Of Purple Hearts and Terrorism

Per Fox News:

Legislation that would award the injured from the 2009 Fort Hood shooting the Purple Heart would adversely affect the trial of Maj. Nidal Hasan by labeling the attack terrorism ...

But that's exactly backward.

Survivors and their families who are asking for the Purple Heart to be awarded assert that "Fort Hood was turned into a battlefield when Hasan opened fire during the November 2009 attack."

It's hard to argue that point. Hasan attacked military personnel, on a military base, with a military weapon (the FN Five-SeveN, developed for and used by military and police, although now available on the civilian market as well), apparently pursuant to an ongoing military conflict. If Congress could be bothered to declare war, he'd be culpable for charges of treason, aiding the enemy, etc.

But a battlefield action -- an attack on military personnel, on a military base, with military weaponry, pursuant to an ongoing military conflict -- is not, whatever else it might be, "terrorism." It's almost the exact opposite of terrorism, which is the targeting of civilians and non-combatants for the purpose of creating (presumably politically useful) terror.

If the US government confers the Purple Heart on the Fort Hood victims, it is explicitly asserting that what took place at Fort Hood was a military battle, not a terrorist attack.

More on this at Memeorandum.