Multiculturalism in the American Army

The War on Islamic terror notwithstanding, the U. S. Army systematically ignored Major Nidal Hasan’s Islamist extremism up until, and even after, he shouted: “Allahu Akbar” and gunned down thirteen people at Fort Hood.

Fortunately for us all, Dorothy Rabinowitz is on the case. Today she offers a look at the report filed by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs, report which expressed shock and dismay at the willful blindness of the American military. Link here.

In Rabinowitz’ words: “In this report, titled ‘A Ticking Time Bomb‘ and put out by the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, there is a detail as dazzling in its bleak way as all the glowing misrepresentations of Dr. Hasan's skills and character, which his superiors poured into their evaluations of him. It concerns the Department of Defense's official report on the Foot Hood killings—a study whose recital of fact made no mention of Hasan's well-documented jihadist sympathies. Subsequent DoD memoranda portray the bloodbath—which began with Hasan shouting ‘Allahu Akbar!’—as a kind of undefined extremism, something on the order, perhaps, of work-place violence.”

The technical term for this is censorship. It represents a systematic repression of inconvenient details. And it was committed by the American military. And, as Rabinowitz notes, it was not some accidental oversight; it was policy.

Shouldn’t Robert Gates have to answer for this?

In the meantime, Rabinowitz concludes that multiculturalism has infected the mind of the American military.

It has been there for quite some time. While many soldiers were out fighting against Islamic extremists, other parts of the military were ignoring a threat from within their own ranks.

Describing evaluations of Maj. Hasan, she writes: “Some of those enthusiastic testaments strongly suggested that the writers were themselves at least partly persuaded of their reasoning. In magical thinking, safety and good come to those who obey taboos, and in the multiculturalist world, there is no taboo more powerful than the one that forbids acknowledgment of realities not in keeping with the progressive vision. In the world of the politically correct—which can apparently include places where psychiatrists are taught—magical thinking reigns.”

Not only did the military overlook Hasan’s overt sympathies with Islamic terrorisms, but it praised him for them. The military saw Hasan as a special kind of Muslim, one who, by flaunting his jihadi sentiments, was really providing the Army with a special insight into the mind of a Muslim radical.

Rabinowitz writes: “Here was a world in which Hasan was untouchable, in which all that was grim and disturbing in him was transformed. He was a consistently mediocre performer, ranking in the lowest 25% of his class, but to his evaluators, he was an officer of unique talents.

“He was a star not simply because he was a Muslim, but because he was a special kind—the sort who posed, in his flaunting of jihadist sympathies, the most extreme test of liberal toleration. Exactly the kind the progressive heart finds irresistible.”

Imagine yourself in Hasan’s shoes. Do you think he could respect an institution that could be so completely deluded about what he was saying? Might he not have believed that he was striking a blow against a decadent culture, one that was so mentally weak that it could not even bring itself to name its enemy?