Workplace violence victims to receive Purple Hearts

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Victims of the Fort Hood shooting will soon be eligible to receive the Purple Heart, with Congress pushing ahead with a policy change that would officially recognize domestic terrorism as an issue, rather than the “workplace violence” designation the Obama administration had used.

The issue has been contentious since the 2009 attack, with victims and their family members saying Army Maj. Nidal Hasan’s shooting spree was clearly linked to the broader war on terror that the U.S. is fighting overseas.

For years, the families’ congressional allies had butted heads with the Obama administration, which balked at designating part of the U.S. the equivalent of a battlefield.

But the backers finally prevailed, writing the new terrorism designation into the annual defense policy bill that is speeding its way through Congress this month.

“It’s been a long fight, and we’ve always had some stumbling blocks, but I’m keeping my fingers crossed and will be very happy when this thing is signed by the president so we can go back to those people who have been waiting for some acknowledgment of their injuries,” Rep. John R. Carter, Texas Republican, told The Washington Times.

The White House did not have an immediate comment on the change Wednesday.

More at the Washington Times

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Of course the WH is going to balk. If they receive Purple Hearts that means Ft. Hood was a terrorist attack on American soil and not workplace violence. It destroys the meme that Obama has kept us free from a terrorist attack on American soil the last 6 years. That would join the ranks of: “You can keep your doctor”, “If you like your insurance plan you can keep your insurance plan”, “Benghazi was the result of a video”, “ISIS is a JV team”, “GWOT is over with”, “Insurance rates will go down $2,500 for the average family of four”, “Obama killed Osama”. Oh well, you get the picture.

I think your own meme is broken. No one claims there’s been no domestic terrorism. Anyone could compile a quick list. There was Scott Roeder’s assassination of Dr. George Tiller in 2009, which was a calculated act of “pro-life” terrorism. Wade Michael Page’s attack on the Sikh temple in 2012 was an act of domestic terrorism by a white supremacist. The 2013 Boston Marathon Bombing was obviously terrorism. The Christopher Dorner shootings the same year were terrorism by a black man against the LAPD. (He was a former member of the LAPD himself.) Are school shootings terrorism? There have been so many that it seems like an epidemic.

Nidal Hasan claims a religious cause by declaring his motive, but all homicidal lunatics seem to think they have their righteous causes or personal justifications. The claims of a cause are often just cloaks that evil wears to justify evil acts. They claim to be an instrument, rather than taking on the full personal responsibility of what they’ve done. Should we go along with that? Would we want to consider Nidal Hasan the instrument of a cause? A political prisoner or some sort of prisoner of war? I prefer to think of him as a common mass murderer. He’s no Soldier of Allah. He’s a Charlie Manson.

What we haven’t had on Obama’s watch is an attack on U.S. soil by a foreign terrorist organization on the scale of 9/11—and it hasn’t been because they haven’t wanted to do it. That’s noteworthy, I think. People certainly wouldn’t hesitate to blame Obama if no such claim could be made.

@Greg:

What we haven’t had on Obama’s watch is an attack on U.S. soil by a foreign terrorist organization on the scale of 9/11—

Oh, so the standard for Obamites is “it has to be on the scale of a 9/11 attack” to be counted. Just exploding bombs in crowds doesn’t qualify.

@Redteam, #3:

There were important differences between what Nidal Hasan did and what happened on September 11, 2001. What each event implied concerning the level of threat to the nation was entirely different. Thus far we haven’t had a 9/11 event in the United States on Obama’s watch. If we did, nobody would be arguing that it mattered no more than Nadal Hasan’s shooting of 13 people, and that the implications for the safety of the nation were no more serious than that.

@Redteam:

Oh, so the standard for Obamites is “it has to be on the scale of a 9/11 attack” to be counted. Just exploding bombs in crowds doesn’t qualify.

Greggie has to keep moving the goal posts in order to defend the indefensible.

There are no goal posts. What’s even more worrisome is that you seem to think that any bad thing that happens on Obama’s watch is a point won for your team—that America is somehow better off if things don’t go well while a democrat is in the White house.

This sort of thinking has become part of the republican dysfunction.