Political Correctness vs. National Security. Update

The Fort Hood shooting story had quickly developed into a scandal. From the day of the shooting the U.S. Military and the FBI seemed more concerned with speculative threats to Muslim servicemen and women than they were with preventing terrorist attacks. From the LA Times:

Army Chief of Staff Gen. George W. Casey Jr. warned of "a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers," adding that "it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well."

The press followed suit by weaving a tale of a man cracked under stress, thus turning the spotlight away from the theological-political element in Hasan's carefully planned murders.

Then came the real shocker. Apparently, there were plenty of advance warnings that Nidal Malik Hasan had radical religious views and that he was in fact trying to make contact with al Qaeda. We do not yet know who may have been aware of these facts, and who failed to act or failed to warn someone who might have acted. It has been reported that some of Hasan's fellow soldiers were aware of his radicalism, but were afraid to report it lest they be accused of racism.

This is a very serious scandal. It has cost us the lives of more than a dozen men and women in uniform. Joe Liebermann was right to come out and demand Congressional investigations.

The Military is right to be concerned that one of our servicemen or women might be discriminated against because that person is Muslim. But there is something deeply wrong when Chief of Staff Casey says, over and over, that his first concern is to prevent discrimination against Muslims in the Army. That is a pathological confusion of priorities.

UPDATE.

David Brooks has this:

A shroud of political correctness settled over the conversation. Hasan was portrayed as a victim of society, a poor soul who was pushed over the edge by prejudice and unhappiness.

There was a national rush to therapy. Hasan was a loner who had trouble finding a wife and socializing with his neighbors. This response was understandable. It’s important to tamp down vengeful hatreds in moments of passion.

But it was also patronizing. Public commentators assumed the air of kindergarten teachers who had to protect their children from thinking certain impermissible and intolerant thoughts. If public commentary wasn’t carefully policed, the assumption seemed to be, then the great mass of unwashed yahoos in Middle America would go off on a racist rampage. Worse, it absolved Hasan — before the real evidence was in — of his responsibility.

Comments

[George Mason]

One question that needs to be addressed is how military medical staff is screened.
Doctors and nurses receive complimentary commissions (as do chaplains). They are not put through the type of screening and training that regular officers receive.
The other question is how well our intelligence and law enforcement are sharing
information. Are they reverting to Clinton era prohibitions?

[William]

I think Mark Steyn summed up this situation about as well as anyone:
Nuts [Mark Steyn]

For the purposes of argument, let's accept the media's insistence that Major Hasan is a lone crazy.

So who's nuttier?

The guy who gives a lecture to other military doctors in which he says non-Muslims should be beheaded and have boiling oil poured down their throats?

Or the guys who say "Hey, let's have this fellow counsel our traumatized veterans and then promote him to major and put him on a Homeland Security panel?

Or the Army Chief of Staff who thinks the priority should be to celebrate diversity, even unto death?

Or the Secretary of Homeland Security who warns that the principal threat we face now is an outbreak of Islamophobia?

Or the president who says we cannot "fully know" why Major Hasan did what he did, so why trouble ourselves any further?

Or the columnist who, when a man hands out copies of the Koran before gunning down his victims while yelling "Allahu akbar," says you're racist if you bring up his religion?

Or his media colleagues who put Americans in the same position as East Germans twenty years ago of having to get hold of a foreign newspaper to find out what's going on?

General Casey has a point: An army that lets you check either the "home team" or "enemy" box according to taste is certainly diverse. But the logic in the remarks of Secretary Napolitano and others is that the real problem is that most Americans are knuckledragging bigots just waiting to go bananas. As Melanie Phillips wrote in her book Londonistan:

Minority-rights doctrine has produced a moral inversion, in which those doing wrong are excused if they belong to a 'victim' group, while those at the receiving end of their behaviour are blamed simply because they belong to the 'oppressive' majority.

To the injury of November 5, we add the insults of American officialdom and their poodle media. In a nutshell:

The real enemy — in the sense of the most important enemy — isn’t a bunch of flea-bitten jihadis sitting in a cave somewhere. It’s Western civilization’s craziness. We are setting our hair on fire and putting it out with a hammer.

[RM]

"Political Correctness" is just another way to suppress Freedom of Speech.

[Dianah]

Greetings the comments are great however I wonder if they are spoken with a JudoChristian theology? I was in Desert Storm and stationed in Saudi Arabia where the Mohabist survive. Let me tell you it was a culture shock for them to see female with weapons and also by the by there was greater than 700,000 soldiers involved in that war. They only understand one thing BRUTE FORCE not dialog.
Also you must have a Secret clearence to be an officer in the United States Military. excuse me also we are educated with Military regulations Basic,Advanced Officer training. I believe I received education on how to go to war and survived.

[KB]

RM: I am not sure that freedom of speech is an issue here. The problem is that, apparently, Hasan's alarming speeches were protected by the current military regime, whereas soldiers who became alarmed by those speeches had no protection should they have wished to notify their superiors.

Dianah: thanks for the interesting comment. Yes, there is a big cultural divide between the U.S. and the peoples of Iraq. But here the problem is one of simple security. Hasan should have been neutralized by any rationale security regime, but he wasn't.

[George Mason]

The WSJ, as usual, does a fine job of investigating the wider causes and implications.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704576204574529844037896738.html

The current administration wants to make counter-intelligence into a crime rather than a virtue to confirm its allegations in its on-going campaign against George Bush.

[KB]

George: If that's true, the new administration is suffering from multiple personality syndrome. It also seems to be keeping a lot of the old administration's security practices.