Major Nidal Malik Hasan has shined a spotlight on the intellectual and
moral shortcomings of America's self-anointed elite.
Journalists and Obama administration officials say they are unable to
identify a motive for Maj. Hasan's murder spree at Fort Hood. This is much
more than a failure to connect the dots. It is like looking westward from
Denver on a bright and sunny day, and claiming to be unable to see the Rocky
Mountains.
Maj. Hasan produced a pro-jihadi slide show which he inflicted upon his
fellow physicians at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C.
He had "SoA," an abbreviation of Soldier of Allah," printed on his
business cards. He attended mosques where radicals preached, and he tried to get
in touch with al Qaida. As he was gunning down the defenseless soldiers
around him, he was heard shouting "Allahu Akbar" (Allah is great.) His
motive couldn't be more clear.
Worse than the willful blindness with regard to his motives were the
efforts by some to make excuses for Maj. Hasan's behavior. His feelings might
have been hurt because some of those on whom he afflicted is anti-American
diatribes did respond well to them. He might have been suffering from post
traumatic stress disorder, not from any stress that he had suffered, but, as
an Army psychiatrist, having listened to veterans of Afghanistan and Iraq
who may have been suffering from PTSD.
Please. The real soldiers who actually were in combat did not go on
murder sprees, and PTSD would not have excused them if they had.
The Fort Hood massacre was the worst terror attack in the United States
since 9/11, but Maj. Hasan was far from the first to suffer from "sudden
jihad syndrome." The historian Victor Davis Hanson noted that "on average, in
the 98 months since the World Trade Center and Pentagon attacks, a radical
Islamic-inspired terrorist plot has been uncovered every four months."
Some of the attacks have been by lone wolves, as when Mohammed Reza
Taheri-Azar ran over nine students at the University of North Carolina in March
of 2006, or when Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad shot two soldiers in front of
an Army recruiting station in Little Rock last May.
Others have been conspiracies. Daniel Patrick Boyd and Hysen Sherifi
were among seven suspects arrested in August for planning an attack on the
Marine base in Quantico, Va.
Some of the actual and would be jihadis were immigrants, like Hosam Maher
Husein Smadi, Jordanian here illegally, who was arrested in September
after planting what he thought were explosives near an office building in
Dallas.
Others like Maj. Hasan were naturalized U.S. citizens.
Others, like Mr. Boyd and Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad (formerly Carlos
Bledsoe) were native born Muslim converts.
Some were educated, some not. Some were wealthy, some poor. What they
had in common was a radical Islamist ideology and a deep-seated hatred of
the United States.
Radical Islam has been at war with us since before 9/11. It is the
ideology which is the enemy, whether it is held by a Taliban guerrilla in
Afghanistan or by an Army doctor in Bethesda. But President Bush could not or
would not articulate this, and President Obama appears not to recognize it.
It is comforting to believe only a handful of Muslims in the United States
are infected by Islamism, and there is reason to believe this is so.
About 5,000 Muslims serve in the U.S. military. Some, like Capt. Humayan
Khan, killed in Iraq in 2004 trying to prevent a suicide bomber from attacking
an American compound, have proved their patriotism beyond any shadow of
doubt.
But our leaders undercut the genuinely moderate Muslims and endanger the
rest of us when they make excuses for Islamists.
It remains to be seen if Maj. Hakim was just a radical Islamist, or a lone
wacko who also happened to be a radical Islamist. But it is clear that
only gross negligence by his superiors permitted him to be in the position to
do so much harm.
"Hasan's radical ideology grew to the point that he committed mass murder
because too many leaders were too afraid to lead out of fear of harming
their career," wrote Army Maj. Shawn Keller. It's a sad commentary on the
Army today that Maj. Keller is more likely to suffer for publicly
criticizing the negligent than will those whose negligence resulted in the deaths of
12 soldiers, a contractor and an infant
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