Tel-Chai Nation

The Senate Homeland Security Committee has released an independent report (via Hot Air) about the Fort Hood murders committed by Nidal Hasan, telling how, despite their awareness that he was in contact with Anwar al-Awlaki, political correctness sabotaged their ability to investigate him:

The JTTF that had reviewed the initial [REDACTED] communications dismissed the second JTTF’s work as “slim” but eventually dropped the matter rather than cause a bureaucratic confrontation. The JTTFs now even dispute the extent to which they were in contact with each other in this case. Nonetheless, the JTTFs never raised the dispute to FBI headquarters for resolution, and entities in FBI headquarters responsible for coordination among field offices never acted. As a result, the FBI’s inquiry into Hasan ended prematurely.

All this in spite of how he practically acted candid about his standings:

Hasan advanced to a two-year fellowship at USUHS…Less than a month into the fellowship, in August 2007, Hasan gave another off-topic presentation on a violent Islamist extremist subject instead of on a health care subject. This time, Hasan’s presentation was so controversial that the instructor had to stop it after just two minutes when the class erupted in protest to Hasan’s views. The presentation was entitled, Is the War on Terror a War on Islam: An Islamic Perspective? Hasan’s proposal for this presentation promoted this troubling thesis: that U.S. military operations are a war against lslam rather than based on non-religious security considerations. Hasan’s presentation accorded with the narrative of violent Islamist extremism that the West is at war with Islam. Hasan’s paper was full of empathetic and supportive recitation of other violent Islamist extremist views, including defense of Osama bin Laden, slanted historical accounts blaming the United States for problems in the Middle East, and arguments that anger at the United States is justifiable…The instructor who stopped the presentation said that Hasan was sweating, quite nervous, and agitated after being confronted by the class.

Hasan’s promotion of violent Islamist extremist beliefs continued after the presentation. One classmate said that Hasan supported suicide bombings in another class. He told several classmates that his religion took precedence over the U.S. Constitution he swore to support and defend as a U.S. military officer.

Yet they allowed him to continue, or even associate themselves with him after that.

One of the officers who reported Hasan to superiors opined that Hasan was permitted to remain in service because of “political correctness” and ignorance of religious practices. That officer added that he believed that concern about potential discrimination complaints stopped some individuals from challenging Hasan. We are concerned that exactly such worries about “political correctness” inhibited Hasan’s superiors and colleagues who were deeply troubled by his behavior from taking the actions against him that could have prevented the attack at Fort Hood.

That explains everything perfectly; exactly what damaged America considerably during the Dubya administration. Now that this has happened, however, the challenging question is whether Congress is going to do anything to prevent further tragedies like that from happening.

Labels: jihad, military, terrorism, United States, US Congress