Obama's Outrage over the Fort Hood Massacre

The world would be a better place if there were fewer white nationalists, neo-Nazis and other assorted alt-right hate groups. As it happens, precious few of these characters dot the landscape, so we ought to feel somewhat fortunate that the pestilence is contained.

Not entirely, of course. Last Saturday a neo-Nazi drove a care into a crowd of demonstrators, injuring many and murdering one. Denunciations came swiftly from politicians and commentators on the right or the left.

Trump's detractors and haters went into the highest dudgeon over what Donald Trump did not say about the murder in Charlottesville. They noted that he has been too slow to denounce people who have, after all, tended to support him. These are fair points.

Yet, it is also fair to say that not one of those who are most outraged at Trump's lack of outrage has ever denounced any alt-left hate group that targets white people or Israelis.

Trump missed a chance to step up to his role as leader by denouncing the organizers of Saturday’s Charlottesville protest. As it happened, most Republican leaders did denounce the act as domestic terrorism. For some it was not enough. When Sen. Ted Cruz forthrightly declared that the man who drove his car into a crowd was a domestic terrorist, New York Times reporter Eric Lipton denounced him anyway… for posturing.

Some people are never satisfied.

Anyway, Trump was roundly disparaged for being insufficiently outraged by the attack. He did not live up to the fine example that Barack Obama set when Major Nidal Malik Hasan yelled Allahu Akhbar and opened fire in a cafeteria in Fort Hood.

CBS News reported on Obama’s full throated expression of outrage:

President Barack Obama said Friday the entire nation is grieving for those slain at Fort Hood, and he urged people not to jump to conclusions while law enforcement officers investigate the shootings.

Mr. Obama met Friday morning with FBI Director Robert Mueller and other federal leaders to get an update on what they've learned. Thirteen people were killed and 30 others injured in the shooting rampage at the Texas Army post on Thursday. The suspected shooter is an Army psychiatrist; his motive remains unclear.

"We don't know all the answers yet. And I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts," Mr. Obama said in a Rose Garden statement otherwise devoted to the economy.

"What we do know is that there are families, friends and an entire nation grieving right now for the valiant men and women who came under attack yesterday," the president said.

As it happened, the Obama Defense Department knew all about Maj. Hasan's interest in radical Islamist terrorism. They did not do anything about it because they did not want to be Islamophobic. As for not jumping to conclusions, President Obama was happy to do so when the victims were black and the perpetrators were white. To think that this constitutes a fair and just assessment of the facts is absurd. 

Once the relevant information was known, the Obama administration still refused to say that Hasan’s action was terrorism. It persisted in calling it workplace violence. How many journalists and media commentators were outraged over Obama’s manifest dereliction? I suspect that the answer was very close to: none.

Then, of course, Obama set out to fight his true enemy: Islamophobia. And white police officers.

It is perfectly fair to criticize President Trump for bumbling his Saturday statement. But is perfectly unfair to pretend that the Obama example was anything but derelict. When faced with an Islamist terrorist who murdered American soldiers, Obama was nonplussed. He acted as though he did not care. 

Media elites who want Donald Trump to be drawn and quartered did not dare denounce Obama. Some people on the right were appalled by Obama’s reaction, but the mainstream media downplayed their reaction in order to idolize their Messiah.