Mass murder madness

Are all terrorists crazy?

Classmates: Hasan defended suicide bombings, held Islamist views. Money quote:

Despite the controversy that his schoolwork created, classmates did not view Hasan as mentally unstable or psychotic, the source said.

But the question being asked is if the perpetrator of the guerilla attack is insane or not. The meme is that he went beserk from listening to the horrible war stories he listened to from his patients, soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

You would think there would be a veritable epidemic of cases such as Hasan.

Charles Krauthammer writes on Medicalizing mass murder

It’s been decades since I practiced psychiatry. Perhaps I missed the epidemic.

But, of course, if the shooter is named Nidal Hasan, who National Public Radio reported had been trying to proselytize doctors and patients, then something must be found. Presto! Secondary post-traumatic stress disorder, a handy invention to allow one to ignore the obvious.

And the perfect moral finesse. Medicalizing mass murder not only exonerates. It turns the murderer into a victim, indeed a sympathetic one. After all, secondary PTSD, for those who believe in it (you won’t find it in DSM-IV-TR, psychiatry’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual), is known as “compassion fatigue.” The poor man — pushed over the edge by an excess of sensitivity.

Have we totally lost our moral bearings? Nidal Hasan (allegedly) cold-bloodedly killed 13 innocent people. His business card had his name, his profession, his medical degrees and his occupational identity. U.S. Army? No. “SoA” — Soldier of Allah. In such cases, political correctness is not just an abomination. It’s a danger, clear and present.

ShrinkWrapped posts on Islamist Terror and Psychosis

The problem for all of those wondering about Major Hasan is that they are restricted by their own frame. In a vacuum, an American who believes that the United States is waging war on Islam, that the West, especially the Jews and Americans, conspire to keep the Muslim world in despair, and that murdering unarmed American soldiers is an assured way to gain entrance to Paradise as a Jihad martyr, would be considered to have lost contact with reality. Unfortunately for a Muslim int he Ummah these “delusional” ideas are shared by a significant portion of their coreligionists. If major Hasan is delusional and psychotic then so are members and supporters of al Qaeda, Hezbollah, Wahhabi and Deobandi Islam, and a host of other sects and groups. The only way Major Hasan could be considered mentally disordered based on his belief structure would be were there to be an idiosyncratic component. For example, if he were to believe that he is the embodiment of Mohammed, we would be correct to think of him as psychotically deluded, just as we characterize the multitude of psychotic patients through the ages who were convinced they were Jesus Christ.

The conundrum for all the sages in the media and our government remains how to determine that Major Hasan was a lone psycho rather than a Jihadi. We may well be treated to an interesting juxtaposition as Khaled Sheik Mohamed, during his trial, espouses the same motivating “delusions” as major Hasan at his trial. The reporting in the MSM should be fascinating.

No doubt about it, the lawyers are getting the workings of an insanity defense on both the Hasan and Mohamed cases.

The only insanity lies in us believing they are insane.