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 Islam" 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.
IN ISRAEL'S case, the first
place where the lesson of this state of affairs needs to be internalized
is in regards to Iran's nuclear weapons program. Since taking office,
Obama has repeatedly claimed that he will not allow Iran to acquire
nuclear weapons. But in practice, his actions have enabled Iran to
vastly expand its nuclear weapons program. Due to his malfeasance, today
Iran has arrived at the cusp of a nuclear arsenal. More than his words,
Obama's actions have made clear that he has no intention whatsoever of
conducting military strikes against Iran's nuclear installations to
prevent the regime from developing nuclear weapons.
Obama's
latest ploy for running the clock down is his embrace of the fiction
that Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, is a moderate interested,
(and perforce empowered), to cut a nuclear deal with the US that would
see Iran voluntarily and credibly end its uranium enrichment activities.
Speaking
of Rouhani this week, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu referred to him
as "a wolf in sheep's clothing," and warned US and European officials
not to be taken in by his act. Netanyahu also noted that Iran has
expanded its nuclear activities since Rouhani was elected two months
ago.
But he might as well save his breath.
Rouhani's
act - like that of his supposedly moderate predecessors Mohammad
Khatami and Ahkbar Hashemi Rafsanjani - is so thin that it can only work
on people who will be taken in by anyone. And indeed, the Obama
administration was taken in by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. For five years Obama
insisted on conducting self-evidently futile negotiations with Iran
while Ahmadinejad - the anti-moderate - was serving as president.
The
US and Europe are not taken in by Iran because Iran is good at hiding
its true intentions. They are taken in by Iran because they want to be
taken in. They want to believe that they don't have to attack Iran and
overthrow the regime to prevent it from becoming a nuclear power. They
want to believe they can appease Iran by pretending it isn't a danger,
just as they believe they can end the threat of terror by jihadists in
the US military and Benghazi by pretending they don't exist.
They
want to believe these threats can be ignored, or appeased away. And
just as Obama and his followers are willing to pretend away Hasan's
actions to protect "diversity," and to pretend away the September 11,
2012, attack in Benghazi to protect the myth of the Arab Spring, so they
are willing to permit Iran to go nuclear to protect the sanctity of
appeasement.
The only thing they are willing to
put their foot down about is the prospect of an Israeli strike. And
they have put their foot down on this issue for the past decade. It
isn't that the US is deliberately enabling Iran to acquire a nuclear
arsenal. It is just that the US elite in government and the media care
more about protecting their faith in diversity and appeasement than they
do about preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
They
have convinced themselves that the prospect of appeasing Iran will
evaporate if Israel attacks Iran's nuclear installations. And so we have
seen a parade of senior US defense officials descending on Israel every
time it appears that Israel is planning to attack Iran. We have seen a
parade of former Israeli military and security chiefs with close ties to
the US defense establishment declaring before every available
microphone that Israel must not strike Iran and that we can count on
Obama to protect us.
But we mustn't believe
their assurances or succumb to their pressure. Obama will not change
course. He doesn't have to. So long as he maintains faith with the god
of appeasement, the US media will protect him. And so long as they
protect him, he will pay no price for his failures. So he will repeat
them.
Israel cannot countenance a nuclear Iran. So Israel needs to attack Iran's nuclear installations.
No more needs to be said.
Originally published in the Jerusalem Post.
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