FT. HOOD MASSACRE: IS THE U.S ON THE WAY TO COMMITTING SUICIDE? 

By 

VOJIN JOKSIMOVICH* 

While doing research for my book, The Revenge of the Prophet: How Clinton and His Predecessors Empowered Radical Islam, I came to the conclusion that neither the 9/11 Commission nor any other analyses established a methodology for a systematic examination of 9/11 or any other terrorist act. So I called upon my professional nuclear safety background including the notion of the safety culture. I arrived at the conclusion that the U.S. government has exhibited no safety culture over the years when it came to developing a sound approach how to confront radical Islam, which as a global movement represents a threat to Western civilization conceivably more so than fascism and communism ever were. There was no explicit acknowledgement that the conflict with radical Islam could be a defining conflict in the early 21^st century. Explanations such as a small minority of Muslim extremists (jihadists) have hijacked the Koran; I viewed as nothing more than a piece of self-deception and flawed political correctness.

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It is not the purpose of this blog to enter into a dissertation explaining differences between secular, moderate and radical Islam. The subject is definitely controversial. Numerous articles and books have been written on the subject with many arguing that there has never been a distinction, i.e. Islam equals radical Islam. It is tough to explain how the Muslim armies coming out of Arabia conquered the Middle East and North Africa, advanced across to Central Asia and India, and invaded portions of Europe using the "religion of peace" (the term several U.S. presidents have used). Muhammad was a warrior; he led men to battle. Jihad was integral to this expansion; it provided a rationale for the Islamic Imperium. In a post 9/11 interview, Samuel Haq, a Pakistani cleric, explained the pillars of Islam and said the following: "Jihad must be fought without limits. There is no compromise in jihad...Jihad against the oppressor of Muslims is an absolute duty. Islam is a religion that defends itself." My assertion is that moderate Islam is definitely more desirable but presently doesn't represent a reality. Hence, apart from westernized secular Muslims, it is prudent to assume that every practicing Muslim under certain circumstances could be radicalized. Being asked to fight fellow-Muslims anywhere in the world is most certainly one of those circumstances. Of course in the long run, we should be able to separate the jihadists from the rest of the Muslims and thus focus on fighting Islamist Totalitarianism. However, our government has to become much smarter and more consistent. This means abolishing hypocritical distinctions between "bad" and "good " terrorists, respectively being those that kill innocent Americans and Brits and those serving temporary Anglo-American hegemonic interests in Europe and Asia.  

I had defined the safety culture as an assembly of characteristics and attitudes in organizations and individuals, which ensures that public safety receives overriding priority over other considerations. In other words it is a culture in which the safety of citizens is never compromised. In the decision making processes of the U.S. administrations, ever since President Roosevelt established the U.S.-Saudi bond in 1945 (Quincy Pact), commerce and geostrategic considerations took precedence over the safety/protection of the citizens. The Quincy Pact left both countries as the godfathers of radical Islam. The extreme branch of Islam, called Wahhabism, while exporting the hatred against the western civilization, legitimizes the rule of the Saudi royal family. This lack of a safety culture continued to be practiced by subsequent administrations prior to the Clinton one. However, it reached new heights during the Clinton administration and led directly to 9/11. The Islamist terrorist networks flourished during the Clinton era. Some 10,000 terrorists have been trained in Al Qaeda's training camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan. Osama bin Laden rose from an ordinary man to a Hydra-like monster. Both the Clinton and Bush-43 administrations acted as appeasers of the radical Islam in Kosovo against the Christian Serbs. It should be noted that Saudi Arabia has built about 300 Wahhabi mosques in Kosovo, while 151 Serbian churches and monasteries have been demolished amounting to de-Christianization of Kosovo. In Iraq, the Bush-43 administration acted as a provocateur as the U.S. invaded a Muslim nation, which was incidentally secular under Saddam Hussein. This invasion has fanned the flames for more jihad as exemplified with occurrence of over 2,000 suicide bombers in Iraq only. A part of Bush's legacy is a million widows in Iraq. 

The worldwide nuclear industry learned a great deal from the Three Mile Island and Chernobyl accidents. This has not been the case with the U.S. administrations and radical Islam. The November 5 Ft. Hood massacre, executed by a radicalized Islamist, Army psychiatrist Hasan, a 39-year-old American born son of Palestinian parents, shows that the radicalized Muslims have infiltrated even the U.S. military. President Obama, again with the support of the compliant media, provides a disservice to the American people by covering up for the existence of radicalized Islamists even among American-born citizens. For many of them the overriding loyalty is to Islam not America. Obama does not even use the term radical Islam. Instead he uses the term extremists. So now it is the ideology of appeasement rather than commerce that currently drives the U.S. foreign policies. 

The Ft. Hood massacre has been covered extensively by the main-stream media. Hence, the basic facts will not be repeated herein. Instead the text will focus on the root-cause of the massacre. Incidentally, the Ft. Hood massacre has some similarity with the Paracin massacre, which took place on September 3, 1987 in the Former Yugoslavia. Aziz Kelmendi, a 19-year-old Yugoslav Army soldier of Albanian origin, shot dead four fellow soldiers: two Bosnians; one Croat and one Serb, and wounded five others on the compound of a military barrack in the Serbian town of Paracin. 

E-mails with Jihadist Cleric 

The National Security Agency intercepted at least 18 e-mails between Hasan, a U.S.-born Muslim whose business cards had the initials "S.O.A"---"Soldier of Allah," imprinted on them, and Anwar al-Awlaki, a radical American born imam currently living in Yemen with reported links to Al Qaeda as a recruiter. He operates an influential Al Qaeda-linked website. Al-Awlaki left the U.S. in 2002 for Britain and then settled 2004 in Yemen, his parent's country, in order to support the Islamist jihad. He championed the jihadist ideology and preached at the Falls Church mosque in Virginia attended by Hasan and three 9/11 hijackers: Al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar, and Hani Hanjour. In an interview with a Yemeni journalist, al-Awlaki said that Hasan initiated the e-mails last December 2008 and came to view him as a confidant. Hasan questioned the U.S. wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and cited the Islamic law that demanded "that what America was doing should be confronted." He inquired when jihad was appropriate and about killing innocents in a suicide attack. After the massacre at Ft. Hood, Al-Awlaki posted a message on his website praising Hasan's actions and calling him a hero, who did a right thing by killing U.S. soldiers before their deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and urged other Muslim-Americans to emulate his example: "Nidal Hasan is a hero. He is a man of conscience who could not bear living in contradiction of being a Muslim and serving the army that is fighting against his own people...How can there be any dispute about the virtue of what he has done." 

2007 "Medical" Presentation 

In June 2007 Hasan delivered an hour-long "medical" presentation to his superiors and some 25 mental health staff at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. This presentation turned into a 50-slide PowerPoint talk on Koranic World View as it relates to Muslims in the U.S. Military. The bottom line was that it was getting harder and harder for the Muslims in the service to justify being sent to fight fellow Muslims. Hasan advocated that the Pentagon should allow Muslim Soldiers the option to be released as conscientious objectors. 

This presentation and Hasan's behavior in general led the doctors supervising Hasan's medical training at the Walter Reed Center to raise concerns about his argumentative behavior including aggressive proselytizing of patients. The doctors questioned Hasan's fitness for military service but no action was taken. Nonetheless, he was allowed to counsel traumatized veterans, promoted to become major and was put on a Homeland Security panel! 

Ft. Hood Record 

Hasan's supervisor, Captain Naomi Surman, recalled his telling her that "as an infidel she would be ripped to shreds and burn in hell." Another individual reported that Hasan stated that infidels should be beheaded and have burning oil poured down their throats. Three days before the massacre he attempted to convince his supervisors about the need to prosecute the soldiers who returned from Iraq and Afghanistan. 

Some Prior U.S. Jihad Incidents 

In 2007 a Bosnian Muslim immigrant, Sulejman Talovic, slaughtered five innocent shoppers in a Salt Lake City shopping mall. In 2008, four Kosovo and Macedonian Albanian immigrants were convicted of plotting to slaughter American soldiers at Fort Dix, N.J. One of them said that an Awlaki sermon was a driving force for them. "Because he gives it to you raw and uncut. I do not give a damn what everybody says. This is Islam; this is the truth right there." Awlaki's materials were found in the records of the accomplices of 2005 London Transport System suicide bombers. Canadians plotting an attack on their Parliament had his recordings.  

Some other Jihad Incidents in U.S. Military 

During the invasion of Iraq in March 2003, Sgt. Hasan Akbar shot at 17 fellow soldiers, killing two. He opposed killing fellow Muslims: "You guys are coming into our countries, and you're going to rape our women and kill our children." He was not alone. Navy signalman Hassan Abujihaad was convicted of tipping-off Al Qaeda to battle group movements in the Persian Gulf. Army reservist Jeffrey Battle in 2003 pleaded guilty to conspiring to wage war against the U.S., confessing he enlisted "to receive military training to use against America." Army Spec. Ryan Anderson in 2004 was convicted of leaking military intelligence to Al Qaeda, including info about the vulnerabilities of armored Humvees. There are at least half a dozen other such similar cases. 

Recent U.S. Terrorist Threats 

Between November 2008 and this writing I discovered 13 U.S. Muslim terrorist threats. Several examples follow. Bryant Neal Vinas, a Muslim convert from Long Island captured in Pakistan, admitted that he was plotting with Al Qaeda. In North Carolina seven Muslims, all but one U.S. citizens, were arrested and charged with planning to wage jihad overseas. An Albanian-American was arrested in Kosovo with charges to engage in terrorist activity. Najibullah Zazi, an Afghan-American trained by Al Qaeda in Pakistan, was arrested with charges for plotting a bomb attack in New York. A Jordanian immigrant was arrested with charges to set off a car bomb in Dallas. David Coleman Headley, a Pakistani American based in Chicago, was charged for scouting targets in Copenhagen for attacks on the Danish Jyllands-Posten newspaper over its publication of cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The same individual was subsequently charged for being a co-conspirator with Lashkar-e-Taiba for the Mumbai massacre in India. Tarek Mehana, a Boston-area man, was charged with a conspiracy to support terrorists as part of an alleged plot to "kill, kidnap, maim or injure" people including U.S. officials, in the U.S. and overseas.   

Hasan's Indisputable Jihadi Mentality  

The facts listed above leave no doubt about Hasan's jihadi mindset. His mindset was not any different from that of the Fort Dix conspirators. What possible dialogue could one have with Al Awlaki that didn't raise red flags? Nonetheless, a joint terrorism task force overseen by the FBI concluded that Hasan wasn't linked to terrorism. "When reviewed there was nothing to raise a red flag," said one official. His e-mail exchanges were a legitimate part of Hasan's academic research!! What happened to the ability to connect dots? Months later when Hasan purchased the semiautomatic handgun he would later use in the attack, he underwent a routine FBI background check and passed it. Some time ago he told his landlord that he would not be renewing the lease. He gave away his furniture along with copies of Koran on the morning of the massacre. Then, after shouting "Allahu Akbar," (Allah is Great) he murdered 13 people and wounded two dozen. Parallels with intelligence breakdowns prior to 9/11 are appropriate, but is there more to it? Is the FBI including the task force members incompetent? While the FBI might be incompetent there is definitely more to it. The mainstream media as well as Obama and his White House aides were puzzled about what Hasan's motives could have been. They couldn't figure out why Hasan fired over 100 shots at his fellow American soldiers in order to murder and maim as many as possible!! Is there a cover-up of jihad in this country? 

Investigations and Jihad Cover-ups 

Several investigations have been ordered by: the U.S. Congress, the White House, the Pentagon and the FBI. Should the American people be concerned that the outcome will be a whitewash? It is much easier to have a whitewash than to face the implications of confronting the ideology almost exclusive to Muslims. Robert Spencer said: "Political correctness has the media and government in a stranglehold." 

An examination of the Fort Dix case suggests that a whitewash is more likely. The Institutionalized political correctness approach was used then in order to cover up the identity of four conspirators. They were first identified as "Yugoslavs." Of course, the Serbs were "Yugoslavs" while Yugoslavia existed, thus the implication that the conspirators were "Serbs." Then the conspirators became Macedonians. While it is true that three of them were Macedonian-Albanians, the fourth one was a Kosovo Albanian, who belonged to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA). I have never found out if former first lady Hillary Clinton welcomed him amongst the 453 Albanians who were allowed to enter the country at Ft. Dix in 1999 in the first wave of some 20,000 so called "Kosovars." This word was invented by the media. In Kosovo there are Albanians, Serbs, Roma and other minorities, none of them identifying themselves as "Kosovars." The Clinton and Bush administrations have used KLA, a terrorist Muslim dominated organization initially supported by Osama bin Laden, to amputate the sovereign country of Serbia in violation of a host of all international laws in order to create a Muslim dominated entity in Europe and thus appease radical Islam.  

General Casey stated that the time has come to replace "diversity training" with a corrective action with pure unadulterated "reality." Will General Casey be able deliver? I sincerely hope so but the mainstream media has portrayed Hasan as an "anomaly," an "aberration," a "lone wolf," a "troubled man." Evan Thomas of Newsweek dismissed Hasan as a "nut case." Tim Rutten in the Los Angeles Times said "None of the implications of Hasan's alleged betrayal are unique to Islam." Tom Gjelten on NPR came up with an innovative explanation "pre-traumatic stress disorder." On Fox News, Geraldo Rivera said: "I don't know what motivates him...as far as I know...he's a sociopath; he's a criminal. He could have had a toothache and gone off because of that." In the first five days after the massacre 85% of the news stories did not mention the words "terror" and "terrorists." Many continue to paint Islam as a "religion of peace" and marginalize critics of the jihad as suffering from "Islamophobia." President Obama stated that we cannot "fully know" why Major Hasan did what he did, thus implying why trouble us any further! These people cannot conceive a paradigm in which Muslims can be evil perpetrators. This privilege is assigned to the Judeo-Christian westerners. 

Subordination of U.S. Foreign Policies 

Over the years, foreign policy including those related to radical Islam, have been subordinated to the interests of big business and the international banks. Corporate capitalism is equating the interests of multinationals with the American national interests. Multinationals are viewed as major organs of the U.S. economic system. Recently, some of them were viewed as too big to fail and had to be rescued by the U.S. taxpayers. Robert Baer, author of Sleeping with the Devil, wrote: "I found myself wondering if there was anything not for sale in Washington...I couldn't help but notice that the Bandars (long-term Saudi ambassador to Washington) and the Boeings, the Carlyle Groups and the Exxons ran Washington." These lobbies buy foreign policies, including a war. Oil interests and petrodollars in particular, rather than American values, have driven U.S. foreign policies. 

In the 1994-1997 time frame, the U.S. supported the Taliban in Afghanistan, despite their radical Islam agenda, treatment of women (when the Taliban captured Herat and threw thousands of girls out of the schools there was no word from the White House), exporting terrorism, conduit of drugs and being a destabilizing factor in the Central Asia. In part, this support was attributable to Unocal's effort to build a gas pipeline Turkmenistan and Pakistan via Afghanistan. Now, we have been at war with the Taliban for eight years at the cost of about 1000 American lives. 

A more drastic case is support for the Balkan jihads (Bosnia and Kosovo) since 1992 against the Serbian Orthodox Christians. Al Qaeda was the Clinton administration's partner in the Balkans. U.S. planes transported the mujahideen to Bosnia to fight Christian Serbs and Croats. As a result Bosnia became the hub of terrorist operations extending into Western Europe and North America, including 9/11. The Hamburg Al Qaeda cell, which played a pivotal part in 9/11, was recruited from Bosnia. 

With the lection of President Obama, Islamophilia has reached new heights. 

Obama's Islamophilia 

Obama admits that he is a Muslim: He said: "I am one of them." He characterized the Muslim call to prayers "the prettiest sound on earth." In his speeches he praises and glorifies the Koran. He talks about the civilization debt to Islam. He asserts that Islam is an important part of promoting peace. He says that "America is no longer a Christian nation." "Islam is a part of America's story...America will never be at war with Islam" (not withstanding that the Afghan war has become Obama's war). He doesn't seem to understand that the war in Afghanistan, now his war, fans the flames for more jihads round the world and thousands of suicide bombers. He has bowed to the Saudi king, presumably the head of his religion.  

Obama has appointed two devout Muslims to homeland security posts: Arif Alikhan as Assistant Secretary for Policy Development and Kareem Shora, born in Syria, as a member of the Homeland Security Advisory Council. Doesn't this make Americans feel safe? Hasan was put on a Homeland Security panel. 

Swiss Referendum 

More than 57% of Swiss voters, and 22 out of 26 cantons, have voted to ban the building of minarets. The Swiss People's Party (SVP), the referendum sponsor, advocated that minarets are a sign of Islamisation, while the government opposed the ban saying it would harm Switzerland's image in the Muslim world. Leaving the issue of "freedom of religion expression" for some other blog, would it not be of interest to the U.S. democracy to have referenda such as this one? As it is now the American voters have no say in foreign policy decisions, including going to war. As a result, the government based on orchestrated disinformation, as exemplified in Kosovo and Iraq cases, decided to go to war in gross violation of international laws with enormous cost in blood in case of Iraq (over 4300 killed and tens of thousands maimed) and treasure (two trillion of taxpayers money).  

The Swiss referendum stirred a debate in Europe. The Belgian paper Le Soir noted: "There is a strong chance that if there was a vote in Belgium, a majority of the citizens would be against it too. "The Swiss vote proved there is significant popular support for tougher measures against Islam," said Jean Viard, head of Cevipof  French political science center. Furthermore, he said: "Deep down, many French don't want more mosques in France." What would happen in the U.S.? 

Little Mogadishu 

We have very recently learned that eastern Minneapolis has become known as Little Mogadishu as an estimated 60,000 Somalis reside there. Most of them arrived as refugees in 1990s. Federal authorities unsealed criminal charges against eight suspects alleged to be a part of a U.S. recruiting network that sent young Somalis from Little Mogadishu to fight in Somalia, some as suicide bombers, with an Al Qaeda-affiliated group known as Al Shabab, or "The Youth."  

Al Shabab, which declared imposition of Sharia in Somalia, is fighting the U.S.-backed transitional government there, as well as against Ethiopian government forces and African Union troops. They have attacked police stations, border posts, government facilities and civilian targets. Al Shabab has trained with and provided refuge for Al Qaeda operatives wanted in connection with 1998 bombing of U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania and a 2002 hotel bombing in Kenya. At least 20 men are thought to have left Minneapolis area and traveled to Somalia between September 2007 and October 2009. 

11 Muslims Thrown off Air Tran Flight 

Air Tran Flt. 297, Atlanta to Houston, was cancelled on November 17. 11 Muslims, dressed in full attire, got on the plane. During taxing, upon warning from a stewardess that cell phones were not permitted at the time, two Muslims ignored the warning, while other two began to show footage of a porno. One of them told the third stewardess "shut up infidel dog." Subsequently all of them got up and started to walk the cabin. All 11 were escorted off the plane by the TSA agents after two passengers stepped in. After a while all 11 walked back on the plane. A stewardess refused to stay on the plane with those men. The pilot told the TSA agent that his crew wasn't going to fly the plane. Minutes later a whole new crew walked on. The passengers walked off the plane suspecting it was a dry run for a terrorist attack. The flight had to be cancelled.  

On November 18 there was a blurb on the Fox saying that "a man refused to get off of his cell phone before takeoff," but not identifying the men as Muslims in a politically corrected manner. 

      Toynbee's Observation 

Arnold Joseph Toynbee (1889-1975), a British historian who authored the 12-volume analysis of the rise and fall of civilizations, A Study of History (1934-1961), observed that all great civilizations rise and fall and that "An autopsy of history would show that all great nations commit suicide". 

Is the U.S. by virtue of embracing multiculturalism, which led to diversity training, on the way to committing suicide? 

* The author wishes to acknowledge most helpful contributions from Ms. Aleksandra Rebic.