A Sick and Twisted Game

By now we've all read about the shootings at Fort Hood, where a deranged Army psychiatrist - apparently in need of psychiatric help himself - shot up an Army readiness center, killing 13 before he was shot himself. (The shooter remains alive in a civilian hospital in Killeen.)

Of course, the shooter's religion has set a few wingnut blogs all atwitter - professional green-baiter Donald Douglas is hardly able to contain his excitement at the prospect of another Moooooooslim terror attack.

Blaming the shooter's religion - by all accounts, he was a devout Muslim who prayed damn near every day - is convenient, but probably not particularly instructive. In fact, this WaPo profile of the shooter reveals that there are other things to blame that make just as much sense as blaming his religion. For example:

Hasan was born in Arlington

He's from Arlington. The Virginia Tech shooter was from Centreville. That's it - Northern Virginians are all murderous maniacs. Stop me before I shoot someone, readers!

Or maybe it was Obama's fault?

Lee told Fox News that Hasan "was hoping that President Obama would pull troops out. . . . When things weren't going that way, he became more agitated, more frustrated with the conflicts over there. . . . He made his views well known about how he felt about the U.S. involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan."

See? Obama killed those troops. I just knew it.

And, well, we Washington-area natives blame everything else on Dan Snyder, might as well blame this on him too:

Hasan is an avid Redskins fan. "That was his main entertainment," his aunt said. "He was not a movie watcher. He worked hard and had been studying for years. He buried himself in his work."

If only Snyder had drafted decent offensive linemen and a receiver, the shooter wouldn't have been so depressed...

Truth is, of course, none of those things make any sense. A more comprehensive reading of the Post's profile gives us a picture of someone who was deeply disturbed, a smart but isolated, depressed, and fragile man, scarred by the stress of his job, who couldn't deal with the added stress of his impending deployment, and just snapped. In short, he bears more resemblance to Eric Harris than to Mohammed Atta.

Anyway, let's pause a moment to remember those who died in the massacre. You expect danger abroad when you're a soldier. You don't expect it at home, on a heavily guarded base, from someone who wears your own uniform.

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Also, let's give a warm ONAF round of applause to the Fort Hood civilian policewoman, Sgt. Kimberly Munley, who ran into the readiness center and took down the shooter despite having been shot herself. In the process, she saved heaven only knows how many lives. And an extra round of applause to the soldiers who immediately began tending to their wounded comrades after the shooting was over. Heroes, all.

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(Wow, second Unexpectedly Sober reference in a week. WTF?)