Ft. Hood

Frank Borelli
Editor In Chief
New American Truth
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Well, it’s happened again. One man with two guns went into a crowded building and started shooting. What made this so much more sensationalistic? This time it was a Major in the U.S. Army killing soldiers at a domestic military base in the U.S. of A. That alone is sad enough and we mourn with honor the 13 people killed by Nidal Malik Hasan. We pray for a quick recovery and comfort for the 30 others he wounded. We express our appreciation to and admiration of the police officer, Sgt. Kim Munley, who intervened on behalf of the good guys and took Hasan down.

All that said, what drove this man to do it? Last night I had the honor of being a guest on a radio news-talk show on KMBZ in Mission, Kansas. Darla Jay is a fantastic hard-nosed woman who doesn’t mince words. I thought I had issues with filters between my brain and my mouth but she made me feel right at home. One of the things we discussed was Hasan’s Muslim faith and whether or not Muslims should be serving in our military as we fight a war against terrorists seemingly motivated by a radical Muslim faith.

Personally I think it’s silly to restrict all Muslims from entering military service. That said, it’s equally silly to think that they’ll have no issues being deployed in a conflict to fight against others of their own faith. Why? I wish I could explain it. Christian law enforcement officers investigate and take action against radical christian extremists all too often. We don’t slow down in the performance of our duty in a mis-guided attempt to remain faithful to our brothers in a faith. They are criminals. We’re the police. It’s what we do.

That thought brought me to the next ponderance. I am looking at a news report that refers to Hasan’s heritage as “Muslim-American”. My first thought was, “WTF?” What other religion out there can be used in congjunction with the word “American” in a hyphenated fashion to describe a cultural heritage?

Sure, there are Jewish-Americans, Christian-Americans, Buddhist-Americans, etc. But look at those terms and tell me which of them automatically makes you think about a person’s birth place or heritage? They merely describe a religious affiliation. Jewish-American doesn’t mean Israeli. Christian-American doesn’t mean English, Irish, or any other nationality. How does Muslim-American rate such a unique and distinct place as an expression of heritage?

It doesn’t. The fact is that the term was used because Nidal Malik Hasan, a man of Palestinian decent and practitioner of the Muslam faith, repeatedly criticized America’s current war against terror and often expressed his concern about being deployed as a soldier of America. Why was this man still in a uniform? Members of his family said he wanted out of the Army. Easy enough: all he had to do was resign his commission. He had to have known that just like every other commissioned officer in military service.

The fact that he didn’t begs the question: what was his motivation for staying IN the Army if he hated it so much and didn’t agree with current military operations?

Other questions of concern, and ones I hope investigators are exploring, are:

What kind of counseling did he give soldiers who had come back from Iraq and Afghanistan while he was stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Hospital?

Why would he maintain his rank, position and clearance if all he wanted was out?

What connections does he have, or did he have, with any radical Muslim factions actively fighting or planning attacks on the United States?

Was this attack motivated in any way by his religious belief structure?

I can’t imagine that a man capable of committing this heinous act was also capable of sacrificing his comfort to remain faithful to an oath to the United States Army. If he’s willing, as a commissioned officer, to murder soldiers he was tasked to lead, then he would have had no problem walking away from his commission. What would have kept him from doing that? What did he gain from it that he was willing to suffer to keep?

A paycheck? Maybe. Benefits? Maybe. How about restricted information? Quite possibly. How about access to soldiers who were being deployed and whom he might be able to impact in a way to affect their beliefs, values and commitments? Quite possibly.

The reality is that this man was in a position to negatively affect our military operations either through the sharing of classified information or by negatively impacting the motivation of soldiers being deployed – or BOTH.

My final question is this: Why are investigators seemingly so carefully tip-toeing around his Muslim faith and the impact it may have played on his actions? We are, after all, at war in two countries that are overwhelmingly Muslim. Hasan did, after all, repeatedly voice his disagreements with the actions of the U.S. military and his concerns about being deployed where he might have to fight against “fellow Muslims”. Such statements showed, quite clearly, that he felt a greater commitment to his religious faith than to his American citizenship or military leadership obligations.

Obviously we need to change how we do business. I know a former police chief of Muslim faith who was quoted as saying, “If the decision has to be made to back up my fellow police officers or remain true to my Muslim faith, the police officers will lose every time, hands down.” That statement was made in the context of deploying officers for riot control during a protest staged by Muslims. He was directly refusing to do his job in favor of maintaining what he viewed as his obligation to fellow Muslims.

KNOWING that, why are we still sending soldiers of Muslim faith into battle, or even deployed to areas with, a large Muslim population? It’s obvious that the faith is strong within them and they can’t perform as they should according to their duty and general orders. I’m not saying we should toss them out of the military, but why are we intentionally creating stress and problems for both them and all the soldiers around them?

Something has to change. The way we’re doing things now isn’t working. It’s getting soldiers killed and we’re not changing our level of security. Submission is unnacceptable so I guess we’ll just have to find a way to fight the battle more efficiently.

What do you think?

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