The Bloody Cost of “Diversity”
We’ve known from the start that there were warning signs of Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s Islamic fanaticism well before the Fort Hood shootings, signs we suspected were ignored due to political correctness. But last night, Sean Hannity called attention to a recent Boston Globe report confirming our worst fears. The report claims that Army officials knew Hasan was a radical, but
“did not act in part because they valued the rare diversity of having a Muslim psychiatrist.”
Examples of Hasan’s radical behavior have previously been disclosed in press accounts based on interviews with unnamed Army officials […] But the Pentagon’s careful documentation of individual episodes dating back to 2005 and the subsequent inaction of his superiors have not been made public before. The Globe was permitted to review the Army’s more complete findings on the condition that it not name supervisory officers who did not act, some of whom are facing possible disciplinary action.
In searching for explanations for why superiors did not move to revoke Hasan’s security clearances or expel him from the Army, the report portrays colleagues and superiors as possibly reluctant to lose one of the Army’s few Muslim mental health specialists. The report concludes that because the Army had attracted only one Muslim psychiatrist in addition to Hasan since 2001, “it is possible some were afraid” of losing such diversity “and thus were willing to overlook Hasan’s deficiencies as an officer.”
[…]
In one classroom incident not previously described by the Army – which parallels another episode around the same time that has received press attention – Hasan gave a presentation in August 2007 titled “Is the War on Terrorism a War on Islam: An Islamic Perspective.” But the presentation was “shut down” by the instructor because Hasan appeared to be defending terrorism. Witnesses told investigators that Hasan became visibly upset as a result. “The students reported his statements to superior officers, who took no action on the basis that Major Hasan’s statements were protected by the First Amendment,” the investigation found. “They did not counsel Hasan and consider administrative action, even though not all protected speech is compatible with continued military service.’’
Words are almost insufficient to convey the contemptible sickness of the situation. Thirteen American heroes are dead because horribly perverse minds held “diversity” to be of more worth than their lives. They wanted someone with the “potential to inform our understanding of Islamic culture and how it relates to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan”? Then research it! Study the messages of extreme and moderate Muslims alike. Consult with experts on the subject from within and without the faith, like Irshad Manji, Brigitte Gabriel, Robert Spencer, and others. To suggest that their only option in learning about Islamic culture was one unstable soldier with known jihadist tendencies is beyond absurd. How useful did they expect whatever lessons they got from a guy like him to be, anyway?
It’s hard to imagine a clearer, more damning indictment of leftist thought for the mental disorder that it is. The current commander-in-chief deserves serious blame for not doing something about this twisted dogma that has infected military officials, but the hard truth is that this didn’t start on his watch. For years, many people, like Lieutenant Colonel Robert “Buzz” Patterson (keeper of the “nuclear football” during the 1990s) have been sounding the alarm on the sorry state President Bill Clinton left our armed forces in, and how, in many ways, military effectiveness has taken a backseat to political correctness. And for all the good President George W. Bush did in the War on Terror, this particular crisis evidently wasn’t on his radar screen.
In the wake of 9/11, President Bush and many of his conservative supporters rightfully said we could not succumb to a pre-9/11 mindset, that we had to wrap our heads around the reality that our nation was at war. But, nine years later, with a jihadist killing spree on one of our own military bases and the Army’s top man worried not about how it happened but about “a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers,” it seems we have to ask ourselves if we really meant it.
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Hailing from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, Calvin Freiburger is a political science major at Hillsdale College. He also blogs at the Hillsdale Forum and his personal website, Calvin Freiburger Online.
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