In PJ Media today I discuss how the two Fort Hood jihadis show the eagerness of American officials to ignore reality.
Fort Hood jihad mass murderer Major Nidal Malik Hasan was in the news
again last week, when he was found in contempt of court for the third
time and fined $3,000 for refusing to shave his beard. (He can afford
it; he is still receiving his salary from the U.S. military.) Also last week, a man who considers Hasan his hero and role model, Army soldier Naser Abdo, received a life sentence
for attempting to repeat Hasan’s murderous attack at Fort Hood. Both
cases demonstrate, in different ways, the abject failure of government
and law enforcement officials to deal adequately with the challenge of
Islamic jihad terrorism.The judge who found Hasan in contempt again and fined him is treating
the former Army psychiatrist as if he were a delinquent American
soldier, which in a technical sense he is. But Hasan’s beard is not just
facial hair; it is a statement. It is his assertion that he is not an
American at all, but a Muslim and a jihadist, someone who regards
America as an evil enemy, the “Great Satan” indeed “” an enemy that he
believes must be fought against as a matter of divine principle. Hasan’s
beard is his silent declaration that he is an enemy combatant, and that
it is ludicrous to try him as if he were in any meaningful sense an
American soldier who has even the slightest degree of interest in
following any of the rules of the U.S. military. And it is.Hasan’s beard and the reaction to it demonstrate the official
unwillingness to face the reality of the Islamic jihad against the
United States. They are another manifestation of the official
determination to pretend that jihad does not exist. Finding Hasan in
contempt of court for his beard is as wrongheaded as classifying his
jihad attack as “workplace violence,” and stems from the same
wellsprings. Hasan is not an American soldier at all in any genuine
sense, and should not be tried simply as if he were a military officer
who committed a crime. But to do otherwise would be to acknowledge the
existence of the jihad that officials are determined to ignore.