The horrific tragedy last week at Fort Hood raises grave questions for law enforcement and the U.S. military.
Maj. Nadil Malik Hasan, who now faces 13 charges of premeditated murder in the Nov. 5 shooting spree, reportedly sent up one red flag after another to colleagues. One associate from his days at Walter Reed Army Medical Center even recalled his saying that he was “a Muslim first and an American second.”
But neither Army nor Pentagon officials ever did anything about their decidedly strange psychiatrist, despite all the warnings before the shootings.
Even more troubling are the persistent rumors and allegations that the Fort Hood murder spree is part of a larger, orchestrated terror campaign by radical Muslims within the military ranks of this nation. Proving that will be difficult, to say the least, but it’s an angle investigators must pursue.
President Barack Obama has ordered a full review of the intelligence data on Maj. Hasan, to see what the military missed, overlooked or ignored in the months and years leading up to the murders.
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Those are questions and issues that will be addressed in the coming weeks and months, as the government’s investigation continues apace.
There is a far greater issue at hand, though, and that is a growing fear within the American Muslim and American Arab communities that the rest of America views them all as potential traitors and as laying-in-wait jihadists poised to take down the U.S., one non-Arab, one non-Muslim at a time.
Nothing could be further from the truth, and the proof is to be found in the history of this country itself.
Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor on Dec. 7, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed a presidential order sending all Japanese-Americans to detention camps for the duration of the war, out of fear they would side with the land of their ancestors in the war, and not the nation of which many were born citizens.
Americans of Japanese descent were even precluded from fighting in the Pacific Theater during World War II, out of fear they would suddenly turn on their “real” American comrades in arms. Sen. Daniel Inoyue, D-Hawaii, received the Congressional Medal of Honor for valor during WWII, but for actions while fighting in Italy. Before 1943, he couldn’t even enlist.
There are millions of Americans today — people of Arab descent and members of the Muslim faith — who are as patriotic toward this nation as anyone.
And more than a few live right here in Central Virginia. They’re our friends, our neighbors, our customers and they harbor no ill will toward this nation.
Don’t treat them as if they do.
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