WSJ pundit Dan Henninger sees the Fort Hood massacre as the template for future terror attacks in the States, rather than 9/11. He sees "our values" and our laws as making preventive action nearly impossible in domestic terror cases:
Former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, as the judge presiding over the 1995 trial of the "blind sheik," Omar Abdel Rahman, for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, had to instruct the jury that the sheik's violent, "holy war" sermons at New York mosques were legal, protected activity (he was convicted of conspiracy). There is a mosque in Manhattan at 96th Street and Lexington Avenue, on whose sidewalk one can hear adherents spouting support for violence against the U.S. That, too, is protected.
A violent ideology is just an ideology, and that is protected speech. It requires acts to put in motion aggressive surveillance, such as wiretapping.
I think the Hasan case shows this is wrong, or at least too dangerous. First Amendment law has never dealt with a widely distributed ideology that has as its raison d'être the mass murder of Americans and destruction of American property.
For now this is the way it is: Future Hasans can get jacked up all day on kill-the-Americans Web sites, and we have to wait until they put in motion a conspiracy like Fort Dix or the Colorado jihadists. Or until they start shooting.
Politics is the only recourse.
This is what the political fight was through the Bush years—fights over the Patriot Act, warrantless wiretaps of conversations between U.S. citizens and foreign suspects, using the Swift financial data system to track terrorist transfers (or, with KSM, military tribunals versus civil courts). The argument against these policies was that "our values" require that judges review and approve virtually all such activity.
The problem with this view is that "our values" were already protected to an unprecedented degree. Raising the bar higher is asking too much of the people assigned to catch all these self-radicalizing jihadists.
Ex-special ops ace Gordon Cucullu wonders how many soldiers will die to preserve political correctness in leaving dangerous jihadists within military ranks. His prime target is General Casey, who has defended P.C. via the sacred mantra of "diversity" as strength:
Let’s look at this contrived value of diversity for a minute. If mere diversity -- expressed as moral equivalency of points of view and inclusiveness for all -- is such a critical factor to the Army’s success, then why are white supremacists, anarchists, and Luddites not encouraged to join up in the fight? In fact, particularly in the case of the former, discovery will lead to disciplinary action and dismissal from service. And it should.
While speaking so forcibly of the value of diversity, Casey ought to be questioned about the wisdom of including Quakers, Amish, Mennonites, and other anti-war believers into the total force structure. Or would he be forced to admit that recruiting from groups that espouse pacificism as a core value would detract from combat readiness?
If the implications of bringing large numbers of conscientious objectors into active duty, thereby filling sorely needed combat personnel slots in the name of diversity seems frivolous, then it would make good sense to challenge the concept that including large numbers of Muslim soldiers simply because of their religious affiliation ought to be questioned too.
What we are observing here is an Army based not on potential skill sets and capabilities but on quotas. So many African-Americans, so many women, so many Hispanics, so many Muslims. Statistical preoccupation with racial, ethnic, and religious quotas guts the core purpose of the military which is to kill people and break things.
Not to say that Muslims, Christians, Jews, and non-believers cannot be good soldiers. But the emphasis needs to be on the latter factor: is this person a good soldier? rather than on some bogus bean-counting standard that detracts from the military’s basic mission.
Perhaps in a twisted way Hasan was right. Any Muslim -- or believer of any other persuasion -- who is not willing to participate as a soldier in the call to duty ought to be dismissed.
Ex-CIAer Reuel Marc Gerecht sees the FBI unprepared to combat domestic Muslim militants, due to political correctness. He contrasts American P.C. with French realism:
For those of us who have tracked Islamic militancy in Europe, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's actions are not extraordinary. Since Muslim militants first tried to blow a French high-speed train off its rails in 1995, European intelligence and internal-security services have increasingly monitored European Muslim radicals. Whether it's anti-Muslim bigotry, the large numbers of immigrant and native-born Muslims in Europe, an appreciation of how hard it is to become European, or just an understanding of how dangerous Islamic radicalism is, most Europeans are far less circumspect and politically correct when discussing their Muslim compatriots than are Americans.
A concern for not giving offense to Muslims would never prevent the French internal-security service, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire (DST), which deploys a large number of Muslim officers, from aggressively trying to pre-empt terrorism. As Maj. Hasan's case shows, this is not true in the United States. The American military and especially the Federal Bureau of Investigation were in great part inattentive because they were too sensitive.
RMG sees a missed opportunity in Obama's embracing P.C.:
Moreover, President Barack Obama's determined effort not to mention Islam in terrorist discussions—which means that we must not suggest that Maj. Hasan's murderous actions flowed from his faith—will weaken American counterterrorism. Worse, the president's position is an enormous wasted opportunity to advance an all-critical Muslim debate about the nature and legitimacy of jihad....
...Westerners could certainly benefit from Mr. Obama underscoring something else he touched on in his Cairo speech: Muslims should stop blaming non-Muslims for their crippling problems. He could ask, as some Muslims have, why is it that Islam has produced so many jihadists? Why is it that Maj. Hasan's rampage has produced so little questioning among Muslim clerics about why a man, one in a long line of Muslim militants, so easily takes God's name to slaughter his fellow citizens?
Had Mr. Obama asked this, we might now be witnessing convulsive debate among Muslims. He missed the opportunity to start this conversation before what is clearly the first Islamist terrorist attack on U.S. soil since 9/11. He will probably get another opportunity.
As it stands now, however, Iranian youth who once so eagerly welcomed Mr. Obama's election by shouting his name in Persian—U ba ma! ("He is with us!")—are now writing the president's likely legacy among Muslims who yearn for a better modernity. Disappointed to see how determined Mr. Obama has remained to engage the regime they despise, they now forlornly chant U ba unhast ("He is with them.").
Bottom Line. P.C. at and after Fort Hood augurs ill for domestic security. Combine Fort Hood with the upcoming 9/11 trial in the Big Apple, and the risk of a copycat attack during the circus trial seems significant.
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