Elliot,

First, you’re right, I think, to note that we’re operating in a court of public opinion here but your comment that there is “too much evidence to suspend judgement” is unsettling. After all, “the court of public opinion” is often meant as a pejorative term. That’s why we have courts of law, right–to allow for a cool-headed and rational assesment of the evidence rather than reflexive anger to dictate the terms by which justice is administered; and the comments on Mr. Kimball’s article, and the article itself, seem full of knee-jerk anger of the kind that all of us should find disturbing, even in the court of opinion.

Second, you write that you consider anyone who kills innocent people a “loon”; Questions of circumstances aside (were the pilots of the Enola Gay lunatics?)I tend to agree but the insanity plea has long been a part of American and English jurisprudence. Its application and the decisions pertaining to it have been vexed to say the least but we should acknowledge its traditional place.

Do I have a difficulty calling Hasan (who has now been officially charged)–based on what the news has reported–a terrorist? Yes, I do. First, the term is notoriously difficult to define but my understanding of it is this: an individual who harms civilians or non-combatants in order to advance a political or ideological cause (I’m open to a better definition but I’m pretty comfortable with this one).

Hasan seems, again from what I’ve read and heard, to have been motivated less by a desire to promulgate a political or religious cause than personal grievance. Jihad–in THIS instance–seems like a convenient cover for personal malevolence. How often it is in other circumstances is another question–though one well worth considering.

My point is this: when we automatically assign Hasan to the category of “terrorist” we duplicate the mistake of all of those officers and evaluation boards that gave him a free pass for fear of looking anti-Muslim. Which is to say, we assign him to a category rather than observing the hard facts of personal instability and disturbance. Why do we have to assume the perpetrator of these acts was a terrorist in order to recognize how horrific they were?