Mark Stein hits the hammer squarely on the nail head in his slam of multiculturalism and diversity. Stein correctly fingers the two politically correct evils for allowing an obvious Muslim terrorist like Major Nidal Hasan to kill fourteen Americans on Ft. Hood army base in Texas. The signs were there but ignored even though terrorist watch government agencies actually flagged Hasan. Why was Hasan’s radical Islam not pursued to the point of removing him from being an army psychiatrist? BECAUSE it might offend the poor victim Muslims in America!
Oh by the way: in case you wonder the reason for my stating the death toll was fourteen instead of thirteen as reported by most MSM outlets. The reason is one of the murdered Americans was pregnant. As Stein correctly pointed out her murder was the death of two individuals not one.
JRH 11/16/09
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A jihadist hiding in plain sight
By Mark Steyn
Nov. 15, 2009 / 28 Mar-Cheshvan 5770
Jewish World Review
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
Shortly after 9/11, there was a lot of talk about how no one would ever
hijack an American airliner ever again — not because of new security
arrangements but because an alert citizenry was on the case: We were hip
to their jive. The point appeared to be proved three months later on a
U.S.-bound Air France flight. The "Shoebomber" attempted to light his
footwear, and the flight attendants and passengers pounced. As the more
boorish commentators could not resist pointing out, even the French guys
walloped him.
But the years go by, and the mood shifts. You didn't have to be "alert"
to spot Maj. Nidal Hasan. He'd spent most of the past half-decade
walking around with a big neon sign on his head saying "JIHADIST. STAND
WELL BACK." But we (that's to say, almost all of us; and certainly
almost anyone who matters in national security and the broader political
culture) are now reflexively conditioned to ignore the flashing neon
sign. Like those
apocryphal Victorian
ladies discreetly draping the lasciviously curved legs of their pianos,
if a glimpse of hard unpleasant reality peeps through we simply veil it
in another layer of fluffy illusions.
Two joint terrorism task forces became aware almost a year ago that Maj.
Hasan was in regular e-mail contact with Anwar al-Awlaqi, the
American-born but now Yemeni-based cleric who served as imam to three of
the 9/11 hijackers and supports all-out holy war against the United
States. But the expert analysts in the Pentagon determined that this
lively correspondence was consistent with Maj. Hasan's "research
interests," so there was no need to worry. That's America:
Technologically superior, money no object (not one but two "joint
terrorism task forces" stumbled across him). Yet no action was taken.
On the other hand, who needs surveillance operations and intelligence
budgets? Maj. Hasan was entirely upfront about who he was. He put it on
his business card: "SOA." As in "Soldier of Allah" — which seems a tad
ungrateful to the American taxpayers who ponied up half a million bucks
or thereabouts in elite medical school education to train him to be a
Soldier of Uncle Sam. In a series of meetings during 2008, officials
from both Walter Reed and the Uniformed Services University of Health
Sciences considered the question of whether then-Capt. Hasan was
psychotic. But, according to at least one bigwig at Walter Reed, members
of the policy committee wondered "how would it look if we kick out one
of the few Muslim residents." So he got promoted to major and shipped to
Fort Hood, Texas.
And 13 men and women and an unborn baby are dead.
Well, like they say, it's easy to be wise after the event. I'm not so
sure. These days, it's easier to be even more stupid after the event.
"Apparently, he tried to contact al-Qaida," mused MSNBC's Chris
Matthews. "That's not a crime to call up al-Qaida, is it? Is it? I mean,
where do you stop the guy?" Interesting question: Where do you draw the
line?
The truth is, we're not prepared to draw a line even after he's gone
ahead and committed mass murder. "What happened at Fort Hood was a
tragedy," said Gen. Casey, the Army's chief of staff, "but I believe it
would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty
here." A "greater tragedy" than 14 dead and dozens of wounded?
Translating from the original brain-addled multicult-speak, the Army
chief of staff is saying that the same fatuous prostration before
marshmallow illusions that led to the "tragedy" must remain in place. If
it leads to occasional mass murder, well, hopefully it can be held to
what cynical British civil servants used to call, during the Northern
Irish "Troubles", "an acceptable level of violence." Fourteen dead is
evidently acceptable. A hundred and forty? Fourteen hundred? I guess
we'll find out.
"Diversity" is one of those words designed to absolve you of the need to
think. Likewise, a belief in "multiculturalism" doesn't require you to
know anything at all about other cultures, just to feel generally warm
and fluffy about them. Heading out from my hotel room the other day, I
caught a glimpse of that 7-Eleven video showing Major Hasan wearing
"Muslim" garb to buy a coffee on the morning of his murderous rampage.
And it wasn't until I was in the taxi cab that something odd struck me:
He is an American of Arab descent. But he was wearing Pakistani dress —
that's to say, a "Punjabi suit," as they call it in Britain, or the
"shalwar kameez," to give it its South Asian name. For all the hundreds
of talking heads droning on about "diversity" across the TV networks, it
was only Tarek Fatah, writing in The Ottawa Citizen, who pointed out
that no Arab males wear this get-up — with one exception: Those Arab men
who got the jihad fever and went to Afghanistan to sign on with the
Taliban and al-Qaida. In other words, Maj. Hasan's outfit symbolized the
embrace of an explicit political identity entirely unconnected with his
ethnic heritage.
Mr. Fatah would seem to be a genuine "multiculturalist": That's to say,
he's attuned to often very subtle "diversities" between cultures.
Whereas the professional multiculturalist sees the 7-Eleven video and
coos, "Aw, look. He's wearing … well, something exotic and colorful,
let's not get hung up on details. Celebrate diversity, right? Can we get
him in the front row for the group shot? We may be eligible for a
grant."
The brain-addled "diversity" of Gen. Casey will get some of us killed,
and keep all of us cowed. In the days since the killings, the news
reports have seemed increasingly like a satirical novel that the
author's not quite deft enough to pull off, with bizarre new Catch-22s
multiplying like the windmills of your mind: If you're openly in favor
of pouring boiling oil down the throats of infidels, then the Pentagon
will put down your e-mails to foreign jihadists as mere confirmation of
your long-established "research interests." If you're psychotic, the
Army will make you a psychiatrist for fear of provoking you. If you gun
down a bunch of people, within an hour the FBI will state clearly that
we can all relax, there's no terrorism angle, because, in our
over-credentialized society, it doesn't count unless you're found to be
carrying Permit #57982BQ3a from the relevant State Board of Jihadist
Licensing.
Ezra Levant, my comrade in a long battle to restore freedom of speech to
Canada, likes to say that the Danish cartoons crisis may one day be
seen as a more critical event than 9/11. Not, obviously, in the
comparative death tolls but in what each revealed about the state of
Western civilization. After 9/11, we fought back, hit hard, rolled up
the Afghan camps; after the cartoons, we weaseled and equivocated and
appeased and signaled that we were willing to trade core Western values
for a quiet life. Watching the decadence and denial on display this past
week, I think in years to come Fort Hood will be seen in a similar
light. What happened is not a "tragedy" but a national scandal, already
fading from view.
[SlantRight: Bill O’Reilly on Ft. Hood Massacre]
___________________
Stein’s book: “America Alone: The End of the World as We Know It.”
From the book description: In this, his first major book, Mark
Steyn--probably the most widely read, and wittiest, columnist in the
English-speaking world--takes on the great poison of the twenty-first
century: the anti-Americanism that fuels both Old Europe and radical
Islam. America, Steyn argues, will have to stand alone. The world will
be divided between America and the rest; and for our sake America had
better win. It’s the end of the world as we know it… Someday soon, you
might wake up to the call to prayer from a muezzin. Europeans already
are. And liberals will still tell you that "diversity is our
strength"—while Talibanic enforcers cruise Greenwich Village burning
books and barber shops, the Supreme Court decides sharia law doesn’t
violate the "separation of church and state," and the Hollywood Left
decides to give up on gay rights in favor of the much safer charms of
polygamy. If you think this can’t happen, you haven’t been … READ ALL.
JWR Steyn Archives
© 2009, Mark Steyn
