COURT-MARTIAL THE OFFICERS WHO IGNORED MAJOR HASAN

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 Qaeda.  As he was gunning down the defenseless soldiers around him, he was heard shouting Allahu Akbar (God is great.) 

His Moslem 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 SJD –  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.  Or when John Allen Mohammed, with his teenage boyfriend accomplice Lee Malvo, murdered at least 10 people at random in 2002 as the Washington "Beltway Sniper."  Mr. Mohammed was executed this week (11/10).

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, a Jordanian illegal alien 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 Moslem 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 Moslems in the United States are infected by Islamism, and there is reason to believe this is so.  About 5,000 Moslems 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 Moslems and endanger the rest of us when they make excuses for Islamists.  Because 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, writes Army Maj. Shawn Keller.  It’s really worth reading. 

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 13 deaths, one an infant, and 31wounded, many with life-changing injuries.

My question is:  shouldn’t those responsible for such negligence be court-martialed?

Jack Kelly is a former Marine and Green Beret and a former deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force in the Reagan administration. He is national security writer for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette.