[Reader-list] "Identity or insanity?" (on Fort Hood massacre and after)

[Kshmendra Kaul]

Please read at:
 
http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/news/world/19-identity-or-insanity-hh-02
 
Identity or insanity?
By Rafia Zakaria
Wednesday, 25 Nov, 2009
 
‘Sometimes an extremist is really an extremist’ was the title of a recent column written by Los Angeles Times columnist Jonah Goldberg this past week. The subject, unsurprisingly, was the ongoing investigation into the motives of Maj Hassan Nidal who shot and killed 13 people in Fort Hood, Texas. 
 
In his piece, Mr Goldberg exhorts Americans to ‘admit it … Major Hassan is a Muslim fanatic, motivated by other Muslim fanatics’. 
 
The debate over whether Major Nidal was plain crazy or a motivated scheming fanatic has escalated in the past few weeks with new discoveries of his contacts with Yemeni cleric Anwar Al Awlaki and the discovery of business cards in his apartment that described him as a ‘soldier of Allah’. 
 
Conservative commentators like Charles Krauthammer of the