Reihan Salam on the Fort Hood shooting

I’ve been at a loss over what to say about the Fort Hood shooting. I think Atrios was on to something yesterday when he wrote “When your first reaction to tragic events is to consider how they might support your politics, it’s time to go for a nice long walk.” Indeed. I was initially tempted this morning to write something like: “When Christians commit murder in politically motivated contexts, it’s an aberration. When Muslims commit murder in politically motivated contexts, it’s time to gird our loins for a clash of the civiliations.” That feels right, but it also feels snarkier than events deserve.

A few months ago, when Scott Roeder killed George Tiller, lots of conservatives urged us not to blame the wider anti-abortion movement for the crimes of one disturbed man. Lots of us on the left — including me — suggested it wasn’t so easy. Now, however, the shoe is on the other foot. Some of the “clash of the civilization” conservatives are making the case that the Fort Hood shootings are exactly what millions and millions of Muslims love to see. I’d rather not believe that. But it’s truly depressing to see all the usual suspects flee to all the usual positions when something catastrophic happens. The sound you just heard? A million knees jerking all at once.

At the Daily Beast, conservative Reihan Salam offers some thoughts worth considering:

Overnight, Twitter feeds and message boards pulsed with anti-Muslim anger. This kind of venting is important to a free society. But it could also be an ominous sign of tensions to come. It is thus no surprise that groups like the controversial Council on American-Islamic Relations have been so quick to condemn the violence. The vast majority of Americans recognize that Hasan doesn’t represent all Muslims, just as the Virginia Tech killer Seung-Hui Cho didn’t represent all Korean-Americans. Yet people who are on the fence about whether Muslims can be trusted could tip over into believing that they can’t.

Hasan’s most important victims are the families who’ve lost loved ones and the soldiers who’ve lost comrades. They deserve our deepest sympathies. Yet Hasan’s other victims are the millions of Muslim Americans who’ve fully embraced American life, and who feel a profound sense of dread whenever innocent people are murdered in the name of Islam.

And the wise James Fallows offers these remarks at his Atlantic blog:

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the “expert” talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre “mean”? A decade later, do we “know” anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They’ve got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don’t mean nothing.