The killing in Chattanooga has nothing to do with Islam or with “yielding to Allah.” It had nothing to do with the killer being stopped in April for a traffic stop and the claim that he had “snorted crushed caffeine.”
It had nothing to do with his uncle who is in jail in Jordan, nothing to do with being behind in his rent. It had nothing to do with anything the media has told us about Mohammed Youssuf Abdulazees, because what Abdulazees did was exactly what American sniper Chris Kyle did.
They both went after “men of the military age,” and Abdulazeez went after men of military age who were actually in the military. Kyle gunned down 140 human beings, many of them not in the military.
If you’re going to say that Kyle was acting within the proper “rules of engagement,” then how is it that Abdulazeez does not have access to these proper “rules of engagement”? Because Abdulazeez was working within them, he did not go after civilians, he went after military men. How can Chris Kyle be a hero and Abdulazeez be a murdering terrorist when they both did the same thing?
Certain questions need to be addressed. Who gets to be “in war” and then have the freedom to kill? Who get access to killing if done through the proper “rules of engagement?” And who decides where the boundaries for the “war zone” begin and end?
It is stupidity, not violence that is going to get us killed.
Frank Erickson lives in Minneapolis.