The massacre at Fort Hood last week is the perfect apotheosis of the liberal victimology described in my book "Guilty: Liberal 'Victims' and Their Assault on America."
According to witnesses, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan entered a medical facility at Fort Hood, prayed briefly, then shouted "Allahu akbar" before he began gunning down American troops. Now I don't know which to be more afraid of: Muslims or government-run health care systems.
President Obama honored the victims by immediately warning Americans not to "jump to conclusions" -- namely, the obvious conclusion that the attack was an act of Islamic terrorism. As conclusions go, it wasn't much of a jump.
But the mainstream media waited for no information -- indeed actively avoided learning any information -- before leaping to the far less obvious conclusion that the suspect's mass murder was set off by "stress."
The day after the slaughter, The New York Times ran one editorial and two of three op-eds asserting as much -- which was at least one more than the Times usually runs about psycho-killer soldiers going on rampages.
Two days after the mass shooting, the Times' laughably predictable headlines about the Fort Hood bloodbath were:
-- "Preliminary Inquiry Finds No Link to Terror Plot"
-- "Painful Stories Take a Toll on Military Therapists"
-- "When Soldiers' Minds Snap"
The Los Angeles Times jumped to the exact same conclusion, running an article on the massacre titled: "Fort Hood Tragedy Rocks Military as It Grapples With Mental Health Issues." Time magazine followed suit, posting an article titled: "Stresses at Fort Hood Were Likely Intense for Hasan."
Inasmuch as Maj. Hasan had never been deployed overseas, much less seen combat, liberals seem to have discovered the first recorded case of "pre-traumatic stress syndrome."
Their point was: The real victim of Fort Hood was Maj. Hasan. Indeed, all Muslims were the victims that day.
The media quickly set to work assembling lachrymose accounts of taunts Hasan had been subjected to in the military for being a Muslim, the most harrowing of which seems to have been his car being keyed at his off-base apartment complex.
I suppose we should be relieved that liberals weren't claiming Hasan snapped because of the dimming prospects for a health care bill by the end of the year.
The evidence for the manifestly obvious conclusion we were supposed to avoid jumping to is rather more extensive.
According to numerous eyewitness accounts, Hasan denounced the "war on terror" as a war against Islam, said Muslims should attack Americans in retaliation for the war in Iraq, defended suicide bombers and said he was "happy" when a Muslim murdered a soldier at a military recruiting center in Arkansas earlier this year.
Stranger still, he wasn't auditioning for his own show on MSNBC when he made these statements.
Hasan shared a "spiritual adviser" with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers, Imam Anwar al-Awlaki, whose unseemly enthusiasm for jihad got him banned from speaking in Britain, even by video link.
A few years ago, Hasan delivered an hour-long PowerPoint lecture to an audience of doctors at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, arguing that non-Muslims should be beheaded and have burning oil poured down their throats.
He had tried to contact al-Qaida, and at least one U.S. intelligence official says the Army knew it.
Despite being well aware of Hasan's disturbing views and conduct, the Army did nothing.
Far less offensive speech has been grounds for discipline or even removal from duties in the military. In the aftermath of the Tailhook scandal, for example, two Navy officers were reprimanded and reassigned after putting up a sign with the words of a nursery rhyme altered to include a vulgar sexual reference to liberal congresswoman Patricia Schroeder.
But a Muslim Army doctor can go around a military installation somberly advocating the beheading of infidels, and the girls running the military treat him like he's Nicole Kidman and they're press junket reporters.
The Army's top brass, Gen. George Casey, responded to the military's shocking decision to keep a terrorist-sympathizing Muslim in the Army by announcing: "Our diversity ... is a strength." And I thought gays couldn't openly serve in the military.
On Sept. 11, 2001, Muslims moved to the top of liberals' victim pantheon on the basis of having slaughtered 3,000 Americans. Muslims were "victims" of Americans' displeasure with them for the biggest terrorist attack in world history. The only American deserving of more coddling than a Muslim is the first African-American president.
So, now any dyspeptic expression toward a Muslim is grounds for calling in a diversity coordinator. And when the "victim" attacks, as at Fort Hood, the rest of us are supposed to feel guilty because Hasan's car got keyed once. As with all liberal "victims," it is the victim who is massively guilty.