Call it treason

Dorothy Rabinowitz, for whom words are saber points, has a delicious take in the Wall Street Journal this morning about the willful blindness of American opinion leaders on the subject of Major Nidal Hussein:

'The tide of pronouncements and ruminations pointing to every cause for this event other than the one obvious to everyone in the rational world continues apace. Commentators, reporters, psychologists and, indeed, army spokesmen continue to warn portentously, "We don't yet know the motive for the shootings."'

Of course we know the motive: Major Hassan saw the US Army as engaged in a battle with Islamic extremism, and he enlisted on the other side. Ms Rabinowitz calls this terrorism, but that's not strictly true, since terrorism by definition is the use of deadly force against civilians for political ends. What the major committed was something much more basic: treason. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford