I think its pretty clear by now that the recent shooting at Ft Hood was not the work of a disgruntled soldier but in fact a terrorist act by a religous Muslim fanatic. And therin lies the rub. Do we call this what it really is? Or, in the interests of not fanning the dying flames of anti-muslim sentiments in this country do we gloss over Nidal Hassan’s radical islamic beliefs and simply call this pre-post traumatic stress disorder? Believe it or not, this is a difficult question even for me. Over at my favorite liberal blog, writers are already decrying the inevitable anti-islam backlash – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/earl-ofari-hutchinson/good-reason-for-muslims-t_b_349492.html or using this as yet another excuse to enact more gun control – http://www.huffingtonpost.com/paul-helmke/fort-hood-shooting-1-dist_b_348895.htmlwhile other more conservative bloggers (like me) are calling this for what it really is -http://hotair.com/archives/2009/11/07/report-hasan-attended-same-radical-mosque-as-911-hijackers/
While I do not feel that the enemy is “infiltrating” our military, the possibility is there. The fact that this man was able to rise to the rank of Major shows that we are perhaps not doing as much screening as we should and in the right places. Those of us who have held a security clearance know that the screening process for thes clearances is fairly thorough, but not until you get up to the higher clearance levels. There is no indication that Nidal Hassan ever had any type of clearance and as a psychiatrist I would not necessarily expect him to. So what processes are in place to ensure that a muslim-american with these types of religous beliefs does not slip through the cracks again? And should our men and women in uniform trust those muslim-americans they currently serve with?
This could have been much worse. Had Nidal Hassan been something other than a psyciatrist, he could have caused far more damage than he did. Of course, he would have gone through more screening to get access to that kind of firepower so maybe the system would have prevented him. We will never know. But can we even screem out people based on religous beliefs? I believe under current law, we cannot. I think we need to take a harder look at just how much “political correctness” is going to end up costing us in the future.
Rich