Ft. Hood Report: Diversity Outranks Defense

It was General George Casey who responded to the self-evidently Islam-motivated murder of the Ft. Hood soldiers by saying, “Our diversity, not only in our Army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”

It’s turning out that, as horrific as the massacre of the 13 soldiers was, it was the result of the pre-Ft. Hood Army living up to the Casey standard. The Army risked making casualties of American soldiers precisely in favor of protecting diversity from becoming a casualty.

Reports recently disclosed reveal how Hasan’s superiors overlooked his extremism because they were afraid getting rid of him would cost them the “diversity” of their only Muslim psychiatrist. (“Ft. Hood suspect was Army dilemma”) .

In spite of numerous specific warnings over years that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a Muslim extremist, including statements defending suicide bombings, advocating the precedence of Shariah law over the U.S. Constitution, and public declarations that Muslim G.I.s can’t make war on Muslims from other nations, superior officers refused to take action.

In searching for explanations for why superiors did not move to revoke Hasan’s security clearances or expel him from the Army, the report portrays colleagues and superiors as possibly reluctant to lose one of the Army’s few Muslim mental health specialists.

The report concludes that because the Army had attracted only one Muslim psychiatrist in addition to Hasan since 2001, “it is possible some were afraid’’ of losing such diversity “and thus were willing to overlook Hasan’s deficiencies as an officer.’’

“Several of his supervisors explicitly mentioned Hasan’s potential to inform our understanding of Islamic culture and how it relates to the current conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan,’’ the investigators found.

I wonder if the Army has figured out there are easier, and safer, ways of getting informed about Islamic culture.