Call it treason II

I earlier blogged about the notion of trying Major Nidal Hasan for, among other things, treason. If it's not treasonous for a company-level officer in the U.S. Army to turn his weapon on his fellow soldiers, because they're American soldiers, what could possibly merit the charge? In the Wall Street Journal today, Yale law professor Peter Shuck discusses this question in passing. As it happens, he doesn't think much of it--too difficult to prove.

But then he poses an interesting alternative: we should revoke the acquired citizenship of would-be murderers like the would-be Times Square bomber. (Faisal Shahzad was naturalized--and swore allegiance to the country that was giving him the green passport that enabled him to travel freely to Pakistan for training--just a year before trying to create a fireball on 42nd Street.) What a satisfying notion! And much more in the American tradition than putting out a contract on the life of Anwar al-Awlaki, the U.S.-born cleric who inspired Major Hasan, Mr. Shahzad, and other nutters. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Soldier of the Lord

Here's a taped rant from that American-born spokesman for al-Qaeda who may or may not have been captured the other day. Like all ideologues, he goes on and on, and even an excerpt is windy, but also revealing:

The year 2009, the inaugural year of a new administration in Washington, ended in a truly miserable fashion for the Crusader West and its intelligence organs, who suffered a series of moral and material blows which culminated in the bloody deaths of at least 8 CIA operatives in a masterfully-planned and executed martyrdom operation inside their clandestine base in Afghanistan. This crushing blow came just a few days after the compromising of America’s supposedly airtight security in a valiant attempt by a heroic soldier of al-Qaida to bring down an American airliner over Detroit. But I would like here to take you back to an earlier event, one whose hero wasn’t a member of al-Qaida or any other Islamic group, but was in fact, a ranking officer of the United States Army, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, who, this past autumn, opened fire on a group of American soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan deep within the army’s largest domestic base, Fort Hood, Texas. According to official army figures, at least 13 Crusaders were killed and more than 30 wounded in this surprise attack. Major Nidal Malik Hasan himself was shot, wounded and captured, and has had charges filed against him in a Crusader military court of inquisition in preparation for a summary show trial whose outcome is not in question....

The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan has shown us what one righteous Muslim with an assault rifle can do for his religion and brothers in faith, and has reminded us of how much pride and joy a single act of resistance and courage can instill in the hearts of Muslims everywhere. The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, by the grace of Allah and with a single 30-minute battle, singlehandedly brought the morale of the American military and public to its lowest point in years. The Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan, lightly armed but with a big heart, a strong will and a confident step, again brought into sharp focus the weaknesses and vulnerabilities of America, and again proved wrong those who claim America cannot be hit where it hurts. And most significantly, the Mujahid brother Nidal Hasan is a pioneer, a trailblazer and a role-model who has opened a door, lit a path and shown the way forward for every Muslim who finds himself among the unbelievers and yearns to discharge his duty to Allah and play a part in the defense of Islam and Muslims against the savage, heartless and bloody Zionist Crusader assault on our religion, sacred places and homelands.

If you want more, here it is on Threat Matrix. You will find, among other things, that Norway is in the crosshairs for being complicit in honoring Mr Obama. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford

Eight fall guys

When I read that eight Army officers might be reprimanded for failing to notice that Major Nidal Hasan was a certifiable Islamic nutter, I wondered if, in the end, they'd be the only ones punished in connection with the Fort Hood massacre. The administration's fumbling over the trial venue of Khalid Sheik Mohammed is hardly reassuring, nor is a legal system in which Major Hasan--paralyzed from the waist down--seems better positioned to sue the government than the government is to convict him of murder.

So I was much taken by Bret Stephens's counterfactual history of the Fort Hood shooting, published in the Wall Street Journal yesterday. Mr Stephens imagines an Army in which the eight fall guys were on their toes: they saw in Major Hasan a man about to explode with religious rage, and they duly reported him to the authorities. The mentally unbalanced psychiatrist would have been denied promotion and given an "unsuitable" discharge from military service. Thirteen soldiers would be alive today, in that case--and meanwhile, Mr Stephens persuasively speculates, the Good People would have come down upon the Army in force, crying racial intolerance from a "Christianist" military culture. (The late lamented Ted Kennedy was among those demanding a full investigation of the arrest of the Muslim chaplain at Guantanamo for espionage; the charges were dropped, the ex-chaplain wrote a book, and he became a delegate to the Democratic National Convention in 2008.) In this parallel universe, Major Hasan would have written a much-praised book, and the eight fall guys would now be accused of racial profiling. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford