America is still mourning the murders of 13 soldiers at Fort Hood in what can only be characterized as a vicious slaughter by a jihadist terrorist, an attack incubated and nurtured by an irrational pandemic of political correctness.

I know no one else is putting it quite like this.

I know I will be flamed for introducing politics into this terrible tragedy.

But sick and twisted politics is what led to this massacre, and somebody has to say it.

How many times do we need to see man-made disasters like this occur before we recognize we are at war? This is not some game. This is not an enemy that will go away if we turn our backs and pretend it really doesn't exist. This is war – all-out war against Americans and America.

The questions are legion:

• How did Nidal Malik Hasan rise to the rank of major in the U.S. Army with his background? I'm not talking about his Muslim faith. I'm talking about his troubled history – the disciplinary record of inappropriate proselytizing, the extremist Internet postings, the statements to comrades about American foreign policy, the mandatory counseling he had to receive because of his behavior. How could he ever have been placed in such a position of authority?

• How is it possible that an officer who had expressed such grave misgivings about a deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq had been assigned to such a mission without careful scrutiny?

• What kind of screening goes on in the military for security safety risks?

• Why was this man chosen to participate in transition plans for the new administration less than a year ago by a major university – particularly on an issue involving homeland security?

• Why are soldiers on U.S. military bases strictly forbidden to carry firearms – weapons that could have prevented this travesty? If they are to be trusted with firearms to carry out their foreign missions, why not at home to defend themselves like other Americans? Why have military bases, of all places, been turned into virtual gun-free zones?

• And how is it possible after so many incidents like this in America are the U.S. media still so obsessed with withholding information and denying terrorism as even a possible motivation?
  

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These are actually dangerous questions to pose in our country today. I will most assuredly be attacked for even asking them. Yet, like them or not, most Americans are clear-thinking enough to know exactly what I am talking about.

I write these words as an Arab-American. I bear no hostility toward people from the Middle East. I bear no hostility toward people who are Muslim. However, I do bear hostility – and, I believe, rightly so – to people who want to destroy America or radically alter its form of governance.

Have we lost our senses?

Do we not recognize threats when they are staring us straight in the face?

I pray that the deaths and suffering of the victims at Fort Hood are not in vain. I pray that our nation learns some critical lessons from this tragedy. I pray that we will once again begin using our heads when it comes to matters so grave as our national security and the personal safety of people willing to make the ultimate sacrifice for their country.

Let's get our heads out of the sand.

Let's start confronting our cunning and wily enemy with discernment.

Let's begin using common sense instead of irrational political correctness to make our national policies.

Let's look around soberly at the threats all around us with mission-oriented clear-headedness.

Let's stop playing pretend.