General George Casey Jr., the Army chief of staff, said on Sunday that he was concerned that speculation about the religious beliefs of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, accused of killing 12 fellow soldiers and one civilian and wounding dozens of others in a shooting rampage at Fort Hood, could “cause a backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers.”

“I’ve asked our Army leaders to be on the lookout for that,” General Casey said in an interview on CNN’s “State of the Union. “It would be a shame — as great a tragedy as this was — it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well.”

But, as if Casey never said it, here’s the independent senator from Connecticut:

Senator Joseph I. Lieberman of Connecticut, appearing on “Fox News Sunday,” labeled the shooting spree “the most destructive terrorist act to be committed on American soil since 9/11” and said that as chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee he intended to investigate Major Hasan’s suspected motives and whether the Army “missed warning signs that should have led them to essentially discharge him.”

“If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamist extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance,” Senator Lieberman said. “He should have been gone.”

It’s important to ask the question of whether Hasan acted alone. The early evidence is that he did. But the question is appropriate, because the stakes are people’s lives.

But that’s the stake in Lieberman’s investigation, too. Inquiries like the one he described have an awful tendency to build the conclusion into the premise — turning constitutionally protected speech or religious behavior or dissent into troubling “signs,” when the person exercising his freedoms worships in a mosque and not a church or a synagogue. The soldiers who died at Ft. Hood did not serve their country to see it devolve into witchhunting.

Whole letter after the jump.

Jihad at Fort Hood

Every American this morning should be outraged not only about the murderous rampage against U.S. soldiers in Ft. Hood, Texas, by Major Nidal M. Hasan, but also by the sickening effort of Big Media, and even some U.S. officials, to deceive us about what has taken place.

For eight years we have been fighting radical Islamists around the world, and we have been the victims of jihadist attacks by lone radical Muslims repeatedly here in the U.S. Yet as the story broke of the carnage yesterday, 13 dead and 30 wounded, virtually every major media outlet, along with our own government, seemed to have as their main goal convincing us that the event had nothing to do with terrorism or radical Islam.

But minute-by-minute, more information is coming to light that can’t be ignored. We have found out that six months ago Major Hasan may have defended Muslim suicide bombers on his web page, comparing such acts to the sacrifice a U.S. solider makes when he falls on a grenade to save his fellow soldiers. Col. Terry Lee, who worked with the killer, said Major Hasan had said, “Muslims shouldn’t be fighting Muslims.” Back in June, when a Muslim convert assassinated a U.S. soldier at a recruiting station in Little Rock, Arkansas, Col. Lee said that Major Hasan seemed happy about the event and that he was confronted by other officers. (You may recall that it took days for Obama to acknowledge that attack, yet the White House issued a rare Sunday statement when late-term abortionist George Tiller was killed.)

In recent weeks, while off the base, Major Hasan started wearing Arabic and religious clothing. He passed out Korans on the morning of the shooting. Survivors in the facility where Major Hasan went on the attack reported that he yelled, “Allahu Akbar,” (Allah is great) before he opened fire – the same words shouted by the jihadists on 9/11 and which have been repeated by our enemy in every attack since.

Nor is this an isolated incident. In June 2003, Sergeant Hasan K. Akbar attacked his fellow soldiers as they gathered in Kuwait to start the liberation of Iraq. He killed two officers and wounded many more. Numerous plots by American Muslims have been uncovered in recent years to attack Fort Dix, the Quantico Marine Corps base and other military facilities.

No one is suggesting that an Al Qaeda operative contacted Major Hasan and ordered yesterday’s attack. But the evidence certainly indicates that Major Hasan was becoming more and more committed to radical Islam and growing increasingly hostile to the American military that paid for his education and repeatedly promoted him. NPR reports, “Hasan was put on probation early in his postgraduate work… He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues…”

I understand the media’s politically correct mindset. What is inexcusable is why the military and the FBI continue to be so reticent about acknowledging the nature of the enemy we are confronting. Instead of going into denial, our military, the FBI and other intelligence agencies need to admit the obvious. While thousands of loyal American Muslims have served in the military, and some have died with other Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan, there are also “sleeper cells” or “sleeper individuals” who are jihadist ticking time bombs inside our own ranks. Similar attacks are inevitable the longer our leaders engage in self-deception. The brave men and women in uniform, who are on the front lines in Afghanistan and Iraq, should not have to worry about being killed at home by the same enemy they are fighting abroad.

Obama’s “Shout out”

As details of the Ft. Hood carnage poured in yesterday afternoon, the White House announced that President Obama would make a statement at a previously scheduled event. Close to 5:00 PM, cable stations switched to cover the president’s remarks as he was getting ready to speak at a Tribal Nations Conference hosted by the Interior Department. What happened next has callers to talk radio shows all over the country outraged.

Instead of bringing a somber demeanor into the room, the president seemed to many to be light-hearted and frivolous. He thanked various staffers, and then said he wanted to give a “shout out” to Dr. Joe Medicine Crow, who he incorrectly identified as a “Congressional Medal of Honor” winner. After several minutes of banter, the president read a somber, brief statement about the shootings. Increasingly, this White House seems “tone deaf.” How hard is it to realize that this was not a time for joking or “shout outs.” In fact, it would have been more appropriate to cancel the speech and make a reassuring statement from the White House on the events in Texas.

This morning, the president made another statement ordering flags to fly at half-staff until Veterans Day. But he also cautioned us not to “jump to conclusions” until we have all the facts. (The last time there was a pending law enforcement issue, the president was the first to jump to conclusions when he said the Cambridge Police Department “acted stupidly” for arresting his friend Professor Louis Gates.)

It’s worth remembering that this sort of hysteria from GOPers is nothing new. In 2006, Rep. Pete Hoekstra (R-Mich.), then the chairman of the House intelligence committee, publicly asserted without any evidence that al-Qaeda had infiltrated the CIA. He paid no price for such an incendiary charge. You can apparently say these sorts of things if you’re a Republican.

Not only is this shameful stereotyping of millions of law-abiding Americans McCarthyite and un-American, it’s actively counterproductive to real vigilance against terrorism. Fernholz:

These four fools have lined up to say they think any Muslim who might want to peacefully advocate their interests should be investigated for terrorist connections, simply by dint of their religion, which could send the message to Muslim Americans that they aren’t welcome in the democratic process. I hope that isn’t the result of these misguided demands for an investigation. Muslim Americans deserve to have their civil rights respected and should be encouraged to exercise their privilege of participating in our government.

In 2005 I spent months researching and writing a long piece about how American religious tolerance and liberal openness to persecuted minorities had allowed the U.S. to avoid the radicalization of Muslims occurring in Europe. Weakening that prophylactic on the strength of slanders sponsored by the same people who say President Obama is not an American is beneath the dignity of anyone who professes loyalty to the Constitution.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel visited the White House today. And by the White House Communications Office’s own admission (!), this is how Obama began his joint appearance with Merkel. Remember, I’m not making this up. It’s from the official transcript:

PRESIDENT OBAMA:  Willkommen.

Like I said, I am not making this up. Barack Obama has now converted to German. Just like Andy McCarthy promised, his totalitarian-liberal instincts preordained this moment.  Obama’s both a Nazi and a Muslim, an unstoppable Islamofascist Voltron. Destroy this mad brute!

Mr. Obama’s revelation of his “inner Muslim” in Cairo reveals much about who he is. He is our first president without an instinctive appreciation of the culture, history, tradition, common law and literature whence America sprang. The genetic imprint writ large in his 43 predecessors is missing from the Obama DNA … Kenya simply routed Kansas.

The president only had 42 white predecessors, not 43 — Grover Cleveland served twice — but you don’t worry about such things when you’re trying to expose the grave Kenyan threat to our culture.

–

TWI is on Twitter. Please follow us here.

President Barack Obama’s speech on June 4, 2009 failed to advance the promotion of human rights in the Muslim world, Human Rights Watch said today. In a much-anticipated address, Obama spoke bluntly about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but kept to generalities when it came to the pressing need for human rights and democratic reforms in the region.

“If Obama wanted to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the US, he should have taken on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed, including his hosts,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “Egypt and others will interpret his bland generalities as a signal they have nothing to fear from their friends in Washington.”

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama addressed democracy as a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world. His choice of Cairo for this much-anticipated speech was controversial because of Egypt’s record of stifling the opposition, holding tainted elections, and imprisoning dissidents.

Only by 8:09 p.m., the group appeared to soft-peddle that message in a release entitled “Obama Mid-East Speech Supports Rights, Democracy: But U.S. Message Needs Stronger Message for Repressive Regional Allies”:

President Barack Obama’s much-anticipated June 4, 2009, speech to the Muslim world avoided confronting authoritarian governments directly, but sent a welcome message that Washington would not let the prospect of empowering Islamist parties deter it from supporting democracy in the region, Human Rights Watch said today.

Speaking before 2,500 invited guests at Cairo University, Obama said the issue of democracy and human rights was a major source of tension between the United States and Islam around the world, in part because of the Bush administration’s use of democratic rhetoric to justify the war in Iraq. He pledged, however, that the United States would continue to support human rights and democratic principles in the region.

“For the US to regain credibility, it will have to follow through even when voters in the Middle East elect governments Washington doesn’t like,” said Sarah Leah Whitson, Middle East director at Human Rights Watch. “If Obama wants to tackle the issues that cause Muslim ill-will toward the United States, he should take on the region’s repressive regimes, many of them US-backed – including his hosts.”

Whitson’s comments, at least, are consistent between the two releases.

In this manner, Obama appears to have followed the same path taken by his predecessor, in creating more enmity towards Muslims, and adding on to the fighting enemies, thus paving the way for new long wars.

Let the American people prepare to continue harvesting what their White House leaders grow, in the years and decades to come.

They say the classics never go out of style. But more distressing that bin Laden’s expected bleating is the lack of rapid response from the administration’s public diplomacy infrastructure. If this were a political campaign, the pushback would have begun already. But so far there’s nothing from the State Department’s blog taking bin Laden’s message down.

Now, there have to be a number of caveats to my criticism. First, Obama’s Cairo speech tomorrow is, of course, a massive public diplomacy effort aimed at essentially refuting bin Laden’s worldview, even if the president doesn’t mention bin Laden. Second, the administration’s announced National Security Council shakeup last week is creating a White House director for interagency public diplomacy, so that represents an elevation of the importance of public diplomacy. Third, an argument that I don’t personally find persuasive but others might is that you don’t want the president of the United States in a back-and-forth with an al-Qaeda mass murderer. Fourth, Judith McHale’s testimony to the Senate last month to be the State Department’s public diplomacy chief made some gestures to treating public diplomacy as a national security issue, and embraced a series of Web 2.0 tools for rapid response. Fifth, the bin Laden tape was just released.

But I’m not going to let all that get in the way of my complaint! The longer bin Laden’s dreck is out there, the greater likelihood it’ll spread through the information bloodstream, and experience demonstrates that disinformation will be accepted if it’s not promptly confronted. The State Department has existing infrastructure set up — the DipNote blog, its Tweeting, and so forth — to get the U.S. message out, and yet it rarely spends much effort countering anti-American messages directly. Similarly, the Pentagon is getting out of the public diplomacy business for fear of edging too closely into propaganda. That’s laudable, but it contributes to an information lacuna that several administrations have failed to address.

That decision should come as little surprise to the Justice Department, given that, as I reported in April, a last-minute rule adopted by the Bush administration in December gives the FBI unprecedented powers to conduct surveillance of targets without any basis for suspicion of criminal activity. That wasn’t likely to sit well with Muslim groups, who believe they’re often the targets of such surveillance. (Because the Department of Justice doesn’t reveal how it uses the FBI authority, it’s impossible to confirm or deny those claims.)

Under the new Attorney General Guidelines — adopted by former Attorney General Michael Mukasey, and which the Obama administration has not revoked — the FBI may use physical surveillance; interview a person’s neighbors, landlord, colleagues or friends; retrieve personal data from commercial databases; and recruit and assign informants to spy at political, religious or other meetings — all without evidence that the target of the investigation has done anything wrong.

A coalition of Islamic groups is now calling for Muslims to stop cooperating with the FBI’s efforts to work with Muslim communities to target potential terrorists.

In addition to the change in FBI guidelines allowing increased surveillance, the groups are upset that the FBI recently suspended ties with the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights group, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, which was named as an unindicted co-conspirator in the government’s case against the Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development.

The coalition, represented by the American Muslim Taskforce on Civil Rights and Elections, has requested a meeting with U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to discuss the matter.

“We have to decide what we’re doing as a country. If it’s not a war on Islam, then these practices must be stopped,” Agha Saeed, who chairs the coalition, told the AP. “We’re not asking for special treatment, just equal treatment.”

Officials ordered nine Muslim passengers, including three young children, off an AirTran flight headed to Orlando from Reagan National Airport yesterday afternoon after two other passengers overheard what they thought was a suspicious remark.

Members of the party, all but one of them U.S.-born citizens who were headed to a religious retreat in Florida, were subsequently cleared for travel by FBI agents who characterized the incident as a misunderstanding, an airport official said. But the passengers said AirTran refused to rebook them, and they had to pay for seats on another carrier secured with help from the FBI.

Kashif Irfan, one of the removed passengers, said the incident began about 1 p.m. after his brother, Atif, and his brother’s wife wondered aloud about the safest place to sit on an airplane.

“My brother and his wife were discussing some aspect of airport security,” Irfan said. “The only thing my brother said was, ‘Wow, the jets are right next to my window.’ I think they were remarking about safety.”

According to the article, five of the six adults in the party were of South Asian descent, and the men all wore beards while the women wore traditional headscarves. Kashif Irfan is an anesthesiologist and his brother, Atif, is a lawyer. Both were born in Detroit and currently live in Alexandria, Va. They said they suspected they were profiled because of their appearance, which AirTran disputed.

“At the end of the day, people got on and made comments they shouldn’t have made on the airplane, and other people heard them,” [AirTran spokesman Tad] Hutcheson said. “Other people heard them, misconstrued them. It just so happened these people were of Muslim faith and appearance. It escalated, it got out of hand and everyone took precautions.”

I realize that many people in this country want airlines to target Muslims for additional security screening, which, even if you agree with that idea, this seems a bit excessive. I’m not sure this approaches the level of impropriety of, say, someone joking that he had a bomb in their bag at the ticket counter.

More importantly, if you don’t agree with targeting travelers based on race, think about why. If a white person made a similar comment, it is very unlikely that anyone would even take notice. And that’s the point: If it was inappropriate for a Muslim, then it would also be inappropriate if someone like, say, myself said the same thing.

At the very least, the airline could have rebooked them on another flight after they were cleared.