On Nov. 5th, Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, an Army psychiatrist and self-radicalized jihadist, stepped inside the Soldier Readiness Center at Fort Hood, Texas. Just before he allegedly opened fire on his comrades-in-arms, Hasan shouted "Allahu Akbar!" By the time a police officer's bullet paralyzed Hasan, he had murdered 13 people--12 soldiers and a civilian--and wounded 32 others.
A little more than two weeks ago, the Pentagon released a report investigating the attack and the threat posed by violent service members. Inside it was a glaring omission: the report never mentioned the alleged perpetrator's religious ideology. Conservatives reacted fiercely. The New York Post's Ralph Peter's called it a "white wash." Crusading Sens. Joseph Lieberman (I-CT) and Susan Collins (R-ME) took offense, arguing political correctness had run amok and wrecked havoc on the country's ability to face up to legitimate threats. "I am disappointed, however, that the report does not adequately recognize the specific threat posed by violent Islamist extremism to our military," Lieberman said in a statement after the report's release.
For once, they were right--but their chauvinism does not go far enough.
For some time now, the U.S. military has allowed citizens to serve in the military who cannot live up to their oath to defend the U.S. Constitution. But that liberty should no longer be tolerated. The massacre at Fort Hood provides an opportunity for the military to get their personnel policies right: any service member's speech or conduct that calls into question their fidelity to the U.S. Constitution should be investigated. If it's discovered that service members' beliefs prevent them from faithfully executing their oath, they should be relieved of their duty.
Reports indicate that Maj. Hasan had expressed his belief that Islamic law trumped the Constitution. Questioning the supremacy of the U.S. Constitution is grounds for dismissal, a U.S. official told CNN.com. If such a policy was enforced, the tragedy at Fort Hood could have been avoided as well as other disgraceful incidents overseas that create the perception that the United States is at war with Islam, a belief Hasan held. The most incendiary example of this creeping Christian fanaticism was uncovered by Jeff Sharlet of Harper's Magazine. In spring 2004, an Army unit based in the holy city of Samarra, Iraq, painted a phrase in Arabic on their Bradley Fighting Vehicle:
Or in English: "Jesus Killed Mohammed." The unit then took the vehicle for a "run and gun" drive through Samarra while the unit's interpreter chanted the phrase through a bullhorn. The city's inhabitants opened small arms fire on the vehicle. The vehicle's occupants returned fire with 25 mm shells, a ridiculously disproportionate use of force.
Incidents like this are not isolated but part of a rising cultural milieu created by a small movement of fundamentalist Christian military officers inside the U.S. military. "What men such as these have fomented is a quiet coup within the armed forces," Sharlet writes, "not of generals encroaching on civilian rule but of religious authority displacing the military's once staunchly secular code." When Christians such as these wield undue influence inside the U.S. military, no one should be surprised the Pentagon was buying rifles with Bible verse numbers stamped on their scopes. The public relations disaster of such examples of religious arrogance, bigotry, and symbolic violence cannot be underscored enough. It provides jihadists with a persuasive recruiting argument: U.S. service members are nothing more than crusaders who have returned to occupy and control Muslim lands.
While Sens. Lieberman and Collins are correct to push for revised personnel policies that address the problem of service members going jihad, Congress and the military must also address the problem of Christian supremacists, who like Hasan, undermine their oath to defend the principles enshrined in the Constitution.There's no doubt that jihadist service members, if more do exist, are an insider threat to their comrades-in-arms and need to be ferreted out. But arguably, Christian supremacists are a bigger threat to the lives of their fellow service members because their inability to separate their duty to serve the United States and their god helps fuel violent resistance to U.S. forces deployed overseas in Islamic countries.
A clash of civilizations mindset has erupted inside the U.S. military and anyone exhibiting such a frame-of-mind is not fit to serve a nation devoted to protecting religious freedom and, more pragmatically, fighting multiple wars in Islamic countries. The U.S. military has an opportunity to make it known that all forms of religious extremism will not be tolerated. By doing so, it will demonstrate to all service members--of any faith or no faith at all--that the U.S. military will not conduct an internal witch hunt that singles out one form of extremism, when more pervasive examples go unquestioned and unpunished.