Harbinger of Terror at Fort Hood

Yesterday, November 5, 2009, a lone gunman murdered 13 people and injured dozens more at the Fort Hood military base in Texas. The shooter was Nadal Malik Hasan, a Major in the U.S. Army. When news broke that a U.S. military base had been attacked, the story immediately saturated major media outlets. As details trickled in, journalists and politicians began to analyze the data. What had happened here?

Within hours, it became public knowledge that Major Hasan was the shooter, and that he was a Muslim who had spoken out against U.S. military actions in Iraq and Afghanistan. While a few news outlets reported this information, for the most part these facts were purposefully ignored by the press. One CNN reporter commented that “it would be irresponsible of us to speculate about any possible motives for these attacks,” and that “right now, our only thoughts should be for the families of those who were killed.” This was the attitude taken by most news outlets, and by all politicians I saw interviewed yesterday.

President Obama, in his initial comments about the attacks, said that his “immediate thoughts and prayers [were] with the wounded and with the families of the fallen and with those who live and serve at Fort Hood.” Though the President must have known about the shooter’s identity and ideological motives at this point, nowhere in his speech did Obama mention the words “Islamic” or “terrorism.”

Like most Americans, I was saddened when I heard the news of the Fort Hood attack. But also like most Americans, my “immediate thoughts” on the issue included the vital question: Was this an act of terrorism? Why haven’t President Obama, the Governor of Texas, or any other political leaders raised the issue of Hasan’s ideological motivation for these attacks? Why has the press (for the most part) ignored this issue? The FBI quickly noted on Thursday that the Fort Hood murders had “no known nexus to terrorism.” They said this within hours of the attack, before Hasan had even been publicly identified as the shooter. Why the hasty public statement dissociating the Fort Hood attack from Islamic Terrorism?

While this was not an act of foreign aggression, a critical part of the story here is that Hasan was motivated by the same violent philosophy as most of the political leaders in the Muslim world. Iran, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, and many other nations are dominated by supporters of militant Islam. It is these nations which now pose the greatest threat to the free world.

But the United States has so far been unable to win its “War on Terror,” a war it wages against backwards nations without a tenth of her military might. The public response to the Fort Hood shootings provides insight as to why we are losing this fight.

Western journalists, diplomats – and above all, political leaders – refuse properly to identify the enemy: proponents of militant Islam. It is not just the cave-dwelling, goat riding bunch of murderous Theocrats in Afghanistan who pose a threat to us. It is the Mulsim governments who support these terrorists, materially and otherwise. It is the millions of Muslims worldwide who cheer for them every time they claim a new victim.

Not every Muslim is my enemy. If a Muslim man – like the average American Christian – refuses to take some aspects of his religion seriously; if he opposes the integration of state and religion; if he denounces the motivations, objectives, and tactics of militant Islamists around the world; then he is not my enemy. But if he does support these things, then he is my enemy, and a nation full of people like him is a serious threat to my life.

The sooner the West is willing to identify the enemy, the sooner we can fight and defeat him.

--Dan Edge