Losing Our Sons
The Fort Hood massacre in Killeen, Texas, rocked the nation in 2009, the worst outbreak of violence on a military base in the history of the United States. In its aftermath, 13 people lay dead, 29 individuals wounded, and the specter of Muslim extremism had arisen on American soil. Folks remember the carnage, but not so much another shooting incident five months earlier in Little Rock, Arkansas, that served as a precursor for Fort Hood.
Carlos Bledsoe
A searing, new documentary provides the back-story behind the Little Rock tragedy that left Pvt. William Andrew Long gunned down outside a military recruiting station on June 6, 2009. Losing Our Sons tells of the mourning by Long’s family, but also the family of Carlos Bledsoe, Long’s killer. Raised a Baptist in Memphis, Tenn., Bledsoe converted to Islam while studying at Tennessee State University in Nashville, changing his name to Abdul Hakim Muhammad and traveling to Yemen to further his religious indoctrination. He returned after 16 months as a full-fledged jihadist, prepared to assault a variety of military and Jewish targets, without the slightest remorse. Speaking to the Associated Press, Bledsoe said, “I don’t think it (killing Long) was murder because murder is when a person kills another person without justified reason.”
