Rudolph declared that his bombings were part of a guerrilla campaign against abortion and the “homosexual agenda”.

That is one of the two primary differences. Rudolph proclaimed his political agenda and attacked a civilian target to inspire terror in the name of that agenda. Most definitions of terrorism I have seen require expressed political intent and a civilian target.
For example,

the calculated use of violence (or the threat of violence) against civilians in order to attain goals that are political or religious or ideological in nature

Rudolph meets both requirements. At this time Hasan meets neither. If and when he states his goals he might meet one. This in no way makes his crime less heinous, but I do think it means that it is not terrorism as it is generally defined.

I don’t think that anyone but Hasan knows his primary motivation or what made him snap at this point and his targets were decidedly not civilian. He may or may not see himself as part of a larger war for his version of Islam and that may or may not simply be the rationalization of a man that snapped for other reasons. Time will make at least some of that more clear.

If he refuses to state a goal and no terrorist organization takes ownership then is it really terrorism?

First of all, Hasan is (or up until recently was) in a coma at some hospital. He doesn’t have the capability to state a goal right now.

While I agree with you that the signs point more toward an individual motivated by his religion, as you point out (and the Al-Qaeda thing doesn’t hold up), terrorism is usually defined as an action with a religious or politically ideological motivation. This clearly was.

Eric Robert Rudolph (1996 Olympic bombing) is defined as a terrorist all the time, and he was a lone attacker. What makes Hasan different?

But I draw the line at the insistence of some that the Army should subject some or all of its members to intrusive monitoring of bank accounts, private associations, private conversations, etc, without proper individualized cause.

No disagreements, here. Though it wouldn’t be the first time the law-and-order wing of the Republican Party has gone off the deep end with demands for surveillance powers.

It is a tragic incident and it appears that religious fundamentalism was at least a partial motivator, but terrorism does not seem the appropriate label.

The signs that Hasan was a potential threat (signs such as attempting to contact Al Qaeda, public statements supportive of Islamic terrorism) were there and did call for a higher level of scrutiny. In this case, as you put it, “individualized cause” existed and had been noted. The question is why it was not acted upon in time. With so much in the way of judgement calls involved (how do you know the ranter will become a shooter?) we may never know that. That he was a nutburger was readily apparent, so the real question is how he could have been distinguished from the mumbling crowd as a deadly-dangerous nutburger without violating his rights.

At least hes willing to put forth something to consider…..however…..

I learned today that…….ABC News uncovered the fact that US intelligence agencies knew of Hasan’s attempts to contact AlQaeda operatives for months prior to the Fort Hood massacre. It isn’t known whether they alerted the military. Hasan also made anti-American comments to his colleagues, which apparently were ignored.

This is sad but now it makes me wonder if the good major was not under surveillance in a manner in which the government was actually trying to use him to uncover operatives in the USA.

I am starting to believe that this guy was actually under deep scrutiny but no one could predict he would do something like this. More likely they were thinking hes gonna build a bomb, hijack a plane or something spectacular as is al qaeda’s op.

Im not excusing the government for letting this happen but rather its now starting to become clear to me that they were indeed watching this guy in hopes that he would lead to a bigger intell haul.

Or his apparently well known attempts to contact Al-Qaeda a couple months ago which, if it has legs, may work to eventually demolish the argument I made in this article.

It’s not only about some dubious blog posts made a six months ago.

And as someone who was once personally targeted for investigation for online comments (even in pre-internet days in 1987 — I believe I was the first person EVER targeted with such an investigation by a military agency) based on hasty and inaccurate presumptions about their meaning, I’m not well-inclined towards the 20/20 hindsight reasoning that would ask the military to monitor online comments and make sweeping conclusions based on them.

I didn’t want you to be disappointed, Jason.

More relevantly, from accounts to date it doesn’t seem that any intensive or intrusive monitoring was needed to discern that Hasan was a dangerous nutburger. Apparently he oozed dangerous nutburger. So the real question is why no one did anything about it before he proved he was deadly dangerous crazy.