Cirque du Jihad

This is simply the BEST article on Nidal Hasan's trial you will find anywhere.

Anywhere.

The story comes from Family Security Matters.

Cirque du Jihad
by KAREN MCKAY


The bizarre jihadist circus that just closed at Fort Hood, Texas, has been a carbuncle on the American body politic that exposes the underlying disease, "Political Correctness," commonly referred to as "PC."

When US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan, whose business card identified him as a "Soldier of Allah," opened fire on unarmed soldiers in Ft. Hood's Soldier Readiness Center-like shooting fish in a barrel--he was shouting the Islamist battle cry "Allahu Akbar." Under a sane government, that attack would have immediately been labeled terrorism and/or an act of war, not to mention treason.

Instead, President Obama called the attack a "horrific outburst of violence" in a speech before the Tribal Nations Conference at the Department of the Interior that day-after he had thanked the Department staff for "organizing just an extraordinary conference," thanked his cabinet members and administration officials who had participated, and given "a shout-out to that Congressional Medal of Honor winner... Dr. Joe Medicine Crow. It's good to see you." The official White House transcript of the President's brief remarks reveal that it wasn't until the middle of the third paragraph that he got around to announcing the "horrific" events of that day. If he hadn't before this day, Obama, who doesn't know what a corpsman is or how to pronounce the word, and is clueless as to what the Medal of Honor is and means, proved that he is unfit to be Commander-in-Chief.

Army Chief of Staff General George Casey's immediate reaction, as he told ABC's George Stephanopoulos, was that "what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here." With those words, Casey, not for the first time, proved that he is unfit for his office and rank. An officer's duty is to his troops, not to politics.

Vice President Biden declared it a "senseless tragedy" and said he hoped the wounded would have a full and speedy recovery. What-were they on a bus that blew a tire on the way to a picnic? Comment on Biden's fitness for his office is unnecessary.

Taking its cue from the Commander-in-Chief as a directive, the Pentagon declared the attack to be nothing more than "workplace violence." Major Hasan had merely gone postal. Lawyers rushed to agree. The Washington Times reported that Professor David Glazier, of Loyola Law School, Los Angeles-a former Navy officer and fellow at the Center for National Security Law, no less-said that it "makes perfect sense" because it's a "simple cut-and-dried murder case." Hasan is "an ordinary service member" who shot people. As for Hasan being, by his own claim, an Islamist carrying out jihad, the professor added, "A military individual pulls out a gun and shoots. It's not necessary to get into motivation to prove that basic offense."

If that is true, why do we have "hate crime" laws that get into motivation behind "basic offenses" and accordingly elevate the egregious monstrosity of the offense and jack up the punishment? In the case of a jihadist attack like Hasan's, it does matter. It matters a whole hell of a lot. In the case of the Fort Hood attack, it also means a whole lot to the victims, their survivors and families.

Sun Tzu's dictum "Know thine enemy" is assiduously ignored by our leaders and planners when it comes to Islamism. "We've got to understand who the enemy is and what motivates him, which is something most of our political leaders refuse to do," Jeffrey Addicott, director of the Center for Terrorism Law at St. Mary's University in San Antonio, told a Christian Science Monitor interviewer. "...Hasan doesn't care about the rule of law and Western concepts of life and freedom, which are hateful to him."

Hasan is no "disgruntled employee," Addicott told Investors Business Daily. "He has..labeled himself as a jihadist Islamist murderer, a hard-core jihadist. It's now clear...in spite of our leadership in this country, including the Department of Defense and Obama, what his motives are."

The New York Times had no compunctions in reporting that motive. Hasan, the paper said, killed unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood, Texas, to defend "the leadership of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, the Taliban," specifically naming Mullah Muhammad Omar, the founder of the Islamic insurgent group. For Hasan, the courtroom is his jihadist stage where his judge is Allah, not a US Army officer.

The Constitution guarantees a "speedy trial." But it doesn't define what is speedy, so courts have addressed it. Strunk v US ruled that if a defendant's right to a speedy trial is violated, the indictment must be dismissed. So, how long is "speedy?" Barker v Wingo established that the prosecution cannot delay a trial if it is prejudicial to the defendant, but a defendant can delay the trial if it works on his own behalf--but doesn't say how long that can be.

Evidently, four years is okay if it benefits a terrorist to be tried for ordinary mass murder-Major Hasan has retained his rank and full pay and benefits (other than being under detention) all this time, and afforded every indulgence his religion demands as well as free medical care. Other than rare exceptions for Sikh soldiers, and Special Operators hunting the Taliban and al-Qaeda in Afghanistan-those whom Hasan claims he was protecting when he opened fire--no US soldier is permitted a beard, but the Army got all wrapped around the axle for months over the issue of Hasan's religious rights, and terrorist Hasan won. Now he has a nice, bushy beard, which he evidently had no problem NOT having prior to gunning down unarmed men and women. No doubt he has been accommodated with all the sensitivities that have been lavished on Gitmo prisoners: Halal food, toilet oriented so he does not urinate in the direction of Mecca, prayer rug, cessation of all formalities at his appointed five-times-a-day prayer... At least the Army had the courage to place a female officer as judge over Hasan's court martial, but she appeared to be contorting herself, the Constitution and the UCMJ to ensure that everything went Hasan's way-the the point of suppressing evidence of his Islamist radicalism.

Meanwhile, his victims, their survivors and families, have been denied all of the benefits and honor that would accrue to them if this attack had been rightfully deemed terrorism or an act of war. These people, including the civilian cops who took down Hasan, have been pretty much discarded to make it on their own. When the Vice President talked about this "senseless tragedy," the senseless tragedy is the one inflicted by his President and his Justice Department on the dead and wounded, their survivors and families. Tragedy it was and is for the victims and their loved ones, but the act itself was an atrocity.

What should have been on trial at Fort Hood is the Political Correctness that facilitated this "crime." The Army long knew about Hasan's radical Islamist bent, but passed him along through promotions, training and assignments out of fear of violating the puritanical Code of Political Correctness. Those responsible for enabling him by sins of commission (promotions, schools, assignments) and of omission (not raising red flags when his radicalism became apparent and stopping his career in its tracks at the first sign of radicalism) should be tried as accessories to the crime of mass murder, workplace violence or--whatever--committed by Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

But Americans are in the grip of PC paralysis, fearful of doing anything that might cause us to be accused of any bias against any protected class. Those protected classes would include feminists, homosexuals, drug addicts and, above all, Islamists-the others are unlikely to commit mass murder.

Political Correctness denies both the act of terrorism and the Islamist identity of attackers. Despite Fort Hood, despite jihadist attacks in Arkansas, New Jersey, Los Angeles, the DC Metro area, North Carolina...despite Dar es Salaam, Nairobi, Calcutta, Karachi, Riyadh and the USS Cole...despite Benghazi...the Department of Justice continues to consider terrorism a criminal matter and terrorists as ordinary criminals. The FBI website still defines it thus: In accordance with U.S. counterterrorism policy, the FBI considers terrorists to be criminals.

It's intellectual cowardice, and the outcome is the tyranny of Political Correctness. Its iron grip is evident every day in the language of news. The American media scrupulously avoid identifying domestic killers, terrorists and wannabe terrorists as being Muslim when that is the case. It's the same PC tyranny that dictates suppression of coverage of black-on-black or black-on-white crimes.

Too many media pundits and politicians cannot look reality in the eye. The PC Iron Maidens they wear dictate that the "alleged" shooter, Major Malik Nidal Hasan, is "disturbed," suffering from "Pre-Traumatic Stress Disorder," even a "nut." He was "hazed" for his religious views, he is excused and "understood" for his Islamist statements, his sympathetic admiration of suicide bombers was merely "medical research."

Euphemisms avoid the unpleasantness of calling a spade a spade. Terrorists are called "militants" or "extremists" in the media. No. Susan B. Anthony and Carrie Nation were militants. The Code Pink females and PETA operatives are extremists. Those who visit violence on civilians for political purposes are terrorists.

In psychological warfare, semantics is all; facts are irrelevant. Political Correctness sprang fully grown from the forehead of Joseph Goebbels, Hitler's gifted propagandist and specialist in mind control. His attentive students find easy prey still in the gullible, the mentally lazy, the well-intentioned, the fearful and the ignorant in America and Europe.

President Barack Obama banished the term "terror" from his Administration upon taking office. We would make war no more; we would, rather, engage in "overseas contingencies." Acts of terrorism would be "man-made disasters." Obama's "Agenda for Defense," issued by the White House on January 22, 2009, swore to deter and defeat any "conventional competitors." "Competitors," not "enemies." The Ft. Hood shooter becomes the "alleged" or "suspected" shooter. The assault becomes a tragedy.

Hasan was permitted by the system to be a sleeper cell out of fear of calling him what he is. He was known to be an Islamist-outspokenly anti-American and pro-terrorist--and those who claim they were watching him were apparently restrained by Political Correctness from saying anything. If they had had the moral courage and integrity to denounce Hasan, they likely would have been disciplined for failure to practice diversity, and worse, castigated as bigots.

Political Correctness is itself a form of self-inflicted terrorism enforcing group-think. Americans are terrified of being accused of bigotry, racism, Fascism, warmongering, sexism, [fill in the blank] if they do not conform to the Liberal world view.

Rabbi Daniel Lapin in his 1999 book, America's Real War, posits that Liberalism and Political Correctness are greater threats to the survival of our nation than any outside enemy. It is this corrosive philosophy that permitted an officer of the United States Army to operate openly, without restraint, as, at the very least, a terrorist sympathizer.

There is nothing that guarantees the survival of a country or a civilization, including ours, the greatest and freest nation in history. Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in "America is great because she is good. If America ceases to be good, America will cease to be great." In The Prince, Niccolo Machiavelli warned that moral decay so weakens a country that it will collapse from a determined push: The conquest of the Mede empire by Cyrus, the fall of Rome to barbarians, the capitulation of France to the Nazis, the disintegration of the Soviet Union under Reagan's relentless pressure. None of these powers would have collapsed as they did had they been morally strong at their core. Each little victory over American law or tradition by an Islamist-Hasan's beard, for example-each small erosion of our American liberties is an incremental incursion of the camel's nose into the tent of our nation and our culture.

Moral decay happens so slowly, so gradually, that we as a nation may not be aroused to stop it before it is too late to save ourselves. While American Liberals/Progressives deride Tea Partiers as reactionary idiots, our enemies look at our media, our courts, our entertainment...and they see rot. They see a people who lack moral courage and integrity, who fear to stand for the values enshrined in their own Constitution and founding documents. A people so weak, so timid, so easily manipulated that they are embarrassed by the absolutes of God and Country. A people obsessed with promoting "social justice" causes that undermine the very foundation of our nation. One day we may wake up to find the entire camel inside and the tent collapsed around us, and we will have loosened the tent pegs by our own hands. De Tocqueville again: "Arbitrary power is most easily established on the ruins of liberty abused to licentiousness." Then we won't have the frivolous luxury of arguing over homosexual rights, abortion rights, animal rights, artistic rights, topless rights...or CO2 emissions, polar bears, SUVs, oil wells or any of the other things that occupy the minds of Liberals.

Now that Hasan has been found guilty and condemned to death-hopefully by firing squad--we have to deal with who and what enabled him to carry out his jihad. The Fort Hood massacre must be recognized as casus belli to declare war on the Political Correctness that allowed this guy to skate through the system. The "Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil" monkeys must go, and the clear-eyed Bald Eagle be restored to his place, unpinioned and unhooded, if our nation is to survive.

Nidal Malik Hasan was not the first Islamist jihadist wearing the uniform of the US armed forces to attack and kill fellow soldiers, and he probably won't be the last. There are surely other Hasans waiting to strike, and those incipient abscesses must be excised before they also kill. They are not unknown, just as Hasan was not unknown to those who had contact with him. At present there is probably no mechanism to do that. The system that now intimidates people into silence and acquiescence has to make it safe for them to report observations or suspicions up the chain of command. The process must allow for discreet investigation at each level of command, and then permit appropriate action for the good of the service and country, not for the good of a political agenda, to remove these closet jihadists.

I can already hear the cries of protest that this will lead to prejudice, unfairness, profiling, revenge, targeting, coercion, and all the other evils of human weakness. Yes, it no doubt will. Systems are operated by flawed humans. Those evils already exist and happen every day to members of the military because human beings are involved, no matter how many safeguards are built into the system. I could write a book about abuses just based on my own military career. It's human nature. Faeces eventum. The system itself is fair and good, and most people do the best they can with professionalism, integrity and honor to make the system work. Now the system must provide for the means to identify and remove Islamist jihadists like Hasan as the malignant growths that they are.

Karen McKay is a retired U.S. Army Foreign Area Operations Officer living in Western North Carolina with her horses and . During the '80s she led the Committee for a Free Afghanistan and later Americans for Freedom. She is also an NRA-certified firearms instructor and volunteer firefighter/EMT.