The Fort Hood Attack Was an Act of Terrorism

Here's how Bill O'Reilly finished his Talking Points Memo on the Fort Hood shooting.

Talking Points" believes media that use tragedy to ram home political points are despicable. That should never happen. This Hasan should be condemned all day
long. That's the story. The guy is either a Muslim terrorist or a crazy person. That's it. Those are the choices. Hasan's computer should tell authorities if this rampage was planned well in advance. If so, he's a terrorist. If not, he's a nut.

Now, I would say he's both a "nut"and a terrorist. In fact, all terrorists are crazy. They are the textbook definition of a Psychopath. In fact, they take psychopathology to the extremes. They believe that the murder of mass civilians is acceptable and a standard operating procedure. That's taking Psychopathology to its extreme.

Furthermore, this mass murder is the definition of terrorism. An act of terror puts fear into the population. What else would an attack on an army base be but an act that was meant to strike fear in the population? Of course, this was an act of terror. By that measure, the attack in Oklahoma City, Colorado, and Virginia Tech were also an act of terror.

The only question that remains to be asked is whether or not this act of terror was inspired by radical Islamists. So far, there is plenty of evidence of this. He yelled "Allah Akbar"(God is Great) when he began shooting. There's evidence that he wrote on radical Islamic chat rooms. There's evidence that he made radical statements to colleagues.

The only question that remains is whether or not the shooter, Hasan, became mentally ill and that illness, schizophrenia, drove him to do this. In that case, he committed this act of terrorism under a mental illness. That's a legal argument that I'm sure his defense lawyers will try and make. It doesn't change what he did, however, or what it means. This was an act of terror, no question, and that act of terror was almost certainly inspired by radical Islamism.