November 19, 2009

By Matt Hausman

The shootings at Fort Hood - by a Jihadist in American military garb shouting “Allahu Akbar” - should have sounded a sobering alarm regarding the insidious threat of Islamist terrorism, but the President’s response to the tragedy failed to acknowledge any connection. In his comments, the President spoke of Nidal Hasan in a contextual vacuum, ignoring his known Jihadist sympathies and urging Americans not to rush to judgment. Mr. Obama has since requested that Congress delay its investigation into the civilian and military intelligence lapses that enabled Hasan’s actions. The President’s refusal to validate the obvious is only the latest act or omission in a pattern of coddling the Arab-Muslim world and of refusing to confront the very real threat of terrorism – a pattern that has been marked by alternating fits of apathy, apologia and denial.

Shortly after taking office, Mr. Obama appointed Janet Napolitano as Secretary of Homeland Security and promptly set about changing how this country would deal with Islamist terrorism in the future. In an interview with “Spiegel Online International” last March, Napolitano explained that the Administration would refrain from using the term “terrorism,” and instead would refer to acts of terror as “man-caused disasters.” Her reason for employing such a vacuous term was “to move away from the politics of fear toward a policy of being prepared for all risks that can occur.” To the extent one could divine any substance from this absurdist statement, it seems that the Administration considered the word “terrorism” to be a politically weighted term incompatible with the philosophy underlying its approach to foreign policy.

Napolitano’s explanation was disingenuous as the word “terrorism” certainly has an objective and concise dictionary definition. In employing the silly term “man-caused disasters,” Napolitano and the Administration engaged in partisan linguistic tinkering that reflected an inclination to appease the societies that foster terrorism and validate their dubious grievances against Israel and the West. Napolitano’s tortured explanation was clearly an exercise in casuistry. However, it was perfectly consistent with the Obama Administration’s persistent attempts to recast the definition of terrorism so that foreign terrorists would no longer be considered unlawful or enemy combatants. Rather, they would now be treated as common criminals entitled to trials in civilian courts.

As previously discussed in these pages, the Obama Administration’s decision to treat foreign terrorists as common criminals entitled to Constitutional protections is in flagrant disregard of both international norms and American common law. Despite the Administration’s obtuse reasoning, there is no precedent entitling terrorists to the same rights as domestic criminals or even lawful enemy combatants captured on the battlefield.

The commonly accepted standard was incorporated into the Geneva Convention III, Article 4, under which terrorists are unlawful combatants because they do not constitute

Members of other militias and members of other volunteer corps, including those of organized resistance movements, belonging to a Party to the conflict and operating in or outside their own territory. . . [who] fulfill (sic) the following conditions:

(a) that of being commanded by a person responsible for his subordinates;
(b) that of having a fixed distinctive sign recognizable at a distance;
(c) that of carrying arms openly;
(d) that of conducting their operations in accordance with the laws and customs of war.

Hostile parties who fail to conform to the foregoing recognized standards of wartime conduct are not considered lawful combatants.

These international standards have been have been recognized in the United States for years. As articulated by the United States Supreme Court in Ex parte Quinn, 317 U.S. 1 (1942), an unlawful combatant is one who “without uniform come[s] secretly through the lines for the purpose of waging war.” The Quinn Court explained further that:

[T]he law of war draws a distinction between . . . lawful and unlawful combatants. Lawful combatants are subject to capture and detention as prisoners of war by opposing military forces. Unlawful combatants are likewise subject to capture and detention, but in addition they are subject to trial and punishment by military tribunals for acts which render their belligerency unlawful.

Consequently, terrorists who target civilians, who traffic in hidden and concealed weaponry, who fail to wear uniforms, who use artifice and subterfuge to inflict casualties and who flout the established conventions of war are unlawful combatants not entitled to the protections of civilian courts. In attempting to define terrorism out of existence, the Obama Administration knowingly repudiated long-standing international conventions and domestic jurisprudence in an effort to curry favor with the Arab-Muslim world.

The pattern continued last June with Mr. Obama’s speech in Cairo, where he distorted Jewish history and repeated the revisionist myth that Israel was a European invention imposed on the Arab world at the expense of a people (i.e., the Palestinians) who had no historical existence. Moreover, he focused on Israeli “settlements” as the stumbling block to peace, analogized the plight of the Palestinians to that of African-Americans, and failed to chastise the Arab world for supporting and exporting terrorism, rejectionism and antisemitism. The President continued this revisionist cajolery during his recent address at the United Nations, where he called on Israel to retreat to indefensible borders and used the term “occupation” to refer to Israeli presence on ancestral Jewish soil. Both speeches were significant for their use of words and imagery culled from classical revisionist thought and anti-Israel propaganda.

The Administration’s pattern also included its courting of the U.N. Human Rights Council, its repeated attempts to force Israeli concessions regarding settlements and Jewish habitation of Jerusalem, its refusal to take effective measures to prevent Iran from going nuclear, and its disrespectful treatment of Prime Minister Netanyahu on multiple occasions. Domestically, the policy tilt has been expressed by the President’s oft-repeated expressions of admiration for Islam, which stand out against his more muted statements regarding the value of other religious groups and beliefs within American society, and by Attorney General Eric Holder’s comments to the ADL in Las Vegas last month equating discrimination against Muslims with antisemitism.

Holder’s remarks were particularly troubling for their ignorance regarding the nature and character of antisemitism, and of the role of Arab-Muslim society in propagating it. Unlike “Islamophobia,” antisemitism has ethnic, racial and national components that fuel hatred of Jews irrespective of their religious beliefs. Thus, Holder’s facile equation ignored that Jews are targeted because of who they are, not for what they believe. Muslims have never suffered the same kind of discrimination. Moreover, his comparison ignored the significant role of Arab society in perpetuating antisemitism, and of religious beliefs that consider the Jews’ autonomy in their ancestral homeland to be anathema. It also ignored the history of discrimination against Christians in the Arab world.

The President’s failure to address the underlying motivation for the Fort Hood shootings, and his call for Americans to exercise restraint in judgment, are perfectly consistent with his Administration’s pattern of assiduous assuagement. In choosing not to comment on the role of Islamist terrorism and Jihad, the President continued his pattern of kowtowing to those with a world view that is inconsistent with American and Western values, and which poses an existential threat for Israel and the West. One wonders how the President could remain silent regarding the Islamist connection after Anwar al-Awlaki, the radical imam with ties to the 9/11 terrorists, proclaimed Hasan a hero. On his website, al-Awlaki said: “The fact that fighting against the U.S. army is an Islamic duty today cannot be disputed. Nidal has killed soldiers who were about to be deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan in order to kill Muslims.”

There are nagging questions in light of published reports that various intelligence agencies knew well before the shootings of Hasan’s multiple attempts to contact al-Qaeda and his e-mails to al-Awlaki, and his possible connection to posted internet content extolling the virtue of suicide bombers. Was the apparent breakdown in the civilian and military intelligence systems influenced by the Administration’s history of pandering to the Arab world? Was the failure of the military to relieve Hasan of his commission caused by a mandate not to offend Muslim sensibilities? Were those killed and wounded by the hand of Hasan merely the victims of a “man-caused disaster”?

The American media has been slow and reluctant to explore the clear influence of Islamic extremism in Hasan’s actions. During recent comments on television, for example, Newsweek editor-at-large Evan Thomas referred to Hasan thus:

I cringe that he’s a Muslim. I mean, because it just inflames all the fears. I think he’s probably just a nut case but, with that label attached to him, it will get the right wing going. And it just, these things are tragic, but that makes it much worse.

Proclaiming that Hasan is a “nut case,” however, suggests that his acts were simply aberrant and beyond any explicable context. And expressing concern that the incident would rile the “right-wing” would seem to suggest that American political conservatives are somehow as bad as Islamist terrorists. Such comparisons are nonsense.

In column after column, liberal pundits have failed or refused to discuss the influence of Islamist extremism. Some have simply played deaf and dumb, while others have affirmatively sought to justify Hasan’s actions by claiming that he was somehow the victim of Islamophobia, despite reports that his heritage actually helped him advance through his medical training and the military ranks despite questionable aptitude. Still others have argued – incredibly – that Hasan was horrified by war experiences related to him by others.

The only non-cable broadcast network to explore the Islamist link at the outset was ABC. The others either remained silent or downplayed any connection, leaving one to wonder whether these conspicuous media lapses represented passive deference to political correctness, or affirmative exercises of a conscious agenda.

The question that most cries out for an answer is this: Why do those who claim to espouse western democratic values – who profess to defend individual freedoms and personal liberty – not only refuse to condemn the threat of Islamist totalitarianism, but serve as apologists for a religious philosophy that openly states its opposition to those very values? Why do those who condemn conservative Christians as fundamentalist lunatics sympathize with Muslim extremists who have declared war on Western society and have actually taken up arms against it? The intellectual incongruity is glaring and palpable.

Based on the Obama Administration’s pattern of soft pedaling any criticism of the societies that spawn extremists and rationalize terrorism, it seems unlikely that it has either the inclination or fortitude to deal with the Jihadist threat in any meaningful way. And this failure of resolve is clearly enabled by a press that, for fear of offending Muslim sensibilities, refuses to acknowledge that the Fort Hood massacre was a terrorist act perpetrated in the name of Jihad. Ironically, this obsequious stance has not curried any favor in the Muslim world, but instead has made the United States appear weak, ineffectual, and incapable of defending its own societal values. # # #