The relationship between the price of oil and the slaughter that took place at Fort Hood is hardly as far-fetched as it would appear. In an instructive article that was reprinted as an Op-ed in the NY Post on Saturday Nov 7, one Stephen Suleyman Schwartz, Executive Director of the Center of Islamic Pluralism, talks about the influences that apparently formed Major Nidal Hassan's murderous hatred.
This in striking contrast to the New York Times' "see no evil" editorial of the same date, which pontificates, "But until investigations are complete, no one can begin to imagine what could possibly have motivated the latest appalling carnage." Really?! The Times, undeterred, continues with an article on today's front page, "A Military Therapist's World: Long Hours, Filled With Pain" replete with the sad song of twisted rationalizations, instructing us that this horrendous act was attributable to professional traumatic stress or, as brightly cited in the Times, "Thursday's rampage has put a spotlight on the srtains of their profession and the patients they treat."
Then, in an adjoining article on the same NY Times front page, "Preliminary Fort Hood Inquiry Turns Up No Link To Terrorist Plot," the NY Times is quick to advise us, "But, so far, investigators have unearthed no evidence that he was directed or steered into violence." Then, perhaps in some deference to journalistic objectivity, mentioned almost in passing, it says that findings were preliminary and that investigators viewed the investigation as fluid.
No such mealy mouthed hesitancy in the Schwartz Op-ed. Here we are informed that Hasan regularly attended prayer services at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, MD, where the main prayer leader, Iman Faizul Khan, was a friend of Hasan's as well as holding board membership on the Islamic Society of North America (ISNA). The ISNA, according to Schwartz, is the main Wahhabi lobby group in the United States and has a long and disgraceful record of promoting radical Islam. He goes on to advise that it is a group understood to have been established by Saudi Arabia to impose extremism on American Muslims.
He continues, telling us that "from a ghastly act, to a Saudi-backed fundamentalist Iman, to a Saudi run designated terror financing charity is not a long trail. That is but a small coil of associations that exist in too many US mosques." He rightfully concludes that American Muslims must drive these elements out of their community. "The problem is not traumatic stress, much less Islam. It's the ideology, the money and and the interests of the Saudi hardliners."
And almost needless to add, the funding comes from the avalanche of money flowing into the coffers of such as Saudi Arabia through the insidious and duplicitous manipulation of oil prices by the cartel producers, with Saudi Arabia as the dominant player and prime beneficiary. This at the cost of hundreds of billions to American consumers in dollars and cents alone, without even beginning to fathom the cost and danger to our society, safety and well-being impacted by the radicalization of a segment of our society through Wahhabi dogma while our government and its agencies look the other way, rarely if ever holding the Saudis to account.
Perhaps, just perhaps, in tribute and memory to those who were gunned down at Fort Hood, this could be a wake-up call to the nation.