Chip Bok's Bokbluster

Two weeks ago I was in Iraq drawing cartoons for happy soldiers headed home to Fort Hood. A few days earlier I had drawn troops, doctors, and other medical staff at Walter Reed hospital in Washington, DC.

Fortunately, I didn’t meet anyone like Major Nidal M. Hasan. In 2007, as a resident at Walter Reed, Dr. Hasan gave a “medical lecture”. You can read about it in this Washington Post story by Dana Priest. Along with talk about beheading and boiling oil (UK Telegraph) he says, “we love death more than you love life”.

That kind of talk may cause you to miss your flight at the airport, but Hasan was sent to Fort Hood as a psychiatrist. At Fort Hood he gave away his possessions and, while shouting Allahu Akbar, allegedly shot 43 people, killing 13. His former Imam, Anwar al-Awlaki, on the lam in Yemen, called Hasan a hero.

I hadn’t figured on jihad in Texas.

As for claims that Hasan was just one more stressed out GI, David Ignatius, of the Washington Post, thinks the military “may be the most resilient part of American society right now”.