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The massacre of political correctness at Fort Hood
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Five days ago, our nation saw the worst terrorist attack on American soil since 9/11.
At Fort Hood, Texas, Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly massacred 13 people and wounded 42 others. He was shot four times by a quickly-responding police officer, and he is currently recovering in the hospital. An expectant mother, a grandfather and a man mundanely waiting for a flu shot were among the killed.
What is unclear at this point is whether the authorities acted foolishly in the time before Hasan's rampage. The US Army obviously placed him in a position of trust and responsibility with easy access to weapons. The Wall Street Journal reports that federal intelligence agencies knew of his contacts with an extremist imam who recruits for al-Qaeda -- somewhere between 10 and 20 emails, along with other red flags, and they neglected to alert the Army.
It is probably fair to say that Maj. Hasan should have been better monitored by his superiors. According to some reports, as a psychiatrist he actively counseled veterans returning from combat that the war on terror is a war on Islam and gave a talk at Walter Reed declaring that Islam calls on Muslims to kill infidels.
If Maj. Hasan's hardcore ideological grievances against the USA were not going to be addressed by his superiors, then he should've at least been sent to gather ice core samples at a one man post in northern Alaska. Certainly putting him in charge of the mental preparedness of soldiers heading overseas was not the best of choices.
But very likely, the Army was afraid of appearing racist and/or being sued. Political correctness and the courts demand that we treat certain groups in this country with kid gloves, and I'd wager that nobody wanted to risk taking on Maj. Hasan. The damaging allegation of racial profiling gives pause to most any boss dealing with a suspicious Muslim.
Even now, many in the media -- and worse, in the Army -- are acting like it's a much bigger deal that some moron might react with racism against all Muslims than that Hasan was an Islamic extremist and a terrorist. And as bad a soldier murdering other soldiers on home soil is, it is much more ominous to have a nation more afraid of the hypothetical response of its own people than the fanatical and committed violence of evil men.
