Events | 2009.11.14
American, for better or worse | Michael Tomasky
US-born Nidal Hassan should be hated for what he did at Fort Hood, not for who he is
What will Americans make in the coming days of the horrifying murder by Major Nidal Hassan – a Palestinian-American who was born in Virginia but whose parents migrated from near Jerusalem – of 12 of his fellow soldiers and one civilian? We should begin by noting that there is no powerful "anti-Muslim sentiment" afoot – there were 156 hate-crime incidents in the US in 2006, the most recent year for which numbers were available. One hesitates to call such a figure tolerable, but as a point of comparison, the UK, with less than one-fifth of America\'s population, had 106 such incidents in a 12-month period covering 2007-2008.
Even so, the national mood, in the wake of divisive off-year elections and terrible unemployment figures , is brittle. On the day of Hassan\'s massacre, about 5,000 rightwing "tea partiers" stormed Capitol hill. They\'re the kind of folks who call Barack Obama a "Muslim" as an epithet (but they\'re equal opportunity: there were also signs to the effect that the president is controlled by the Rothschilds).
We have much more to learn about Hassan before we can jump to any conclusions. A New York Times profile of him from yesterday notes that this army psychiatrist, who\'d presumably heard many blood-curdling war stories, obsessively feared being sent over to Iraq or Afghanistan. But it then says that the FBI has monitored some internet postings by a certain Nidal Hassan that spoke positively of suicide bombers, comparing them to soldiers who risk their lives for their comrades. The Times didn\'t know if it was the same Nidal Hassan.
For all most Americans know about Palestinian culture, Nidal Hassan could be as common a name as Dave Johnson. The Palestinian is an unknown person in the US. Jews are a part of the country and have been for decades, but average Americans pretty much know Palestinians only as suicide bombers. Sadly, for some Americans this event will reinforce an image of a people who resort first to mindless violence.
A Palestinian-American soldier is a strange thing to most Americans. I grew up watching second world war-era movies about American armed units that invariably featured the following types. There was a tough guy from Brooklyn, usually with an Italian-sounding name like Joe or better still Vinny. There was a sturdy fellow from corn-country, who represented the no-nonsense fearlessness of your average American. There was a southerner, often a bit slow-witted but lovable, who provided comic relief but came through when the chips were down. The thing they had in common was that every one of them was white.
All this changed in the post-Vietnam era. It came to be understood that wars were actually fought by black, working-class or poor people, so Hollywood embraced that. The really heavy lifting in the fields of south-east Asia was typically done, in life and in film, by sons of the ghetto and what we sometimes call white trash kids. More recent filmic depictions of the grunt\'s life have incorporated Latinos. But a Palestinian?
We should assume until it\'s proven otherwise that Hassan was an American and a loyal one, who just snapped, as Americans of all ethnicities and backgrounds and political persuasions do. And, as is so rarely the case in these situations, he\'s alive, so we\'ll have a chance to hear him express his views some day.
He was a native-born citizen. He deserves exactly the same legal representation and presumptions as if he were a white man from corn-country. And he deserves exactly the same amount of anger and fury and contempt from the rest of us for this unspeakable thing he did. Let him rot – but because of what he did, not because of who he is.
Editor\'s note: The headlines on this article were changed after publication
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]er-first-foremost-nidal-hassan
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