Friday, November 6, 2009
Where Are The Americans?
Six years ago, I wrote of the critical difference between American society and others, shall we say, less advanced:
Though Washington, Madison, Jefferson and the rest were the titans of their day, behind them stood still others with just as much understanding of the ideas of liberty and justice. They were emigrants from Europe, or the descendants of such emigrants, who had come here seeking freedom and opportunity. They knew what it would require to transform freedom in the New World’s virgin vistas into prosperity and security. They had learned it the hard way.America is what it is because it is a made society, founded on clearly understood principles by a pioneer people. The societies of Africa are legacy societies, weighed down by the tribal traditions, superstitions and animosities of thousands of years, unleavened by the Enlightenment from which our core concepts sprang. Until Africa renounces its past, there will be no room in which to build a new future.
One of the things for which Americans are internationally known is our responsiveness to injustice and tragedy: We rush to help. We don't say "It's someone else's problem." We send our sons, our money, and our fighting men. We usually get results -- and we always dwarf the contributions of non-Americans.
Say what you will about the wisdom of our involvements in Afghanistan and Iraq, or our defense of Bosnian Muslims against Serbian efforts to exterminate them, or our 1990 liberation of Kuwait from Saddam Hussein: We were trying to help. We saw suffering and monstrous injustice. We acted according to our best judgment, we committed ourselves wholly, and we asked nothing in return. In certain cases, it might have been unwise to intervene. But no one can justly fault Americans' intentions, no matter how many have tried.
That's what Americans do. That's the sort of people we are. But in recent years, we've frequently been reviled as self-serving monsters, eager to rape the peoples of other lands for whatever we can get from them. Some of the persons saying such things have good reason to know better.
Yes, this is about Fort Hood.
In case you've spent the last thirty years in a coma, the world has been having a spot of trouble with the totalitarian pseudo-religion called Islam. Some of its adherents think they have a divine warrant to convert, subjugate, or kill anyone who's not a Muslim. Others among them, while not willing to pick up a gun or strap on a suicide vest, willingly support the violent ones with money and shelter. The rest will brook no criticism of Islam as the source of such violence -- indeed, they'll argue that a mere verbal insult constitutes sufficient justification for Muslims' acts of savagery against us "infidels."
What do Americans say about all this?
Without exception, our major news media are engaged in a conspiracy of silence about the Islamic roots of international terror. The reportage on the Fort Hood atrocity very nearly omitted to mention that the captured killer, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, is a Muslim of Palestinian descent. Until very late in the news cycle, none of the media organs mentioned this man's frightening statements in defense of suicide bombers, or that the FBI has been monitoring him for six months. If it were possible for the media to suppress all mention of Hasan's obviously Middle Eastern name, no doubt they would have done so.
Very un-American. Americans speak their minds and damn the consequences. Americans face facts. Most important, Americans confront their enemies and give at least as good as they get.
Clearly, there aren't any Americans left in the major media.
After World War II, the Federal Bureau of Investigation was universally renowned as the foremost organization of its kind. Its counterintelligence and counterespionage record during the war testified to its effectiveness. Axis agents assigned to penetrate the United States lived in as much fear of the FBI as Axis soldiers did of the United States Marines.
J. Edgar Hoover, the legendary chief of the Bureau, was ruthless about pruning out agents who weren't utterly dedicated to the security of the United States and the well-being of its people. For many years he was personally involved in candidate selection, and had the final word on the approval of new hires. In those years the FBI was considered above all suspicion, both for its methods and its motives; anyone who knew an FBI agent knew a living example of patriotism and integrity.
Things are a little different today, of course. We haven't had an FBI director of Hoover's quality since he left the Bureau. His successors have all permitted the politicization of the Bureau to some degree, which several times resulted in its embarrassment or worse. In particular, the indications are that the Bureau's original singleness of purpose has been compromised by political correctness.
Just now, the politically correct position is that Islam is "a religion of peace," that it can't possibly be involved with violence or terrorism in any slightest degree. The FBI has been shackled to that assumption, which has been reinforced by the Bureau's unwise involvement with several Muslim-mouthpiece groups as "sensitivity trainers." No doubt it was in service to political correctness that even before anything substantive was known about Malik Hasad and his collaborators, FBI spokesmen proclaimed with absolute assurance that the Fort Hood mass murder was "not a terrorist act."
Americans don't do that. They don't make absolute proclamations exculpating their open, sworn enemies without some sort of evidence. They don't preemptively kowtow to victimist groups. And when evidence does become available, they follow it to whatever conclusions it dictates.
If there are Americans in the FBI, it wasn't they who made the "not a terrorist act" pronouncement.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) leaped into the matter to caution Americans against concluding that Islam had anything to do with Nidal Malik Hasan's outrage, and to urge Muslims to watch their backs for reprisals from us "infidels." But anyone who pays attention to the news would have expected that; it's what CAIR does after every Muslim atrocity. There aren't any Americans in CAIR. There haven't been for a long time.
Barack Hussein Obama, inflicted on us as president for the sins of the Bush Administration and its Congressional allies, made a brief statement about Fort Hood. Basically, he deplored the violence and expressed his sympathies for the slain and their families. He passed from that as quickly as possible to return to his attempts to socialize American health care. If he was conscious of the Islamic connection to this atrocity, he gave no indication. We need not look for Americans in the Obama White House.
Other federal officeholders have been silent. Perhaps we'll hear from Muslim Congressman Keith Ellison (D, MN) later today about how Islam couldn't possibly have given rise to such a "tragedy."
My colleagues, friends, and acquaintances are stunned, not so much by the mass killing -- murder is Muslims' sole newsworthy achievement, after all -- but by the rush to deny that Islam was at all relevant to it. The facts are as plain as print. The conclusions they imply seem inescapable. They look at one another as if to say, Where are the Americans? Are we all that's left?
Perhaps.
When I mentioned to the C.S.O. this morning that Nidal Malik Hasan had been under FBI monitoring for his record of pro-jihadist statements, she immediately replied "What could they do about it? Freedom of speech." But this is a misconception. Army officers do not have absolute freedom of speech; they never have. Statements regarded as detrimental to the United States or its armed forces can get an Army officer cashiered. The sorts of statements Hasan made, over a long period of time and in several fora, should have been enough to see to that. It compels me to question whether the overriding desire not to offend a Muslim or Muslims was, to borrow a phrase from our left-liberal friends, the root cause of the murders of ten soldiers and two civilians yesterday afternoon at Fort Hood.
It's not an American practice to spend our soldiers' lives to no constructive purpose. Indeed, it's not an American thing to shed anyone's blood for nothing. We prosecute our men at arms on the slightest suspicion that they've "exceeded the rules of engagement" or have gone "beyond mission parameters" in causing harm to others -- even if scant seconds ago, those others were trying to kill them.
Apparently, Hasan's superiors in the Army were aware of his proclivities. They did nothing about them. He was even promoted recently, despite a record of poor performance assessments that would have justified compelling him to retire as a captain.
There are a lot of Americans in our Army. But not all its officers qualify for that title.
Time was, the slogan: "America: Love It Or Leave It!" was on many lips. Those who used it probably meant it sincerely. Who could use it sincerely today?
Not our president, who thinks abasing our country before foreign tyrants is the right way to conduct American foreign policy.
Not our news media, who routinely slant their offerings, both reportage and commentary, to conduce to the greatest possible harm to the United States.
Not the spokesmen for the FBI, who repeatedly issue proclamations designed to deflect attention from the near-perfect correlation of Islam and terrorism.
Not Nidal Malik Hasan's superiors at Fort Hood, who permitted him to remain there, a place bristling with weapons and men intended to wield them, despite his long-obvious animosity toward the United States.
Not the Quislings and spineless ones of the Left, to whom this is more of an indictment of the United States -- in the person of the Bush Administration, of course -- than a fresh new data point about the dangers of having Muslims among us.
Where are the Americans?
