Speculation! Snapped! Backlash!

The word cloud that will hang like a toxic L.A. smog over the waning of this accursed year of 2009 is forming, and its outlines are now taking shape.

Our collective vocabulary — at least as it applies to Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan and the Fort Hood massacre — will look something like this:


To generate the above word cloud, I extracted the text from a dozen or so typical Ft. Hood news stories taken from the wire services, the TV news sites, and the Texas newspapers, and ran them through the Tag Crowd application. As you can see, the warnings against “speculation”, the worries about “backlash”, and the sense that Maj. Hasan must have just “snapped” — does that count as speculation? — have shaped the national conversation, at least as chronicled in the legacy media.

The latest news is that Senator Joe Lieberman (D-CN) is calling for a congressional investigation into a possible connection between Maj. Hasan and “terrorism”. Doesn’t he know he’s not supposed to speculate about such things? Does he want to produce a backlash?

Snap out of it, Joe!

The official spokesmen for our nation’s uniformed services are still trying to soothe the public’s atavistic fears and prevent an Islamophobic backlash. According to The Houston Chronicle:

Army Chief of Staff George Casey also warned Sunday against reaching conclusions about the suspected shooter’s motives until investigators have fully explored the attack. “I think the speculation (on Hasan’s Islamic roots) could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers,” he said on ABC’s This Week.

If Maj. Hasan were a devout Christian, and had screamed “Jesus is Lord!” as he pulled the triggers with both hands, would we be worried about a possible backlash against innocent Presbyterians?

But that’s the Army’s story, and they’re sticking to it. We’ll see if Sen. Lieberman manages to pry anything else out of them.

I can see why the Pentagon might want to play down the I-word in all this, because it has become quite evident that there were abundant signs of Maj. Hasan’s Islamic zealotry long before he opened fire on his victims last Thursday:
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Dr. Val Finnell told The Associated Press on Saturday that he and other classmates participating in a 2007-2008 master’s program with Hasan at the Uniformed Services University complained about his comments, including that the war on terror was “a war against Islam.”

Another classmate told the AP on Sunday that he complained to five officers and two civilian faculty members at the university. He wrote in a command climate survey sent to Pentagon officials that fear in the military of being seen as politically incorrect prevented an “intellectually honest discussion of Islamic ideology” in the ranks. The classmate requested anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

So it was obvious to the lower ranks that there was a potential for trouble, but the higher-ups — anybody with any ambition for career advancement, that is — didn’t want to hear about it.

Forget the speculation. Forget backlash. Never mind whether he snapped or not.

If the officers had listened to their subordinates, the lives of thirteen people could have been saved.

Political correctness killed all those people at Fort Hood.

That’s not speculation; it’s a simple fact.

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The mosque in Maryland was not the only one favored by Maj. Hasan. He apparently also liked to visit a mosque in the notorious Emirate of Falls Church, one that was Wahhabist enough to satisfy the needs of the 9-11 hijackers:

Meanwhile, the FBI will probably look into whether Hasan attended the same Virginia mosque as two Sept. 11 hijackers in 2001 at a time when a radical imam preached there, said a law enforcement official who spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigation is ongoing.

But don’t worry — the mosque isn’t really as bad as all that. And Maj. Hasan wasn’t a leader there. Everything was normal; you can all go back to sleep:

Imam Johari Abdul-Malik, outreach director at the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center, confirmed Sunday Hasan’s family participated in services at the mosque in Falls Church, Va. Abdul-Malik said the Hasans were not leaders at the mosque and their attendance was utterly normal, and he did not know whether Hasan himself ever attended services there.

I love the way the media report this stuff with a straight face. If the Dar al Hijrah Islamic Center is really radical enough to appeal to the 9-11 hijackers, how likely is it that its imam would tell a newspaper reporter the truth? Surely the writer — even if he has never heard of taqiyya and has no idea what a dhimmi is — must have some inkling that hardcore terrorists and terrorist sympathizers might have reason to lie…?

But no, not in the MSM, and especially not now, at the waning of this dreadful year, as we go downward to darkness on extended wings, as we descend into this the winter of our discontent…

But enough of speculation. That snapping you hear is the sound of our elites’ final tethers to reality breaking free.

Or maybe it’s the patience of the American people snapping at last.

The backlash from that one will be something to see.