The media have so far been interpreting the facts that are emerging about Major Hasan as follows: they portray him as a frustrated conscientious objector turned enemy combatant. I think that this is what Major Hasan wanted: the media are helping him to be seen as he wanted to be seen. But I also think that it is an implausible interpretation of the facts that we have, now, and that it is likely to do damage to our views of medical service, in particular, and public service, in general. Put another way, I think that the media are unwittingly furthering Major Hasan’s wicked ends.

They portray Major Hasan as a frustrated conscientious objector because he said, apparently to anyone who would listen, that he objected to our current wars and thought that he should be excused from further service for that reason. This might make some sense if he was an infantryman or artilleryman, charged with killing the enemy in our current wars. But he was a doctor, and thus he had no obligation to kill anyone. He was charged only with providing health care near the battlefield. Perhaps he thought that by treating our psychic casualties, he was contributing to the killing of our enemies, since patients he managed to successfully treat could return to kill them. Maybe so, but he could not have contributed less to our war efforts as a private practitioner in Cheboygan, since his taxes would have done as much in that case for our war effort. Either way, his contribution to the war effort would have been equally indirect and uncertain.

U.S. military doctors are expected to treat U.S. and enemy casualties equally, according to medical rather than political criteria. So Major Hasan was not plausibly any sort of true conscientious objector, and his claim to be one is insulting to real conscientious objectors, who stand to unjustly be misunderstood if the media persuade the public to equate their concerns with Major Hasan’s.

Worse, the media portray Major Hasan as having traveled a natural road from conscientious objector to enemy combatant. We have already seen that he was not likely any kind of conscientious objector. So the media suggestion that conscientious objectors are dangerous in this way is unfounded. But it is also implausible, on the facts that the media now present, that Major Hasan really became an enemy combatant. Neither the cause the media allege for Major Hasan’s crime, nor the effect, nor any connection between them, are very likely.

To think that Major Hasan became a true enemy combatant by the time that he shot up Fort Hood, killing 13 people, we have to think that he was primarily motivated by enemy principles. Maybe he was. But then we also have to think that his acceptance of these principles was non-psychotic. Otherwise, his acceptance of enemy principles was merely an arbitrary trigger, or excuse, for a psychotic episode. Yet by all media accounts, his frustration at being unable to avoid his pending deployment was the trigger, or excuse, for his going postal. If that is so, it is not likely that he was a true enemy combatant. True enemy combatants are not motivated by personal frustrations or hardships; they are motivated by belief in their cause. The selfishness of the best accounts of Major Hasan’s actions suggest that he was psychotic, not a true enemy combatant.

Apparently, Major Hasan’s commitment to the enemy cause and his frustration with his personal situation grew up together, and fed off of each other, just as John Hinkley, Jr.s desire to gain notoriety by killing Reagan, and his belief that Jodie Foster was sending him secret requests to kill Reagan, grew up together, and fed off of each other. If that is so, it would be as stupid for us to adjust our attitudes or policy towards conscientious objection in the military because of what Major Hasan said, or did. as it would be for us to adjust our attitudes or policy towards Reagan, or Jodie Foster, because of what John Hinkly, Jr. did.

To sum up, most of the current evidence counts against the media’s theories that Major Hasan was a conscientious objector or enemy combatant. The evidence suggests, instead, that he was a psychopath who would like us to believe the current media theories. Let’s not be manipulated by a media who are so easily manipulated by psychopaths into doing anything stupid in response to Major Hasan’s crimes.