After a three-and-a-half-year delay, U.S.
Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan … who admits to shouting “Allahu akbar” (God is
great) and opening fire on unarmed people … was finally placed on trial for murdering
13 and wounding 32 other individuals at Fort Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009. This he did to his comrades-in-arms in an
effort to stop them from going to Afghanistan and killing his fellow Muslims. He told jurists at his court-martial he was on
the “wrong side” in America’s war.
Before, during and following his
assault, Hasan was a self-identified jihadist. His paper and electronic trail provided
mountains of evidence that he committed the massacre to advance the cause of Islamic
supremacy. (He even called himself a “Soldier
of Allah” on his business cards.) Islamic
supremacists like Hasan, and his early mentor al-Qaida operations chief Anwar al-Awlaki,
view as enemies all people who oppose totalitarian Islam's quest for global
domination. But rather than believe Hasan,
and so do justice to his victims, the Obama Administration, with the active
collusion of senior U.S. military commanders went to great lengths to cover up
Hasan's ideological motivations; and hence the nature of his crime.
On the day of the attack, LTG Robert
Cone (then Commander of III Corps at Ft. Hood) said preliminary evidence didn't
suggest that the shooting was terrorism. Cone said this even though it was immediately known
that before he began shooting Hasan called out "Allahu akhbar." In an interview with CNN three days after the attack, U.S. Army Chief of Staff GEN
George Casey said, “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is
a strength. And as horrific as this
tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that's worse.”
The intensity of the Obama Administration's
participation in this cover-up became clear in May 2012. At that time, Congress had placed a clause
inside the Defense Appropriations Act
requiring the Pentagon to award Purple Hearts to Ft. Hood's victims. Rather than accept this eminently reasonable
demand … which simply required the Administration to acknowledge reality … Obama's
emissaries announced he would veto the appropriations bill and so leave the
Pentagon without a budget unless the clause was removed. Rather than define Hasan's attack as an enemy
attack or a terrorist act, the Administration has defined it as a case of “workplace
violence.” Following this determination,
those wounded in the attack, as well as the families of the murdered, are
denied the support conferred on armed forces personnel killed or wounded by
enemy fire. The purpose of this cover-up
can be nothing other than to deny the American people the truth about the
nature of the jihadist (foreign and domestic) threat in America.
Victims of the shooting rampage filed
a lawsuit last year over the Administration’s decision to treat the incident as
“workplace violence.” They say that
designation has robbed them of benefits and made them ineligible to receive the
Purple Heart medal … awarded to service members wounded in battle.
Why can’t the Administration call this
an “act of terror” without charging Hasan as a terrorist? According to a widely quoted Pentagon position
paper opposing Purple Hearts for the victims that would allow the defense to
argue that Hasan “cannot receive a fair trial because a branch of government
has indirectly declared that Major Hasan is a terrorist — that he is criminally
culpable.”
Reed Rubinstein, one of the attorneys
representing a number of the shooting victims and their families, calls that
argument “disingenuous.” The National Counterterrorism Center and State Department both counted the
incident among terror attacks that year, he notes. The White House and Department of Defense have balked, he argues, because too many
people didn’t heed warning signs that Hasan was becoming increasingly radical
leading up to his deployment to Afghanistan. “The truth of the matter is, it comes down to
politics,” the Washington attorney says. “It comes down to covering up the political
correctness that was the proximate cause of this attack in the first instance,”
Rubinstein said. Rubinstein is not
calling for a terrorism charge, but argues the government could
administratively rule this was an “act of terror” so his clients can qualify
for more benefits and the Purple Heart, which comes with its own set of
recognitions and privileges.
Rubinstein terms the government’s
refusal to call the shooting incident a terrorist attack for purposes of
awarding benefits “a kick in the teeth to the victims.” “They have to hear about workplace violence,”
he says. “They’re told that what happened
to them was no big deal. Pay no
attention to the fact that he was a jihadist. Never mind that we knew and the FBI knew. But his career, because of his ethnicity and
his religion, was more important to us than your lives. Forget all that.” Government attorneys have asked a federal
judge to postpone the civil case, which seeks to reclassify the incident so as
to make combat-related pay and other benefits available to the victims, until
after the court-martial and post-trial processing are completed. That could take a long time.
Victim Shawn Manning estimates he has
lost $2,000 a month in pay and benefits because of the decision to classify the
injuries as resulting from “workplace violence” rather than combat or
terrorist-related. Had his injuries been
classified that way, the military would have paid the difference between his
civilian and reserve salary, offered him better medical benefits and granted
him greater disability payments. “And
Hasan is still collecting his major pay,” growls Manning, who now works as a
civilian mental health specialist at Fort Lewis, Washington state. “That’s not correct,” agrees former SSG Alonzo
Lunsford, who was shot seven times and still carries one slug in his back. He and Manning spoke to the Associated Press … before a military
judge’s order not to discuss the case.
On this day that may render a verdict
at Hasan’s trial, where is the public outcry over the government's decision to
cover up the nature of Hasan's actions? The
public's passivity in the face of the government's mendacious, unjust behavior must
largely be credited to the mainstream media for having not castigated the Administration
for its decision to hide the fact that Hasan was not a ‘garden variety
disgruntled employee’ – but a traitor who acted in the service of declared
enemies of the U.S. In the absence of a
media-induced public outcry, the Administration has no reason to change; no
impetus to acknowledge the truth and act accordingly.
Rev. Dr. Kenneth L. Beale, Jr.
Chaplain (Colonel-Ret), U.S. Army
Pastor, Ft. Snelling Memorial Chapel
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