COLUMN: Plenty of blame to share

First, not only did our military fail to detect an absolute loon in its ranks, it promoted this psychopathic terrorist to major even after poor performance evaluations.

According to Associated Press reports, the army sent Major Nidal Malik Hasan to Ft. Hood despite concerns that he might be “psychotic.”

The military was not alone in its failure to peg Hasan as a security threat. A joint terrorism task force investigated Hasan, but did not refer the matter to their superiors because they concluded he was not linked to terrorism. Just because he happened to be a terrorist army of one is no excuse not to pursue the case.

News pundits have speculated that the poor handling of Hasan may have been related to political correctness regarding his religious beliefs. I don’t think so.

Political correctness can be blamed for any number of idiotic actions and statements, but this situation was caused by something far more serious.

It is one thing to be reluctant to investigate an individual’s religious affiliations, it is quite another to ignore those affiliations when the individual seeks contact with a radical iman with known ties to Muslim terrorists.

Naturally, just because a person is a Muslim does not mean they are a terrorist. However, if a Muslim makes anti-American remarks or hints at “adverse events” if American Muslim soldiers are forced to fight their Middle Eastern brethren, then that Muslim must be investigated.

I find it truly hard to believe that security personnel were so worried about offending Hasan’s Muslim sensibilities that they failed to investigate this questionable behavior. The sad truth appears to be that Hasan was identified as a risk and someone dropped the ball.

There are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims in the world – roughly a quarter of the planet’s population. Among those are an unknown number of would-be terrorists who want nothing more than to kill Americans. We are at war with these people even if the current administration does not want to admit it.

This is a war that will not be won with pretty speeches or apology tours. If the war on terror is to be won, our security forces cannot use political correctness as an excuse for failing to identify and stop a threat, nor can they make careless mistakes. As long as Americans continue to die at the hands of Muslim extremists, common sense dictates we take every potential threat seriously.

If the government fails, then we are left trying to differentiate good Muslims from Muslim extremists at the point the latter starts shooting people or flying planes into buildings. That is not acceptable.

The American public and our men and women in uniform deserve to know what went wrong at Ft. Hood. We are fighting a war we cannot afford to lose. We must learn from this tragic event and not repeat the mistakes that allowed a terrorist to kill innocent Americans.