Irony

I'm not condoning Nidal Malik Hassan's actions in any way shape or form. He is a crazy murdering fiend, no question. But this whole situation has had me fuming every time I hear about it in the news. No one considered the religious backgrounds of the VA Tech shooter, or the Pittsburgh Fitness Center shooter, or the wacked minds of the Columbine teens who mowed down their classmates. No, what we heard was that these were messed up, lonely, angry psychotics. And the fact is, that is the same with Hassan. Today the headline is "Ft. Hood shooter charged with 13 counts of murder"-- and the headline seemed to sting my eyes in a strange way-- clearly so strange that I felt I had to write about it, because I hardly ever do this--but I could not help but see the irony of the fact that Hassan could have gotten on a plane and headed to Afghanistan, be handed a gun and, given the proper circumstances, even if innocent civilians happened to get killed in the crossfire, he would have gotten away with it. On a more grim and disturbing note, those thirteen soldiers could have been deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, been blown up by IED's or shot by snipers, and no one would ever be brought to justice, because that's what happens in war. People get killed. I'm just saying there is a whole lot more wrong with the picture of Nidal Malik Hassan than that he was a devout Muslim of Palestinian descent. He also was able to legally purchase a gun. And he was in an organization that condones the use of guns to kill, even if innocent people might get injured along the way, in a world that still, despite all the evolutionary evidence to support otherwise, a world that still recognizes violence as any kind of solution at all.