Ft. Hood shooting, a racist inquiry?

Article: "US Senate may probe army shooting" - BBC News

Senator Lieberman, who chairs the Homeland Security Committee, has announced that he will launch a congressional investigation into the shooting at Ft. Hood. He states that he wants to know whether or not the act was one of terrorism.

It is perfectly understandable that the Congress would want to understand the motives behind a mass shooting on one of their own forts, and granted Nidal Hasan may have been a crazy man, but to automatically assume it is more likely to be a terrorist attack than recent military murders is racist. The now Republican-leaning senator is merely catering to his right-wing demographic as he spoke with Fox news about the highly suspicious nature of this case. Perhaps, Hasan was a terrorist; he had supposedly spoken angrily about the war in Iraq and Afghanistan before, as I'm sure many other, non-Muslim service men who were about to be deployed have too. If Hasan was linked to a larger terrorist organization like Lieberman insinuated, it seems odd that he would have executed such a spontaneous, rather noncomplex attack. I feel that if he had been part of a large, very experienced group, they would have planned some sort of massively devastating event for a man with quite high access to a military stronghold.

To me, this looks like Lieberman's attempt to gain any little bit of support for the war he can, even by taking seemingly racist actions. After all, would the Congress be so concerned if the shooter's last name had been Smith rather than Hasan?

Major Nidal Hasan

Links:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8349413.stm

http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jATMK2q96bKfz6B-aZUHOd5i4mBgD9BSD6UO2