ACLOCK that started ticking on Sept. 11, 2001, marking the time without a second mass-casualty terrorist attack on U.S. soil, seemed to have stopped yesterday afternoon, Texas time, at mammoth Ford Hood.
Early reports indicated that more than one shooter at more than one site on the base had opened fire on U.S. soldiers and their families, murdering a dozen and wounding many more than that. But as the mists of mayhem thin, this turns out apparently not to be so. Instead, the carnage in Texas resets a shorter-working clock, the one separating massacres by lone, angry lunatics.
The central figure in this episode is Nidal Malik Hasan, a Northern Virginia-reared, Virginia Tech-educated Army major who worked as a psychiatrist at the base. Major Hasan, stopped by an MP's bullets from swelling the toll, was, in fact, the ultimate loner--unmarried, childless, and reportedly alienated from the Army "family," perhaps in part because of his Middle Eastern ethnicity and Muslim faith. As we write, the major, who was fighting imminent deployment abroad, appears to have acted very much alone.
To the nation, this is comforting. The loved ones of the dead do not feel comforted. They feel as if their whole worlds have died--surreally, shockingly, in a place of refuge and return from the country's wars.
Americans also are shocked, and terribly saddened, by this tragedy. In the hours ahead, facts will emerge, and pundits will tear lessons from the loss. But for now it is enough to bow our heads as "Taps" stirs our common soul, remembering the service of Hood's fallen that has kept that 9/11 clock ticking, and still ticking, for so long.