if he wanted out of the Army, was simply to refuse the deployment order; at which point he would be charged under the UCMJ for refusal of a lawful order and the process would have gone from there - probably ending up in some sort of compromise plea bargain[*]. In any event, no killings.

No, much more than that was involved here. You don't take down the equivalent of 1-1/2 platoons without very strong convictions about your "right" to do so. In the abstract, that "right" could be irrational or rational. In the fact, it was either one or the other.

Perhaps, we have a problem with the concept that a native-born American (a field grade officer at that) can rationally reject loyalty to the US for what that person considers a higher loyalty ? So, the impetus to find the "real underlying motive", with MAJ Hasan using religion as an external justification as cover for that "motive" ?

In listening to that argument, I think of the SovComs finding that executions and gulagings were not the best way to handle dissidents. They eventually felt that mental hospitals were the better way - given the wonders of the Soviet system, anyone rejecting those wonders had to be insane. That in the end did not change the reality that their dissidents were not nutjobs.

We have had much higher ranking traitors than MAJ Hasan - e.g., Alger Hiss in the US; Kim Philby in the UK. Between them, they killed more people (albeit indirectly) than did MAJ Hasan.

Maybe the CID and FBI investigations will prove that he was a nutjob. If so, then we will be looking at the UCMJ provisions governing mental capacity. BTW: UCMJ has exclusive jurisdiction.

Let's see where the facts lead us.

And, another BTW: no legal justification should exist for the murders - except for classic legal insanity (e.g., he thought he was shooting Martian invaders).

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[*] This exact situation came up at K.I. Sawyer during the Vietnam War - refusal by an INCONUS officer to deploy to Vietnam.