Fort Hood, War and Indecision

Daniel Henninger. Read the whole thing.

The most-heard reason for the possible failure is political correctness. No doubt. But Sen. Lieberman's committee should avoid making this its main line of inquiry, because that is a problem without a policy fix. It minimizes the real problem.

The problem is confusion. The combatants at each end of the spectrum in the war over the war on terror know exactly what they think about surveilling suspected terrorists. But if you are an intel officer or FBI agent tasked with providing the protection, what are you supposed to make of all this bitter public argument? What you make of it is that when you get a judgment call, like Maj. Hasan, you hesitate. You blink.

Now everyone thinks the call was obvious. But it wasn't so obvious before the tragedy. Not if for years you have watched a country and its political class in rancorous confusion about the enemy, the legal standing of the enemy, or the legal status and scope of the methods it wants to use to fight the enemy.

In war, uncertainty gets you killed. It just did. . . .

Everyone has seen the pictures of inconsolable grief amid the coffins of Fort Hood. Only one person can resolve the confusion that let this happen: the president.

So, it appears to me that Henninger sees political correctness and political in-fighting as leading to indecision, confusion, silence or buck-passing when people encountered danger signs. People felt personally imperiled by the prospect of reporting highly disturbing behavior by an army psychiatrist, because he was a Muslim.

Victor Davis Hanson:

Something has gone terribly wrong in the entire reaction to the Ft. Hood massacres, as evidenced by the media, the administration, the military authorities, and perhaps the public at large. There seems almost a dreamy disconnect from the terrible fate of the slain—as if we are innately impotent to stop such mayhem, or are above the fray and so like Platonic Guardians must remain deep in contemplation about how in theory we can persuade the Hasans to cease and desist—as if our therapeutic stance in the first place did not encourage and embolden such monsters to act. . . .

How about some passion, or at least promises of a gargantuan hearing, a federal inquiry, Tailhook- or 9/11-style, to investigate how this extremist passed all sorts of red lines—starting with the promotion process and ending with questions of firearm security and use on bases, touching on immigration policy from the Middle East, FBI policies, and political correctness?

Read the whole thing. Comment #1:

Try to imagine the response of the “elites” if Hasan were a blue eyed, blond haired, fervently committed member of the Ku Klux Klan.