An Attack That Didn’t Have to Happen
When Major Nidal Malik Hasan went on a shooting rampage at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009 and killed 13, his shouts of “Allah Akbar” during the attack left little doubt that it was motivated by radical Islam. A new Senate report finds that that the attack was preventable and that the government failed to take indications of Hasan’s extremist ideology seriously and this resistance to calling a spade a spade is ongoing.
The Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs report, titled “A Ticking Time Bomb,” says that the Department of Defense and the FBI “collectively had sufficient information to have detected Hasan’s radicalization to violent Islamist extremism but failed both to understand and to act on it.” It said that there were “specific systemic failures in the government’s handling of the Hasan case and raises additional concerns about what may be broader systemic issues.”
Senator Susan Collins criticized the Obama Administration for failing to mention the ideology behind the terrorists, including Hasan, saying “the refusal to distinguish violent Islamic extremism from the peaceful, protected exercise of the Muslim religion sends the wrong message as it implies they can’t be distinguished.” The Obama Administration, on the other hand, is purposely vague out of the same concern.
