Must reading: A powerful cri de coeur by an Army officer, Major Shawn Keller, about Ft. Hood.
Major Keller is angry, and he's right to be:
"But as angry as I am at what happened, I'm even angrier that it was allowed to happen. Apparently, there was no shortage of warning signs that this guy identified himself more with Islamic Jihadists than he did with the US Army....There were more than enough red flags raised that at a minimum, should have gotten Hassan kicked out of the Army.
But just like 9-11, those agencies and individuals charged with keeping America and Americans safe, failed to connect the dots that would have saved lives. Jihadist rhetoric espoused by Hassan was categorically dismissed out of submissiveness to the concepts of tolerance and diversity. The Army as an institution has been neutered by decades of political correctness and the leaders in Hassan's chain-of-command failed to act accordingly out of fear of being labeled anti-Muslim and receiving a negative evaluation report. The counter-terrorism agencies knew this guy was communicating with Al-Qaeda and dismissed it as academic research instead of delving deeper into the probability that a terrorist had infiltrated the ranks.
Even four hours after Hassan stood on a desk yelling Allahu Akbar and opened fire, the FBI stated that they were not investigating the attack as an act of terrorism even as there were still reports of other gunmen on the loose. Meanwhile the Army continues to dismiss it as a "tragedy" and an "isolated incident by a lone gunman" while the media has invented the psychological condition of post-traumatic stress disorder by proxy. There is more concern for promoting the appropriate information operation campaign and maintaining the illusion of safety than there is for actually exposing the weaknesses and faults in the system that allowed this to happen....
Hassan's radical ideology grew to the point that he committed mass murder because too many leaders were too afraid to lead out of fear harming their career or the image of the Army. If those leaders don't have the intestinal fortitude, moral conviction or personal courage to do stand up, speak up and protect soldiers, then retire, resign or get out of the way and let somebody else do it for you."
I'll make this despairing prediction: Major Keller will get in more trouble for writing this, than anyone in Hasan's chain of command or elsewhere in the government will get for failing to do their job.
