http://www.jewishworldreview.com/0511/west.php3
May 26, 2011 / 22 Iyar, 5771
'Senseless' seems easier than saying 'jihad'
By Diana West
http://jewishworldreview.com/op-art/terrorism_next.jpg
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | The Army honored a fallen hero of the Ft.
Hood Jihad Massacre with a medal this week. Not, of course, that the Army
describes the November 2009 attack in such meaningful terms. Army
psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan may have shouted "Allahu Akbar" (Arabic for
"Allah is great") as he killed 14 and wounded more than two dozen; may have
been in contact with jihad cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and frequented jihadist
websites; may have had business cards proclaiming himself a "SoA" (Soldier
of Allah); and may have created and presented an Islamically correct
PowerPoint brief outlining reasons for jihad by Muslims within the U.S.
Armed Forces, but no matter. His actions remain a total mystery to the U.S.
Army.
To wit: "Although we may never know why it happened, we do know that heroic
actions took place that day," Brig. Gen. Joseph DiSalvo said in presenting
the Secretary of the Army Award for Valor to Joleen Cahill, widow of Michael
Grant Cahill. Cahill is recognized as the first person to have tried to stop
Hasan and the only civilian to have been killed by Hasan that day. "He will
forever be a source of inspiration."
Alas, I have my doubts about the deputy commanding general of Ft. Hood.
Despite overwhelming evidence that Hasan committed an act of jihad, DiSalvo
-- like the Army, like the U.S. government -- looks the other way. "We may
never know why" the Hasan attack happened, DiSalvo said without, apparently,
turning red or rolling his eyes.
It's hard to overstate the impact of these words. In honoring the very last
thing Cahill did on this Earth, the general pointedly chose to omit its
significance. Like a potent spell, his words made all the context of the
62-year-old Cahill's valorous act -- charging Hasan with a chair as Hasan
fired on the crowd -- disappear. Of course, the general's omission takes
nothing away from Cahill's courage. It does, however, wrongly release the
rest of us from our debt to Cahill. In treating Hasan's rampage as no more
purposeful than a flood or a cougar attack, the general has also reduced
Cahill's ultimate sacrifice to its most personal level; exemplary,
admirable, but of no consequence beyond the scene, outside the circle. This
is morally wrong. It was the general's duty to place Cahill's death in
perspective, to impress upon both his loved ones and his fellow citizens
that he died not only to stop a bloodletting but also in defense of liberty,
then and now under jihadist attack.
In other words, the general flinched. No surprise there. Ft. Hood may have
been a war zone that day but, with few exceptions (Texas Republicans Rep.
John Carter and Sens. Kay Bailey Hutchinson and John Cornyn are pressing to
see Purple Hearts awarded), neither our military nor our government has the
courage to admit it.
There is a ripple effect. This Memorial Day, by U.S. government reckoning,
by U.S. military non-fiat, the Ft. Hood fallen do not rate remembrance as
war dead. As a result, there have been no Purple Hearts awarded to military
dead and wounded (as there were to casualties of the 9/11 attacks), no
combat death benefits awarded to their survivors, no recognition of Hasan's
jihad. Indeed, as the general says, we may never even know why they died.
This is just the way our leadership wants it -- "senseless," as President
Obama put it, describing another 2009 jihadist attack the U.S. government
refuses to recognize as an act of war, this one in Little Rock in which Pvt.
William Long was killed and Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula was severely wounded
outside a military recruiting station. The trial, which begins in July, is
currently subject to a tug-of-war, almost literally, between the lawyers and
defendant Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. Prosecutor Larry Jegley is determined
to prosecute Muhammad as "nothing but a street thug" accused of "just a
drive-by shooting," defense attorneys want Muhammad to plead insanity, while
Muhammad, a Muslim convert who may have studied with a jihadist imam in
Yemen where he drew the attention of the FBI, is pleading, strenuously, to
be tried as a sane, confessed jihadist. Like the US military, like the White
House, the court seems to be pushing jihad, kicking and screaming in this
case, down the memory hole.
Which makes you wonder: By next Memorial Day, who will remember?
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