A Muslim soldier, Nidal Hasan, shot dead 12 soldiers and a civilian at Fort Hood on Thursday, shouting the Muslim expression “Allahu Akbar.” But in an absurd display of political correctness, media reports barely mentioned the religion angle, choosing instead to highlight the fact that the killer was an “army psychiatrist” or the false claim that he was a veteran with PTSD (which he wasn’t: he never even served overseas). Oh, those violent psychiatrists!
The killer had previously said that Muslims should rise up against the military, “repeatedly expressed sympathy for suicide bombers,” was pleased by the terrorist murder of an army recruiter, and engaged in hate-speech against non-Muslims, publicly calling for the beheading or burning of non-Muslims, and talking “about how if you’re a nonbeliever the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.” But nothing was done to remove him from a position where he could harm others. Although his views were common knowledge, “a fear of appearing discriminatory . . . kept officers from filing a formal written complaint,” the Associated Press noted. Moreover, “a key official on a review committee reportedly asked how it might look to terminate a key resident who happened to be a Muslim,” notes NPR.
Intelligence officials knew he was trying to contact Al Qaeda, reports ABC News today. The killer used to pray with some of the 9/11 terrorists, reports the London Telegraph.
The military is not like the outside world. In the civilian world, hate speech, and often even incitement to commit violence, are protected speech under the First Amendment (under Supreme Court decisions like R.A.V. v. St. Paul, Brandenburg v. Ohio, and Forsyth County v. Nationalist Movement, and appeals court decisions like Dambrot v. Central Michigan University).
But in the military, soldiers get punished for bigotry all the time -- except for this guy. The courts have held that hate-speech or speech that “discriminatorily harasses” others can generally be criminally punished in the military, unlike in the outside world, and accordingly, white supremacists get disciplined for their views. (So, too, do soldiers who express disloyalty to their country or merely contempt for their Commander in Chief. Rooting for the death of your fellow soldiers is obviously not protected speech.) But not this soldier, who was more dangerous than your typical white supremacist.
In court cases like Goldman v. Weinberger and Brown v. Glines, the Supreme Court has said that soldiers have less free speech rights, and less freedom of religion, than in the civilian world. The military cites this all the time when it wants to punish soldiers for bigotry, like the soldier who was punished for a sexist insult about liberal Congresswoman Pat Schroeder (D-Colo.) in the aftermath of the Tailhook Scandal. (The Air Force Court of Appeals did overturn one military “harassment” regulation as too vague, in an unpublished ruling, but it held that such bigoted speech could be banned under a clearer regulation, and most such regulations have been upheld).
But the military did not apply not apply its standard policy against seditious, bigoted hate-speech to this soldier, perhaps because political correctness exempts Muslims from the rules that members of other religions have to follow, in the eyes of the liberal Obama Administration officials and lawmakers to whom the military is accountable.
Even if his anti-American hate speech had been protected speech in the sense of not being punishable, the speech would still be circumstantial evidence of unfitness for his position working with injured American veterans, warranting his departure from the military for a more appropriate line of work.
Obama could barely bring himself to mention the tragedy, much less express sympathy for the victims, in his initial remarks about it Thursday, in which he buried any expression of sympathy in the middle of a speech filled with “wildly disconnected” ramblings about an unrelated topic, starting with a “joking shout-out.” Even for liberal journalists, President Obama’s initial response to the tragedy was embarrassing. Even the liberal Boston Globe, which endorsed Obama in 2008, chided the President for a speech lacking in “empathy” for the victims.
Despite the shooter’s open hatred towards America, the military, and America’s non-Muslim majority, Obama still insists that the shooter’s motive for the killings is unknown.
I am not arguing for a ban on Muslims in the military. The military has a critical shortage of , and need for, translators who speak languages like Pashto (spoken in Afghanistan), Urdu (spoken in Pakistan) and Arabic. These translators are often Muslim, and they should be welcome in the military. But neither should the military exempt Muslims from the rules of conduct imposed on soldiers of other religions. That is an insult to the principle of equality under the law.
Another factor in the tragedy, say critics of the Obama Administration, is a gun-control policy that disarms soldiers while on military bases to create “gun-free zones,” leaving them defenseless in the face of an attack. The policy succeeded in disarming the killer’s victims, but not the killer himself.
Even after the killer’s religious motive for the shootings became obvious, many liberal commentators, like The Atlantic’s Max Fisher, were quick to deny it and jump to the opposite conclusion. Fisher lectured his readers that the killer “appears to not have been motivated by his Muslim religion, his Palestinian heritage . . . or any related political causes,” and falsely suggested that those pointing to contrary evidence were “Islamophobic.”
In an absurd display of political correctness, early media reports chose to harp on the unsupported claim that the killer had been subjected to harassment (support groups for Muslim soldiers say they have received no reports of Muslim soldiers being harassed). Anything to divert attention away from the disturbing truth about his motives.