Anger at failure to respond to Hasan dangers

Major Shawn Keller:

As an officer in the United States Army, I'm angry for so many reasons over what happened at Ft. Hood. I'm angry that twelve of my fellow soldiers and a contractor were murdered. I'm angry that over thirty people have suffered life altering injuries from which they will never fully recover. I'm angry that the lives of so many families have been forever ruined. I'm angry that this happened on an Army post on American soil where soldiers should be safe. And I'm angry that the murderer was a terrorist who masqueraded as an Army officer for half a dozen years.

But as angry as I am at what happened, I'm even angrier that it was allowed to happen. Apparently, there was no shortage of warning signs that Hasan identified more with Islamic Jihadists than he did with the US Army. From speeches, writings, conversations, affiliations and postings on Jihadist websites, there were more than enough dots to connect that should have exposed Hasan as someone inclined to attack innocent people in the furtherance of a political, religious and ideological agenda. There were more than enough red flags raised that, at a minimum, should have gotten Hasan kicked out of the Army.

But just like September 11, those agencies and individuals charged with keeping America and Americans safe failed to connect the dots that would have saved lives. Jihadist rhetoric espoused by Hasan was categorically dismissed out of submissiveness to the concepts of tolerance and diversity. The Army as an institution has been neutered by decades of political correctness and the leaders in Hasan's chain-of-command failed to act accordingly out of fear of being labeled anti-Muslim and receiving a negative evaluation report. The counter-terrorism agencies knew Hasan was communicating with Al-Qaeda and dismissed it as academic research instead of delving deeper into the probability that a terrorist had infiltrated the ranks.

...

And, don't forget the business cards found in his apartment that leave off his affiliation with the Army and instead tout him as a Soldier of Allah.

There were several signs that had they been aggregated, would have led a reasonable person to conclude that this guy was a danger to the troops and to himself. Instead the individual dots were explained away, by what looks like a political correctness mentality. That was clearly a mistake.