an American military officer who is a practicing Muslim allegedly shoots forty of his fellow soldiers who are about to deploy to the two wars the United States is currently fighting in Muslim countries, some broader meaning might, over time, be discerned, especially if the officer did, in fact, yell "Allahu Akbar" while murdering his fellow soldiers, as some soldiers say he did. This is the second time this year American soldiers on American soil have been gunned down by a Muslim who was reportedly unhappy with America's wars in the Middle East (the first took place in Arkansas, to modest levels of notice). And, of course, this would not be the first instance of an American Muslim soldier killing fellow soldiers over his disagreements with American foreign policy; in 2003, Army Sgt. Hasan Akbar killed two officers and wounded fourteen others when he rolled a grenade into a tent in a homicidal protest against American policy.

I am not arguing, of course, that American Muslims, as a whole, are violently unhappy with America (I've argued the opposite, in fact). But I do think that elite makers of opinion in this country try very hard to ignore the larger meaning of violent acts when they happen to be perpetrated by Muslims. Here's a simple test: If Nidal Malik Hasan had been a devout Christian with pronounced anti-abortion views, and had he attacked, say, a Planned Parenthood office, would his religion have been considered relevant as we tried to understand the motivation and meaning of the attack? Of course. Elite opinion makers do not, as a rule, try to protect Christians and Christian belief from investigation and criticism. Quite the opposite. It would be useful to apply the same standards of inquiry and criticism to all religions.

And Goldberg's point is if a non-Muslim shoots somebody, religion doesn't matter. If a Muslim shoots somebody however, it's proof that all Muslims are evil and that Islam is a cult based around killing all non-Muslims, and that we should take special action to segregate all Muslims from our society, for they are all The Enemy. Maj. Hasan's religion, because he is a Muslim, is the only possible explanation for why he killed.

Substitute "black" or "Hispanic" for "Muslim" and "race" for "religion" up there and the Wingnut mind starts to make more sense.

They always need an Enemy. If Maj. Hasan the Muslim had instead been named Maj. Harris the Christian, the same people instead be talking about all the horrors of war he had heard tales of as an Army psychiatrist at the largest Army base in America.

[UPDATE 12:11 PM] Steven D over at BooMan's place is starting to sound like me, the poor bastard.