Better safe than sorry

By Joshua Wilwohl / josh@theklaxon.com / 11.06.2009

Updated on: 01.17.10 at 11:49 am

As the U.S. mourns the shooting death of 13 at Fort Hood that also left 30 wounded, including the shooter, the question on everybody’s mind, but afraid to ask is, “What was Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s motive?”

According to reports, Hasan, the shooter, yelled, “Allahu Akbar” before he began wielding two pistols and taking out 12 soldiers and one civilian police officer.

The phrase, which is Arabic for “God is great,” brings the fear of religious terrorism to the minds of some emergency management colleagues.

We can’t say it in mainstream media just yet, because it’s not politically correct, but there’s no question that every reporter at Fox News is itching to flirt with the idea.

Not much is known yet of Hasan’s background except that he was a U.S. Army mental health professional with training in combat stress and posttraumatic stress disorder.

We know he was a 1997 Virginia Tech graduate with a bachelor’s degree in biochemistry, where he also served in ROTC.

It might not yet be PC to dish out blame or label those involved, but we have to consider the risks accompanied with such a disaster.

In emergency management, everything is done to avoid risk. So, what happened here? How is it that Hasan was able to write blogs and comments online about his future deployment in an unfavorable light and it did not raise a red flag to anyone in the U.S. Army?

Maybe it’s because such actions are protected under the First Amendment and freedom of speech.

However, when there’s legitimate concern because the person allegedly is posting comments about suicide bombings (officials still are trying to confirm Hasan was the author) then that risk should have been flagged.

The Associated Press reports that one of the posts under review likens a suicide bomber to a soldier.

“To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. It’s more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause,” the Internet posting reads. “Scholars have paralleled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, it to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers.”

Are we asleep at the wheel?

The U.S. praises itself in war on terror. We have an entire department whose complete operation is to prevent actions that occurred at Fort Hood.

The U.S. Army claims Hasan’s incident is an “isolated case,” but it seems more and more that these isolated cases are becoming trends. The Virginia Tech shooting in April 2007 where Seung-Hui Cho killed 32 people was considered isolated. But, like Hasan, he too made online posts and not once did it raise more than suspicion.

The U.S. government must not allow a backlash of religious prejudice to persecute the many patriotic Muslim soldiers who love this country.

At the same time, the shackles of political correctness must be removed and replaced with the antennae of common sense.

Hasan’s record is full of warnings that were not heeded. Because of the gross negligence by military mental health professionals, one of their own has made the nation look incredibly vulnerable at a time when the projection of strength is at a premium.

It’s understandable that the U.S. does not want the to be considered too stereotypical, but when there’s doubt, lately, it seems to raise to legitimacy.