Enemies within

Last Thursday, Nov. 5, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and devout Muslim, fatally shot 13 U.S. American citizens (12 service men and women) and wounded an additional 30 people at the largest U.S. military installation, Fort Hood, Texas.

Faizul Khan, a former imam who attended services at the same mosque with Hasan for 10 years in Silver Spring, Md., described him as "very serious about his religion" and wanting an equally religious woman "who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab."

Hasan vehemently opposed the U.S. missions in the Middle East, arguing with co-workers, senior officers and even patients. He quarreled with Col. Terry Lee, who testified that Hasan "said maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor." Dr. Val Finnell, a former classmate, said that Hasan was "very vocal" about equating the war on terror with a war on Islam. He said Hasan even gave a PowerPoint presentation once justifying Islamic suicide bombing.

A few days before Hasan's killing spree at Fort Hood, he proved his premeditated intentions by giving away all his belongings (including his Qurans) to his neighbors, saying he would no longer need them and adding "I'm ready."

Just hours before the shooting spree, he attended prayer services at a local mosque, where he normally wore street clothes but that morning wore white Muslim attire.

Firsthand witnesses at the Fort Hood murder scene heard Hasan yelling, "Allahu akbar" (meaning "God is great") before he opened fire killing 13 and wounding 30 more.

For six months, authorities had been tracking the extremist thinking of Hasan. Internet postings like this one go back to May 20, 2009 (spelling as in original):

There was a grenade thrown among a group of American soldiers. One of the soldiers, feeling that it was to late for everyone to flee jumped on the grave with the intention of saving his comrades. Indeed he saved them. He inentionally took his life (suicide) for a noble cause i.e. saving the lives of his soldier. To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. Its more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause. Scholars have paralled this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers. If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory. Their intention is not to die because of some despair. The same can be said for the Kamikazees in Japan. They died (via crashing their planes into ships) to kill the enemies for the homeland. You can call them crazy i you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam. So the scholars main point is that 'IT SEEMS AS THOUGH YOUR INTENTION IS THE MAIN ISSUE' and Allah (SWT) knows best. (Note: An interesting resource next to Hasan's posting is for the resource "Martyrdom in Islam Versus Suicide Bombing.")

Authorities just revealed that Hasan has had contact with other al-Qaida operatives and, in 2001, attended a mosque whose leadership was associated with two of the Sept. 11 hijackers. He even stirred up anti-American sentiment within other Muslim soldiers at Fort Hood.

The questions that keep coming to my mind are: Have we become so tolerant and politically correct that we can't see or confront a rotten apple when it's right in front of our eyes? When our fear of discrimination enables our enemies, can't we see something is grimly amiss?

To those roughly 3,500 Muslims who faithfully serve in the U.S. military, God bless you. We appreciate what you do and pray for you along with all of our dedicated service men and women. I fully realize Muslim extremists don't represent mainstream Islam. We must not quarantine all Islamic theology and practice as un-American.

At the same time, we must not stick our heads in the religious sands and call all these fatal acts "isolated incidents." We should not ignore the systemic nature and embryonic potential of fanaticism inherent within many. And we must not allow our cultural infatuation with passivity and tolerance to restrain us from searching for and stopping such militant rudimentary resistance, especially on our military posts.

Isolated incidents?

Since before Sept. 11, Islamic extremists have continued to infiltrate the ranks of our armed forces and cause mayhem in many military settings. As far back as March 2003, commentator Michelle Malkin and others have documented U.S. jihadist acts of violence by U.S. Muslim military personnel.

For example, Malkin notes on her website that Ali A. Mohamed, a major in the Egyptian army, immigrated to the U.S. in 1986 and joined the U.S. Army, despite being on a State Department terrorist watch list before securing his visa and being granted U.S. citizenship over the objections of the CIA. After being honorably discharged in 1989, Mohamed worked as an escort and trainer with none other than Osama bin Laden, later pleading guilty to "attack any Western target in the Middle East" and admitting his involvement in the 1998 African embassy bombings that killed more than 200 people, including Americans.

Semi Osman, a Seattle-based Muslim cleric, served in a naval reserve fueling unit based in Tacoma, Wash., and was arrested for involvement of a terrorist training camp in Bly, Ore.

Jeffrey Leon Battle, a former Army reservist, was indicted in October 2002 for conspiring to wage war against American soldiers in Afghanistan and "enlisting in the Reserves to receive military training to use against America."

In 2003, Sgt. Asan Akbar, a Muslim American soldier, rolled hand grenades and shot his automatic rifle into three tents filled with sleeping commanding officers at the 101st Airborne Division's 1st Brigade operations center in Kuwait.

In May 2007, five men suspected of being Islamic militants were arrested by the FBI and charged with plotting to attack Fort Dix, N.J. In April, four were sentenced to life imprisonment, and the fifth to 30 years.

U.S. soldier Hassan Abujihaad was convicted in 2008 of espionage and other terrorist acts after serving on the USS Benfold and sharing classified information with al-Qaida financiers.

And who can forget John Muhammad, a Muslim convert and a member of the Army's 84th Engineering Company, who was suspected of throwing a grenade into a tent of 16 fellow sleeping soldiers just before the ground attack of the Gulf War in 1991? Eight years later after being discharged in 1994, he was arrested in the 21-day Beltway shooting spree that left 10 Americans dead and three wounded. He is scheduled to be executed this week.

Good American?

One of the gravest insults to the victims of the abominably iniquitous act at Fort Hood is how many news stories and commentators have tried to justify Hasan's bloody tirade by offering empathetic reasons for his deranged mental state. From suffering some type of contagious trauma as a result of treating overseas returning troops to blaming bad foreign policy and personal military religious harassment, I was flabbergasted to hear mainstream media commentators not just explain but defend this murderous thug. Even after Maj. Hasan's murderous rampage, his cousin, Nader Hasan, told Fox News that he was "a good American." Good American?!

Tragically, even our president warned Americans "not to jump to conclusions" about the motives of Maj. Hasan. But to what "conclusions" is he referring? It's fascinating that our president will travel the world blaming America for everything under the sun, but he will caution Americans not to "jump to conclusions" about a fanatic Muslim military officer who just took the lives of 13 patriots and wounded another 30 patriots who honored their oath to defend this country. Why would the commander in chief even take up his precious media time immediately after this brutal rampage to encourage tolerance and political correctness concerning this psychotic killer? As a veteran of the Air Force and honorary Marine, I am appalled.

To add insult to injury, I must confess that I found our president's initial condolence to the victims of the Fort Hood massacre one of the most distasteful and pathetic commiserations offered by any president during my lifetime. To echo sympathy after a three-minute "shout out" to attendees of the Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Department of Interior's Bureau of Indian Affairs is absolutely unbecoming and frighteningly insensitive for any commander in chief.

Mr. President, I'm not a criminal psychologist. I certainly don't know everything about human nature. But if Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan's fatal rampage at Fort Hood doesn't constitute a domestic terrorist attack, I'm not a martial arts expert! Hasan is either a Muslim extremist on par with Sept. 11 assailants or an absolutely paranoid, twisted sociopathic murderer who deserves in either case the fate he offered to others last Thursday.

Far more than an 'overseas contingency operation'

It's time our federal government woke up and realized that jihadists are not done planning and plotting against the U.S. and that a terrorist is not only defined by being a card-carrying member of al-Qaida. It's time our federal government better assured the protection of our valiant service men and women, not only in the Middle East but right here on American soil.

Extremists are still infiltrating our military ranks, and we must be more diligent about exposing and stopping them. If Washington worked with just one-tenth the passion in corralling the enemies of the U.S. as they do cramming the ramrod of a Obama-Pelosi health-care system down our throats and pocketbooks, we'd reduce military acts of terrorism down to zero, inside and outside our borders.

On the eve of another Veterans Day, we owe our renewed allegiance and support to our service men and women. And we owe in particular those who had fallen at the Fort Hood massacre and their families our continued reassurance that their loved ones did not die in vain. They were real people, mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers – American patriots who each sacrificed everything in a war we wage even domestically to save our sacred land.

Let us pause again and salute all the victims and valiant soldiers at Fort Hood, including the heroes who kept the death toll from escalating. Let us honor the wounded and in particular the fallen who (like those who fell on Sept. 11) serve as catalysts for our patriotism and vivid reminders that there are still enemies within.

Wounded (only 22 of 30 names revealed at time of publication)