With all due respect to Mr. Kimball, really? First, until today–November 14th–there were no formal charges made in regard to the massacre at Ft. Hood. So if we believe in due process in this country–and I assume Mr. Kimball does (I certainly do)–we should recognize that any commentary about the events that transpired at Ft. Hood, President Obama’s included, have been made with a certain circumspection. In civilian circumstances that circumspection would persist until a conviction had been made but the US military, when prosecuting crimes, does not operate under the presumption that an individual is innocent until proven guilty. This makes abundant sense to me for various reasons, but we should recognize that the military does at least operate under the assumption that an individual is innocent until charged.

Second, according to Mr. Kimball the events at Ft. Hood are clear evidence of an Islamist terrorist threat to the United States and in the larger case he makes the first item of evidence is September 11th. No mind that eight years have transpired between the attacks of September 11th and the massacre at Ft Hood. For Mr. Kimball they are inextricable, both informed by the tenets of a faith that includes millions of people in its fold. But if we’re looking at a law of averages–rather than the cheap anecdotal narrative that Mr. Kimball employs (cheap not so much because the anecdotes are bad but because the narrative he employs is ridiculously trite)–there has been, so far as I am aware, only one massacre motivated by what appears to be Islamist extremism (remember, innocent until charged).

Beyond that, why is it so difficult to acknowledge that the suspected perpetrator of these acts is a plain lunatic? Lunatics find ways to justify their lunacy. It was CS Lewis after all–probably the 20th century’s greatest apologist for the Christian faith–who told us that we should not mistake a masochist who wanders into a church for a saint. Likewise we should not mistake a psychopath who professes a certain faith for a holy warrior.

I have long admired Mr. Kimball’s work–I find him a bracing and incisive critic of so much of the intellectual cant that circulates in our culture–but here I find him a grotesque caricature of the savvy and smarts that so much of his other observation manifests.