On Thursday, February 18, 2010 Joseph Stack, 53 year old software engineer and bass player crashed his Piper PA28-236 Dakota into the Echelon Federal Building in Austin, Texas in a rage over taxes. Miraculously, only one person died.
On Nov. 4, 2009 Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan marched onto the base at Ft. Hood, Texas and murdered 13 of his fellow soldiers, wounding another 30.
On Friday, Feb. 12, 2010 Amy Bishop, PhD, professor at the University of Alabama, Huntsville shot and killed three colleagues during a staff meeting, wounding 2 others.
On May 31, 2009 Scott Roeder, anti-abortion fanatic and suspected schizophrenic walked into the Reformation Lutheran Church in Wichita, KS and shot Doctor George Tiller in the eye.
On Christmas Day 2009, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to kill 289 people on board Northwest Airlines Flight 253 using a bomb concealed in his clothing. No one was injured.
On April 19, 1995, Timothy McVeigh, ex GI and KKK sympathizer, detonated a truck full of explosives in the front of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal building killing 186 and injuring 450.
Question: Which of these people is a criminal and which is a terrorist? Why?
Applying Occam's Razor, the simplest answer is also the correct one... It doesn't matter.
Regardless of motivation, a crime is a crime and should be handled in the same measured, detached manner prescribed by our judicial system. Calling a person a terrorist is a pointless name game resulting in unnecessary fear and tragic overreaction. There are thousands of Christian Americans passionate for a cause. They talk tough, attend rallies, carry signs. They do not shoot people or blow things up. There are thousands of American Muslims who object to the military invasion of Iraq. They rail on web sites, reinforce their views at mosques, they applaud America's military difficulties in Afghanistan. They also do not shoot people or blow things up. Muslim extremists are no different from Christian extremists and should be treated no differently.
We are a country of laws. Americans never miss an opportunity to parade our freedoms and our Constitution through the streets. We take great pride in any effort to bring that freedom to others. We cheer the rule of law when it's exported to Iraq and Afghanistan. Sadly, when opportunities arise to apply those same noble principles in our own country, we look to Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin for guidance. Bolstered by the clownish rhetoric of Glen Beck and Bill O'Reilly, we respond to every threat by breaking out the torches and pitchforks.
Amy Bishop was a Harvard PhD yet no one (except maybe Sean Hannity) is looking for the motivation for her rampage in Cambridge. If you shoot three professors in Alabama you're a headcase; if you shoot a doctor in a church you're a misguided baby-saver; if you shoot 43 soldiers on an Army base, you're a Muslim demon controlled by puppet-masters in the Middle East.
When tragedy strikes, America seeks answers. What were the warning signs that we missed? How can we prevent another Ft. Hood or another Virginia Tech? Frustration over the senseless loss of life prompts us to lash out in all directions. After 9-11 many dark-skinned citizens were harassed including turban-wearing Sikhs. Strangely, after the Tiller shooting, no one (except maybe Keith Olberman) was suggesting we keep an eye on Bill O'Reilly's ardent fans. After Virginia Tech, there was no increase in surveillance of Korean Americans.
What escapes notice is that right-wing extremists, hungry to find any excuse to abandon democratic principles of due process in favor of a rope and a tree, never think to attack or question the Second Amendment. I defy you to find one single conservative talker who suggested that, had Major Hasan's weapons been tougher to obtain, a tragedy might have been averted or minimized. If you imagine that an Army doctor has access to military firearms, you know nothing about the military.
You would expect the Hannitys and Becks to demand frontier justice. They have never seen a fire that couldn't use a good dose of gasoline. Political leaders however, should know better. Elected officials are presumed to understand the laws and the ramifications of ignoring them. It's why we elect people trained in the law, not in TV ratings. Sadly, Conservatives and by extension Republicans, have decided that pandering to the baser emotions of Americans is easier and more expedient than leading. God help us if they succeed.
When people commit crimes in America or against Americans we arrest them, read them their rights, put them on trial and if guilty, lock them up. (If, after 44 years you don't understand Miranda, you don't watch enough Law and Order.) No exceptions. No.. "but what ifs..".
If you are captured on the battlefield (in the thousands of years of combat this has never been an obscure concept) you are a prisoner of war. Goodbye Department of Justice; hello Geneva Convention. We don't mix and match. You are not in line for Dick Cheney Justice (which is no justice) because you pray to Mecca. Those battlefields are in Iraq and Afghanistan, period. Seat 17F of a commercial airliner is not a battlefield.
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