Report: Fort Hood Attack Enabled by Political Correctness
As noted at the Christian Science Monitor,
A Senate report on the Fort Hood attack suggests that the Army failed to heed warnings about the prime suspect because it was wary of singling out a devout Muslim.
The article and report seem to implicate that a fear of being accused of racial profiling may have discouraged pursuing what should have been “red flags.” (This has long been discussed.) The Senate solution: Call it what it is.
The enemy — Islamist extremists — must be labeled correctly and explicitly, the report said, in order for the military to counter the extremism.
The Senate committee’s report calls for updated military training to identify signs of violent Islamist extremism and policies to ensure it is not tolerated, a change that would allow Army officials to root out Muslim extremists without being subject to accusations of racial profiling – a concern that may have prevented officials at Fort Hood from intervening when Hasan first showed signs of extremism.
The misuse of “racial profiling” notwithstanding (Islam has nothing to do with race), the report also walks a fine line in recommending “distinguishing” sects of religion:
The report said the government lacks policies that distinguish between a devout yet peaceful practice of Islam and violent radicalization.
The problem lies in the appropriate role of government in “evaluating” religious beliefs. It appears the goal would be to identify behavior rather than belief, if the two can be separated.
Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan has been charged with 13 counts of pre-meditated murder for the 14 people killed in the attack, as well as 32 counts of attempted murder.
Religion, like guns do not kill people, people kill people. I find it extremely unlikely the people in this wacko’s chain of command had ANY idea this guy was going to do what he did. There aren’t very many people qualified to determine mental competency, and rightly so. We don’t want a bunch of barracks psychologists attempting to analyze Johnny or Peggy in hopes of finding some hidden childhood trauma that might cause them to “go-off” and do something awful.
I’ve worked with some very angry people in my life and some of them should have been carted off to the loony bin. But I was in no position to even remotely suggest to the powers that be that these people were/are unstable. I even asked a senior officer for some advice once and he told me that you (I) don’t want to go down that rabbit hole because there could be extreme repercussions’ for accusing someone of something without hard evidence, not to mention a butt-load of paperwork.
I hope this man gets the death penalty; and I’d also like to read all of the reports/investigation surrounding his behavior rather than belief, if the two can be separated as JD mentions, especially the parts that his supervisors may have known his religious beliefs really made him kill and they didn’t attempt to do anything to stop him.
watchtower,
read ‘The Gift of Fear’ by Gavin deBecker. There are many reasons to ignore warning signs. The accusation is that political correctness on behalf of religious concerns is a reason people dismissed Maj Hasan’s warning signs.
Dealer —
I have read this book and found it to be a thriller [like] read, but the PINS are everyday occurrences and very subjective. I want to punch a jack-wagon at least once a month but obviously don’t act upon it because I’m aware of the consequences, doesn’t mean I don’t talk about doing it either. Does this make me predisposed to commit a violent crime maybe in the future? Sounds more like the (far fetched) Tom Cruise movie Minority Report; where in the future, criminals are caught before the crimes they commit.
I doubt PC has anything to do with this. He is totally responsible for his actions and although there will be attempts to blame someone or something else for it the truth is they can’t.
watchtower,
I also found it to be a very fascinating read, and yes the PINS are subjective. That’s how deBecker makes his money. I personally think there were many people who had concerns about Maj Hasan, some of them were took the issues to the chain, some did not. I do not know how many concerns were dismissed out of political (or religious) correctness, or were based on the idea the military should get a reasonable amount of return on the investment in Hasan.
From my safety training, I think about breaking the chain of an accident. In this case, we want to break the chain to prevent anyone from attacking us in this manner again. Maj Hasan is not the only link in that chain. He is totally responsible for his own actions, but then lax security procedures, illegally acquisition of weapons, or any number of other potential flaws be factors in prevention.
*could be factors…
The “PC” portion of this came from people Monday-morning quarterbacking the fact people “missed” all of the “obvious” signs. IE, people who “saw things” didn’t say anything because they might be accused of singling him out because of his religion. To the point, the Wall Street Journal points out (the already identified fact) that none of the DoD reports on the Fort Hood shooting even mentioned Islam.
As the links above note, however, such a concern was validated at least once, when a Muslim Soldier implied he was being treated uniquely because of his religion.