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Islamic Terror at Fort Hood
16 November 2009Ma’ariv Sabbath Supplement Nov. 13, 2009 page 23.
Shmuel Rosner
HAVE YOU FORGOTTEN 9/11?
A Very Undesirable Week For Adherents Of “Dialogue” And “Conciliation” For The Left Wing And Obama’s New America
Next week US Justice Secretary Eric Holder will fly to Detroit Michigan. He will speak before the organization called “Leaders and Activists for Security in the Community and the Police” a coalition of organizations that includes CAIR – The Council on Islamic American Relations. In 2007 in a Texas court evidence was presented that tied American CAIR to the Muslim Brotherhood. The FBI already sent a letter in April notifying the organization that it will have no contact with it so long as it cannot prove it has no ties with terrorist organizations like Hamas. And nonetheless the Justice Secretary is speaking on a stage on which beside him sits a CAIR official. And not only that: The senior FBI agent of the city of Detroit will serve as joint chairman of the festive dinner in which the Justice Secretary is going to make his speech.
Relations between the FBI and CAIR are tense. Six months ago a coalition of Muslim organizations threatened to sever ties with the FBI because of its “unjustified attitude to important Muslim-American groups.” The FBI addressed this threat seriously. In the new America, of Barack Obama, the administration is making concerted efforts to prove that the United States does not discriminate against Muslims and has no fight with them. Sometimes these efforts produce positive results. The Pew Institute reported two years ago that Muslim-Americans are pleased with their lives and maintain moderate views regarding many issues that divide Muslims and westerners around the world.
But sometimes they create great confusion, like the one that came up this week when it emerged that the Fort Hood murderer had contact with extremists, preached for discharging Muslims from military service, said many objectionable things – and was still not arrested, or discharged. American intelligence failed again.
Nidal Malek Hasan used two pistols. One of them he purchased legally in a Texas store for $1100. A valuable gun. Here are the gory details, mostly marginal. They start with Hasan’s correspondence with the extremist Imam Anwar El Awakli, to traditional Muslim dress, growing fanaticism, to expressions of support for suicide bombings. All these became political catapults. The conservatives blame “political correctness” for preventing identification of dangerous individuals. The liberals still think there is a need to fully examine the possibility that Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome caused the murder – and not ideological stress. They note correctly that more than 15,000 Muslim soldiers serve in the US armed forces. It isn’t sensible to turn all of them into criminal suspects.
The ideological war over political correctness is an interesting war, tumultuous, but perhaps not practical. Not this time. Yes, it may be the case that the FBI treads too carefully out of concern over a head on collision with political correctness. Or this is just negligence, of the kind for which there are no hidden reasons. “On the basis of what we know, neither the US Army or any other organization tied to the Department of Defense knew about Major Hasan’s contacts with Muslim extremists,” said a senior Pentagon official. One may read this announcement and then go back and read the thick report from the committee that investigated 9/11, and then one understands: nothing has changed.
Reforms, reorganization, new appointments, shifts from leadership to subordinates are rampant – but the basic problem of the bureaucratic monster called American intelligence is unmistakable. Every organization guards what it knows close to the vest. A Pentagon official who belongs to the Task Force On Terrorism heard about Hasan’s emails, but could not report about them without approval from his superiors in the Task Force who are FBI men. This octopus has many task forces and planning centers, but little operational or planning flexibility. American politics and the press withdrew into a battle of words expected in advance. From Obama’s “don’t jump to conclusions” through :”perhaps the world will never know if religion was a factor” of the liberal TV host Chris Matthews, from the MSNBC network, the left wing answer to Fox News.
This was an undesirable week for adherents of “dialogue” and “conciliation”, a problematic week for the agenda of the American left wing, of President Obama. And all this, not because the murderer’s motivations are already clear, known and documented – midweek the FBI stated that “the motivation is still unknown”. This was an undesirable week because it does not matter what findings come out of the investigation, the public already knows. And one needs to admit this also: it is not difficult to convince Americans that any gunfire executed by a Muslim is an act of terrorism.
Translation by yonatan silverman
