Gay Conservative

US Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan spent a sleepless night calling friends and neighbors, telling them goodbye and saying he’d miss them. He handed out copies of the Qur’an. He went to morning prayers, got his usual coffee and hash brown from a local convenience store, smiled at other patrons, then went home and changed into his ACU’s (Army fatigues). He arrived at the processing center at Fort Hood and at 1330, he jumped onto a desk, shouted “Allahu Akbar!” and began a shooting rampage that would end with 13 dead–12 fellow soldiers and one security guard–and 40 wounded, 28 seriously.

Saturday Hasan was removed from a ventilator. Today it is reported that he is talking. He has already asked for a lawyer and the lawyer has ordered federal investigators to stay away. And while some of the reports coming out of the Fort Hood tragedy are still being investigated as possible leads, there are some that have been confirmed as absolutely true by investigators.

-While stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan attended a mosque led by Anwar Al-Awlaki, a radical Islamist who was the spiritual advisor to three of the 9/11 hijackers, including Hani Hanjour.

-Hasan attempted to contact recruiters for jihad militant group Al Qaeda. At least one US Intelligence agency–as yet unnamed–notified the Army that he was contacting anti-American extremists.

-Classmates at the military university where Hasan received his training in psychology have all gone on the record as having complained that Hasan was openly anti-American and frequently made statements that gave the impression that he was a ticking time bomb.

-Hasan actually gave a presentation in one of his psych classes that was meant to justify suicide bombings, a belief that was echoed both in person and over the internet.

-Hasan told many people both in the Army and out that he was a Muslim first and an American second–and he held Sharia above the Constitution of the United States.

-In a class on environmental health–where an assignment to give a speech on things such as water contamination and the effects of mold was given–Hasan stood up and gave a speech about the War on Terror actually being a war on Islam. The instructor refused to question him.

-Osman Danquah, a leader at the Islamic Community of Greater Killeen, was so concerned about Hasan’s extremist rhetoric that he denied his request to be a lay Muslim leader at Fort Hood.

In the two days immediately following the shooting, one of Hasan’s uncles was interviewed in the West Bank–his family is of Palestinian origin and he claimed his citizenship as Palestinian–and a string of so-called “experts” were paraded on MSM channels saying that, based on the family’s reaction, we can’t call Hasan’s actions terrorism; it was too early for that, they chided. Larry King’s idea of a “balanced panel” was to have one single Iraq war veteran up against a slew of liberal windbags so he could be yelled at for calling a spade a spade.

One such PC voice was Shoshana Johnson, the Army Specialist who has earned the distinction of being the first-ever black female to be a POW. She rolled her eyes and shouted at the former JAG officer, saying, “I was a POW! You were a JAG officer in Iraq, you didn’t do anything!” Well, miss Johnson…it’s not like you were in the infantry. You were a food worker. And it’s worth pointing out that you were a taken along with Jessica Lynch, whom liberal reporters castigated as a posterchild for the Republican war effort when she supposedly didn’t suffer the real harm of what they deemed a “real” POW. So I have to ask, when did Johnson and Lynch become legitimate to the MSM?

That JAG officer on Larry King was trying to talk people into contemplating the idea that Hasan really was acting out his personal version of jihad just like the 9/11 hijackers. Johnson, along with Dr. Phil, shouted him down, with Johnson screaming that his knowledge was worthless. This is what the MSM calls balance?

In the meantime, it was a British newspaper–the UK Telegraph–that first broke the story that Hasan had attempted to contact Al Qaeda. While the American media dithered about the subject of Hasan’s ties to extremists and the very real possibility that he might have committed his crime in the name of waging jihad against Americans, a country that can’t even allow its citizens the natural right to defend themselves called this whole brouhaha exactly what it was.

Earlier this year a friend of mine, now serving in the Army, called me late at night to tell me an incredible story. His unit was called together for an announcement: effective immediately, all US Army personnel were to cease use of the term “swine flu.” Complaints from Muslims were too great; they were to refer to the new flu strain as H1N1 or risk disciplinary action.

This sounds absolutely silly, but it’s standard operating procedure for the US military these days. Everything (except the idea of gays in the military, mind you) has to be absolutely politically correct, elsewise we might offend someone and we just can’t have that. I have heard several soldiers in the Army say in the open that they didn’t join to go to war, and if deployed they would go AWOL. And in this case, with Maj. Hasan, a Muslim extremist, can spew seditious vitriol for years without anyone questioning whether he should still be allowed to draw a paycheck. In everything I’ve read so far it seems the general concensus among those who served with Hasan is that the Army was both desperate to keep an officer and afraid of being seen as discriminating against a Muslim.

My friend Jennifer, a military wife, brought up a very good point. Obama was quick to tell us that we shouldn’t jump to conclusions or act rashly. Yet the first words out of his mouth about a police officer in Cambridge the day after an incident were that the officer “acted stupidly.” We shouldn’t rush to judgement, and need a measured response to this tragedy, but when it comes to something like the stimulus or healthcare reform, we need to get it done NOW–without reading the bill.

Oh, but don’t offend the Muslims. Even if the next Nidal Malik Hasan is among them, we can’t upset them. Worry about their reputation now. Screw reality.