This week, after a three-and-a-half-year delay, US Army Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was finally placed on trial for massacring 13 and wounding 32 at Ft. Hood, Texas, on November 5, 2009.
Hasan was a self-identified jihadist. His paper and electronic trail provided mountains of evidence that he committed the massacre to advance the cause of Islamic supremacy. Islamic supremacists like Hasan, and his early mentor al-Qaida operations chief Anwar al-Awlaki, view as enemies all people who oppose totalitarian Islam’s quest for global domination.
Before, during and following his assault, Hasan made his jihadist motives obvious to the point of caricature in his statements about the US, the US military and the duties of pious Muslims. But rather than believe Hasan, and so do justice to his victims, the Obama administration, with the active collusion of senior US military commanders went to great lengths to cover up Hasan’s ideological motivations and hence the nature of his crime.
On the day of the attack, Lt.-Gen. Robert Cone, then commander of III Corps at Ft. Hood, said preliminary evidence didn’t suggest that the shooting was terrorism. Cone said this even though it was immediately known that before he began shooting Hasan called out “Allahu akhbar.” He called himself a “Soldier of Allah” on his business cards.
In an interview with CNN three days after the attack, US Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said, “Our diversity, not only in our army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
The intensity of the Obama administration’s participation in this cover-up became clear in May 2012. At that time, Congress had placed a clause inside the Defense Appropriations Act requiring the Pentagon to award Purple Hearts to Ft. Hood’s victims. Rather than accept this eminently reasonable demand, which simply required the administration to acknowledge reality, Obama’s emissaries announced he would veto the appropriations bill and so leave the Pentagon without a budget unless the clause was removed.
Rather than define Hasan’s attack as an enemy attack or a terrorist act, the administration has defined it as a case of “workplace violence.” Following this determination, those wounded in the attack, as well as the families of the murdered, are denied the support conferred on soldiers killed or wounded by enemy fire.
At the first day of Hasan’s trial this week, he admitted that he perpetrated the murderous attack because he is a jihadist who “switched sides” in the war. That is, he told the court that he conducted the attack as an act of war against the United States to advance the goals of the global jihad.
Hasan’s statement made clear, once again, that in its efforts to describe his actions as “workplace violence,” the administration is engaging in a cover-up. Its purpose is to deny the American people the truth about the nature of the jihadist threat to their country.
Outside the conservative media, and certain circles of the Republican Party, there has been no public outcry over the government’s decision to cover up the nature of Hasan’s actions. The public’s passivity in the face of the government’s mendacious, unjust behavior owes to the fact that the mainstream media have not castigated the administration for its decision to hide that Hasan was not a garden variety disgruntled employee but a traitor who acted in the service of declared enemies of the United States. In the absence of a media-induced public outcry, the administration has no reason to change its behavior. It has no impetus to acknowledge the truth and act accordingly.
THE SAME is the case with regards to the September 11, 2012, attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi. Already on the day of the attack, it was apparent that the US mission and the CIA annex had been targeted in a premeditated, preplanned attack. Footage of the attack broadcast in real time showed armed men attacking the consulate with rocket-propelled grenades. It was not an act of savage mob violence. Mobs do not carry RPGs or act in a coordinated manner. That is, already at the time of the attack it was apparent that it was not a spontaneous protest in response to an anti-Islamic video on YouTube.
And yet, from the outset, the administration covered up what happened. And the media colluded. Fox News was the only major network that pursued the story. A US ambassador was raped and murdered on the anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks. US personnel were under multi-pronged attack for hours. Their desperate pleas for assistance were denied by the administration. And the US media went along with the fiction that the attack was a spontaneous outburst of rage over a YouTube video no one had ever seen.
The media’s collusion was so great that CNN anchor Candy Crowley threw a US presidential debate when she defended Barack Obama’s handling of the attack by inserting false information in the middle of the debate that she was moderating.
The Benghazi story keeps getting more and more outrageous. Last week we learned that some two dozen CIA personnel were on the ground during the attack. The administration has reportedly scattered these operatives throughout the US and forced them to adopt new identities. They have reportedly been prohibited from speaking to the media or congressional investigators, and subjected to monthly polygraph tests.
US personnel wounded in the attack have been hidden from investigators since the attack took place.
This behavior is scandalous, and unprecedented. Yet, outside of the “usual suspects” in the conservative media and the Republican Party, there is no outrage. The media coverage of this shocking revelation is nearly nonexistent, and where it exists, the reportage is laconic, indifferent.
Here, too, the administration feels comfortable perpetuating its cover-up. As in the case of Ft. Hood, why come clean if there is no price to pay for lying and covering up?
Speaking of the frequent US failures in understanding events in faraway lands, Winston Churchill famously quipped, “We can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have exhausted all the other possibilities.”
But what if the other possibilities are never exhausted? The media’s collusion with the Obama administration’s false portrayal of jihadist attacks on US targets gives foreign leaders concerned about the US’s lackadaisical attitude toward jihadist threats no reason for confidence. In the absence of public pressure, the Obama administration has no reason to change course when its policies fail.
When Failure Carries No Cost
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