Putting The Fort Hood Massacre in Context

....as the media searches for excuses (bullying, prejudice, impending deployment) for Major Hasan's slaughter of American soldiers at Fort Hood yesterday, it's important to remember that similar, if less bloody, incidents have happened with increasing frequency of the past few years.

There was the attack on the Jewish center in LA just a few years back (he was "deranged"). There was the incident in North Carolina where a young Muslim ran a number of his fellow students with his jeep (he felt "isolated"). And of course, we have the famous DC sniper, due to die later this month - praise Allah - who's name just happened to be Muhammad.

And those are the civilian attacks. There was a recruiting station shot up late last year in Little Rock, there was the plot to murder soldiers at Fort Dix (which Keith Olbermann mocked, here - felling stupider than usual today, Keith?), and numerous other both known and unknown that were broken up.

The attacks contain a common thread: all were acts of rage committed by Muslims against innocent American civilians/soldiers. And yet the media refuses to connect the dots, instead frantically looking for excuses (even citing Major Hasan's extra weapons training as proof of his inability to handle guns as opposed to evidence that he was deliberately training for such an act) in an attempt to force Americans away from the obvious conclusions.

For better or worse, there was little surprise when the Ft. Hood gunman turned out to be a discontented Islamist, which suggests that Americans have drawn their own conclusions about the nature of Muslims in America. Maybe if the media would address the phenomenon honestly, instead of explaining it away with a thin gruel of excuses, the nation could come to grips with it, understand it, and perhaps prevent similar attacks in the future.

But by creating a fog around this and other similar incidents, the media lays the groundwork for what may be unnecessary societal retribution against one class of citizens, when it may only be a small subset that is truly dangerous. For this the media will blame rednecks, hicks, and Republicans, while again refusing to address the root cause of the problem - themselves.

And you can rest assured that Barack Obama will do nothing to make this situation any better...