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Tuesday, November 10, 2009
The Fort Hood Scandal
Gentle Readers, perhaps you were like me when news broke of the shooting at Ft. Hood last week - you may have thought it was an unhinged wacko, a one-shot “terrorist for a day” incident with few grander implications. Yes, the Muslim name and reports of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan shouting “Allahu Akbar” as he opened fire were disturbing, but there are many causes of psychological stress in the Army to which Maj. Hasan could have been subject that could have caused him to snap.
I might once have thought that, but I don’t now. If you are going along with the media line that Hasan was suffering from some kind of “secondary PTSD” or was angry from being bullied for his Muslim background, you are deluded.
First, let me present a timely reminder from “Streiff”, a former soldier, writing at Redstate.com:
What has happened in the past 6 years is that assurance that the men in uniform were if not loyal Americans at least loyal to their comrades has been shattered.
The tip of the iceberg appeared in 1998 with the arrest of former Special Forces sergeant Ali Mohammed, a former major in the Egyptian army before immigrating to the United States and joining the US Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, NC.
In September 2004 SFC Abdullah Webster was sentenced to prison for refusing to deploy to Iraq. Testifying on behalf of Sergeant Webster was Air Force Chaplain (Captain) Hamza Al-Mubarak who claimed it was better for Webster to die than to fight fellow muslims.
In 2003 Army Chaplain (Captain) James Yee was arrested and charged with espionage and sedition based on his dealings with al-Qaeda prisoners at Guantanamo. He avoided court martial because the government was concerned with classified information that might come out at trial. His assistant, Airman Ahmad al-Halabi, was convicted by a court martial. Civilian translator Ahmed Fathy Mehalba, also stationed at Guantanamo, was arrested and convicted at the same time.
In 2004 Army Specialist Amir Abdul Rashid was arrested, and eventually sentenced to life in prison, for providing sensitive information to al-Qaeda.
In 2008 Navy Signalman Hassan Abu Jihaad was sentenced to ten years for divulging classified information to al-Qaeda.
And no one can forget that on March 23, 2003, the eve of our invasion of Iraq, Army Sergeant Hasan Karim Akbar tossed a hand grenade into the command post of 1st Brigade, 101st Airborne Division killing two officers and wounding fourteen others including the brigade commander. He is now on death row at the US Disciplinary Barracks and presumably will soon have the services of his own private shrink.
This list doesn’t include the numerous John Walker Lindhs and Adam Gadahns out there. They, at least, made their sympathies plain.
Notice a pattern there? While we must always be careful not to tar the innocent with the deeds of the guilty, just when do we face up to the truth that the percentages don’t lie? Not every Muslim is a terrorist, but just about every terrorist is a Muslim.
The Army is apparently still living in la-la land. Interviewed by the media a few days after the shooting, Gen. Casey babbled to George Stephanopolous, with a completely straight face, “And what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here. And it’s not just about Muslims. We have a very diverse army. We have a very diverse society.” Gen. Casey is either a fool or an abject slave to political correctness. Either way, how is he still allowed to wear the uniform?
Folks, the shooting at Fort Hood is a major scandal that is still brewing. The evidence is mounting that the Army, the FBI, and DHS officials knew of Hasan’s increasingly treasonous statements, odd behavior, and contacts with senior al-Qaeda operatives and did nothing about it. President Obama’s pathetic address today at the memorial service for the victims shows just how deluded by political correctness and radicalism the current administration is. Take this statement for example:
It may be hard to comprehend the twisted logic that led to this tragedy. But this much we do know — no faith justifies these murderous and craven acts; no just and loving God looks upon them with favor.
Really? It’s that hard? It seems to me from the PowerPoint presentation extolling jihad that Hasan gave for his final military psychiatry exam that Hasan’s logic was very clear: the United States is engaged in a war against Muslims, and therefore all Muslims, including United States citizens, must fight back. After he was given enough time and resources by the inaction of our entire national security apparatus, he carried out his beliefs in the violent and unforgiving fashion we have come to expect from Islamic radicals.
We can already tell that scandal is beginning to erupt by the reports of backstabbing and finger-pointing going on amongst the various agencies that share responsibility for this travesty. I particularly liked this article:
Finger-pointing erupted between federal agencies Tuesday over Fort Hood shooting suspect Nidal Hasan. Government officials said a Defense Department terrorism investigator looked into Hasan’s contacts with a radical imam months ago, but a military official denied prior knowledge of the Army psychiatrist’s contacts with any Muslim extremists.
The two government officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the case on the record, said the Washington-based joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI was notified of communications between Hasan and a radical imam overseas, and the information was turned over to a Defense Criminal Investigative Service employee assigned to the task force. The communications were gathered by investigators beginning in December 2008 and continuing into early this year.
That Defense investigator wrote up an assessment of Hasan after reviewing the communications and the Army major’s personnel file, according to these officials. The assessment concluded Hasan did not merit further investigation — in large part because his communications with the imam were centered on a research paper about the effects of combat in Iraq and Afghanistan and the investigator determined that Hasan was in fact working on such a paper, the officials said.
The disclosure came as questions swirled about whether opportunities were missed to head off the massacre in which 13 died and 29 were wounded last Thursday — a familiar, early stage in the investigation of headline-grabbing crimes when public officials involved in a case often speak anonymously as they try to shift any blame to rivals in other agencies.
Round and round it goes. Where it will stop, no one knows. This we do know, however - the disease of political correctness, which afflicted the Bush administration to a significant degree, is at epidemic levels in the Obama administration. Though it will never be proven, there is no doubt in my mind that one of the factors preventing our national security agencies from acting to detain Hasan was the fear that the Obama White House and Justice Department would hound the agents responsible just as they are hounding the CIA and military personnel responsible for the “enhanced interrogation” techniques used on top enemy operatives during the Bush years.
It is my suspicion that most Americans think of the dance of political correctness and diversity training as a harmless game for the elites to satisfy their own sense of self-righteousness with. The massacre of Fort Hood is a reminder that it can be deadly serious.
Wake up, America. We are not safe so long as the radicals in our government agencies are allowed to run wild.
Comments
We’ve come across these problems before; there is very little new under the Sun. When the US entered WWI, my German-born great grandfather changed the family name from Köhler to Keeler. During WWII, we essentially imprisoned every American of Japanese descent on the West coast, and only allowed them military service in the European theater, to avoid compromised loyalties.
Here we have a war with an ideology (something we’ve done before), a religious/political hybrid (something the West has done before, though not the US), all embodied in a combination of self-identifying individuals, non-state organizations and sympathetic states (again not new). We have mechanisms for dealing with this, and I think we should consider them with fresh eyes.
A good example would be the idea of parole. Let’s say that the majority of the inmates of GTMO really are not a threat. Then ask for their parole, that they will not fight against the US for, say, ten years. If they refuse to give parole, fine, they’ve voluntarily forfeited all their rights and can rot in jail. If they give parole, and then are found to be fighting against us, then we kill them, because that’s the condition of their parole: no trial necessary. The same approach could be taken to potentially-hostile citizens, potentially hostile in that their loyalties might be divided, in sensitive posts.
I am not naïve; I know that the Left will still scream to high heaven if we ever actually due carry on: logic is not their forté, after all. Nonetheless, centuries of precent and much established common and statute law make this a clearly useful choice. Of course, you would also think that making war upon the US while a US citizen, as Hasan did, would be treated as treason, since it is a perfect match to the definition, but I suspect that we have gone too far out of touch with reality to even consider treason a possible crime these days.
We shall see, I suppose.
Posted by Jeff Medcalf on 11/10/2009 at 10:37 PM”...I suspect that we have gone too far out of touch with reality to even consider treason a possible crime these days.”
Given that (and I sadly agree with your assessment), the likelihood of our taking such sensible measures as outlined before the above quote is even more remote. Those who wield power will sell tomorrow for more power today - and have done so, and still are. To take such measures would be a surrender of power over their domestic enemies (us in the limited government/pro- Western civilization camp) in order to take action against foreign fellow-travelers (tyrants and powermongers).
Posted by on 11/10/2009 at 11:11 PMJeff,
Your point re: treason is well taken as I have previously asserted. The parole option was used with varying degrees of effectiveness during the the hostilities of 1861-1865. It would not likely to be advantageous with muzzies who engage in takiya or kitman especially regarding their “second chance” at the 72 virgins. Bottom line: their oath is meaningless. This is not a “gentlemen’s war”.Posted by ΛΕΟΝΙΔΑΣ on 11/10/2009 at 11:36 PMAccording to Enlightened Opinion, we must ask ourselves “Why do they hate us?” We may find a hint of an answer by considering who they hate the most.
Judging by their choice of targets, terrorists claiming to act in the name of Islam really, really hate unarmed infidels.
Maybe we should stop provoking them.
Posted by Joseph Hertzlinger on 11/11/2009 at 02:55 AMYou might add to the list Abdulhakim Muhammad’s killing of one soldier and wounding of another at Little Rock, Ark., Army recruiting office back in June. There’ll likely be more of them, too.
Posted by Dick Stanley on 11/11/2009 at 01:14 PMA careless reader of official pronouncements could almost conclude the Federal power structure’s sympathies lie with Major Hasan, not with his victims. But that’s just silly, isn’t it?
Posted by Ol' Remus on 11/11/2009 at 01:15 PM
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