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Check your conclusions at the door
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A U.S. soldier patrols beside a flag at half mast in Bahrain.
At some point, America has to stop leaning into a left hook.
It's hard to fathom that a democracy founded on the principles of freedom of speech and freedom of expression; a government seeded from infancy "by the people, of the people, and for the people"; and a country once so unified in times that threatened her existence in world wars, can become so self-absorbed as to not be able to see the enemy within. Our elected officials seem to be too distracted by assassinating one anther's character and party status in debates like healthcare, relentlessly shadow-boxing over the most minute details,rather than seeing and admitting what the country refuses to acknowledge for fear of offending the sensibilities of the cultures perpetuating religious hatred within our borders.
But don't jump to any conclusions.
Perhaps it's because we're handed a pair of fruit-striped candy pants and told to check our conclusions at the door when grotesque acts like mass shootings, allegedly committed by someone with a Middle Eastern heritage and serving in our own army opens fire on innocents at Fort Hood.
Thirteen lives that had already chosen to serve and sacrifice for their country, but ended up being sacrificed over a military brother's conflicted and twisted treasonous ideology. Thirteen lives taken, families decimated, and America weeps again.
Indeed, it is still merely alleged that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan suffered an ideological embolism based on accrued stress from counseling soldiers returning from Afghanistan and Iraq; and distraught by the horrific accounts of the war, decided to demonstrate his patriotism and compassion by turning Ft. Hood into a shooting gallery.
But don't jump to any conclusions because of his heritage and ideological inclinations.
America was attacked on September 11, 2001 in the first massive broadside launched by a radical movement based on Middle Eastern ideology. Planes flew into buildings like some child-gone-wild playtime scenario. People jumped to their deaths rather than burn to cinders; two of the country's most visible iconic buildings crumbled into a molten heap of shattered metal while victims and first-responders were torn asunder and our national hearts bled tears of grief like a river overflowing it's banks.
But don't jump to any conclusions because of their heritage ideological indoctrination.
Unquestionably, it is wrong to stereotype, typecast, categorize, profile and cliché any culture or segment thereof into a tidy little nom de plume. For example, something like using the term ‘America-hating radical terrorist'. Lord knows that the acts of one or a few individuals don't represent the feelings of an entire people toward another, do they?
According to the New York Times, the Muslim Public Affairs Council, speaking for much of the Muslim community in the United States denounced the shootings, saying it was a "heinous act", and adding "Our entire organization extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed as well as those wounded and their loved ones". In other words, don't jump to any conclusions and blame all of us for the acts of the few. Just out of curiosity, where are the statements of public support for America when our men and women and children and anything western are blown to smithereens on a daily basis overseas? More importantly, where are the moderate voices daily that should be calling out the purveyors of hateful religious interpretation in defense of their own culture?
The silence is deafening, but don't jump to any conclusions.
Meanwhile, on the streets of New York the day of the mass killing, Muslim radicals were seen on the street corners praising the massacre, and using the opportunity to hold a street corner recruitment drive. A drive to join the ideological fan club of zealots who despise everything that America and the west stand for; yet who, for some reason, come here to settle and hypocritically take advantage of all the freedom and opportunity America has to offer.
But don't jump to any conclusions.
And as if all of this weren't enough, the Associated Press reported today that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly "attended the same Virginia mosque as two September 11 hijackers in 2001". What irony! What a small world ! What a complete and totally bizarre coincidence!
If true, this revelation provides the missing piece to the intricate puzzle of Maj. Hasan's psychological motivation; it explains why he single-mindedly presented a PowerPoint presentation in a scientific engineering class on jihad despite the protestations of other students to the professor that his topic had nothing to do with the class; it sheds light on why classmates in his master's program at a military college repeatedly protested his radical anti-American views. The man was a terrorist in our midst and years of warning signs were ignored because we didn't want to 'offend'.
And now thirteen innocents are dead.
But don't jump to any conclusions.
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