The case for U.S. Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan

In the wake of the tragic loss of life from last week's shooting at the Fort Hood military installation in Texas, there has been a constant stream of conjecture concerning the reasoning behind the alleged suspect's rampage.

It would be an attempt of pure folly to subscribe the antiquated and over-used "he hates America and freedom" line to dispel any other motivation, but in these troubled times of constant strife within the Muslim world, a more precise explanation must be offered.

The mind of Major Hasan has been filled with images of people from both his faith and ethnic background who have faced unimaginable destruction under the guise of liberation, and these events have been incubated by the profession that he, Major Hasan, has intimately been a part of since before the War on Terror began.

One can only imagine the constant second-guessing that Major Hasan dealt with as he struggled to reconcile the direction his life was taking him. On one hand, he was serving his home nation in its most venerable form - the military - all the while never being accepted by his contemporaries, superiors, and subordinates due to the appearance and makeup of his person.

What path shall a man take when he is not appreciated by the very land and body he was born into? I believe the answer was played out in its most brutal form that gloomy afternoon on the base. After all, what’s a dozen or so lives compared to the taking of tens of thousands by the indomitable machine that is the U.S. military.....indomitable up until that few minute stretch when one man, one Arab, and one Muslim, changed the scorecard single handedly.

Perhaps the prism of relativism can convince his persecutors to go gently into their task. Though 233 years of American history tells us that is a fairly unlikely happening.

A great toon for Obama

Obama in his element

Our glorious leader perched on his thrown.

Ode to George W Bush

Tomorrow arrives the day a great many of the populace have craved for since November 2004, the unequivocal end of the current administration's eight year executive reign. The perception of President Bush during his two terms have swung wildly on the approval line chart. He oversaw the most calamitous operation to be carried out on American soil in generations - nee the Operation of the Century as the Iraqi state deemed it in September 2001. In a matter of hours, the Islamic chickens had come home to roost, nourished by previous Presidents' inflaming escapades on the soils of Saudi, Iraq, Libya; the empowering of religious warriors in the quest to combat Soviet aggression; the unabashed devotion to the Israeli state's hold on Muslim land.

What road was Bush to take? The road towards combating Islamic fanaticism had been paved long before his inauguration, and if there was anything the US was still best at among anyone in the world, it was sheer military might. The American street was hell bent on a paralleled response to the bold and brilliant Muslim exercise employed on 9/11/01. This was a chess game after all, and the previous moves had been made in the preceding 22 years. This time, Bush and his planners would chart out the following moves in advance, the other side's response be damned.

We live under a system of representative government. It is we, the people, who choose the candidates to voice our opinions, requests, and demands. It is in that body of representatives that lies the power to use military force. We chose nearly unanimously to engage the Taliban and terrorist threat. Then again we were asked approval for military action against Saddam's Iraq, and even the opposition political party who controlled the US Senate decided to give George Bush his pass to start the 2nd war. There certainly were no cries of disapproval during the October 2002 war deliberations among the governmental bodies (save for the man who will take the oath tomorrow). Iraq was not and is not George Bush's war - lo, it is the American people who own it.

There were two other points of damnation the political left has seared onto Bush's legacy, quite unfairly. One is the inadequate response to Hurricane Katrina. There was no foreseeing the breaching of the levees. The city was given an evacuation order, yet it was the failure of the local and state government that supersedes any fault among the federal body. Secondly, Bush has been cast as a racist. How does it strike those critics when the first black secretary of State, the first female black secretary of state were appointed by Bush 43. His spiritual adviser, the man who officiated his daughter's wedding, is black. Bush has provided more aid to fight AIDS in Africa than any other president.

We must all analyze the George W Bush years and its effect on us not by how others perceive it - the biased media, academics, entertainers, but rather, how has his policies affected YOU...if at all. You'd be surprised by the answer.