RSS
Home
Muslim soldier kills 13 at Fort Hood: Political correctness, gun control cited as enabling shootings
Print
Email
RSS
Subscribe
A Muslim solder, Nidal Hasan, shot dead 13 people at Fort Hood on Thursday. Hasan had earlier displayed extremist, anti-American propensities, including applauding terrorist attacks against U.S. soldiers. Misguided policies helped make this tragedy possible.
One was a politically-correct double standard that kept the alarm bells from going off in the military. The killer had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, "repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers," was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and publicly called for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, talking "about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire." But nothing was done to remove him from a position where he could harm others. Although his views were common knowledge, "a fear of appearing discriminatory . . . kept officers from filing a formal written complaint," the Associated Press reported. Moreover, “a key official on a review committee reportedly asked how it might look to terminate a key resident who happened to be a Muslim," notes NPR.
(Before shooting his victims, he shouted the religious expression "Allahu Akbar." The killer used to pray with some of the 9/11 hijackers, reports the London Telegraph).
Commentators also point to a gun-control policy that disarms soldiers while on military bases to create “gun-free zones,” leaving them defenseless in the face of an attack. The policy succeeded in disarming the killer's victims, but not the killer himself.
Even after the killer's religious motive for the shootings became obvious, many liberal commentators, like The Atlantic's Max Fisher, were quick to deny it and jump to the opposite conclusion. Fisher lectured his readers that the killer "appears to not have been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage . . . or any related political causes," and falsely suggested that those pointing to contrary evidence were "Islamophobic." (Fisher has now retroactively changed the November 6 The Atlantic Wire commentary in which he made those false claims, "When a Muslim-American Killer Is In the News," to remove those embarrassing errors, without mentioning those deletions to his readers).
In an absurd display of political correctness, early media reports chose to harp on the false claim that the killer was a veteran with PTSD (which he wasn't: he never even served overseas) or the unsupported claim that he had been subjected to harassment (support groups for Muslim soldiers say they have received no reports of Muslim soldiers being harassed). Anything to divert attention away from the disturbing truth about his motives.
Even for liberal journalists, however, President Obama's initial response to the tragedy was embarrassing. Obama's initial remarks about the tragedy came buried in the middle of a speech laced with "wildly disconnected" ramblings about an unrelated topic, starting with a "joking shout-out." Even the liberal Boston Globe, which endorsed Obama in 2008, chided the President for a speech lacking in "empathy" for the victims.
In other news, the House of Representatives passed a healthcare "reform" bill backed by Obama on Saturday by a 220 to 215 vote. The bill would raise taxes. It would also explode state and federal budget deficits and cost far more than promised. It contains special-interest pork, like racial preferences.
It contains provisions sought by trial lawyers that will increase medical costs. Doctors afraid of being wrongly sued for malpractice despite providing good quality care order unnecessary tests (or defensive medicine), which wastes at least $200 billion annually.
