President Barack Obama and other officials acknowledge there was a failure to “connect the dots” and prevent the would-be bomber of a U.S. airliner from boarding the plane Christmas Day. There were lots of danger signs, yet he cruised past security and only narrowly failed to kill hundreds of fellow travelers.
Now, in a separate case, the dots not only weren’t “connected” but may have been actively ignored.
The Defense Department has reviewed the case of Maj. Nidal Hasan, who is accused of murdering 13 people at Fort Hood, Texas, in early November. The findings are disturbing.
Doctors who tracked Hasan’s progress during his training to become an Army psychiatrist said again and again that he had extremist Muslim views and engaged in improper behavior. Yet the same doctors gave him good performance reviews that aided his military advancement.
Fellow students said Hasan believed Islamic law ought to supersede the U.S. Constitution and believed suicide bombings were defensible. He suggested America was engaged in a war on Islam itself rather than a war on those who had committed terrorist acts against us. In addition, there have been allegations that Hasan was in contact with a radical Muslim cleric in Yemen.
“Yet no one in Hasan’s chain of command appears to have challenged his eligibility to hold a secret security clearance even though they could have because the statements raised doubt about his loyalty to the United States,” The Associated Press reported. “Had they, Hasan’s fitness to serve as an Army officer may have been called into question long before he reported to Fort Hood.”
We cannot read the minds of the supervisors who oversaw Hasan’s training. One of them who did reprimand Hasan strangely gave him a good letter of reference anyway. He declined to speak to the AP.
Were warning signs about Hasan ignored because some observers feared that challenging his views and behavior might have drawn accusations of religious bigotry? We do not know for certain. But what we do know is that it would be tragic if “political correctness” contributed in any way to the 13 deaths of which Hasan is accused.