Had investigators merely Googled Imam Al-Awlaki, they would have found his jihad manual and an in-depth profile on him at the web site of the NEFA Foundation, a U.S.-based counterterrorism organization that maintains the largest public database of open-source terrorism intelligence. They also would have been reminded at the NEFA Web site that Imam Al-Awlaki’s recorded sermons helped inspire the terrorists who unsuccessfully targeted Fort Dix, N.J., three years ago. In fact, the Fort Dix plotters specifically praised the imam’s lecture encouraging self-motivated jihad.
None of that mattered to investigators, because Hasan didn’t explicitly discuss violence or terrorism with his mentor. Traditional metrics for assessing criminal danger, though, do not neatly apply to jihadists.
Most jihadist attacks are not driven by appeals to violence or wanton bloodlust. The stated motive for most jihadists is some form of defending Islam or innocent Muslims from an evil aggressor.
Someone falling into the lure of jihadist ideology becomes a threat long before he even discusses violence. Danger begins with the embrace of a paranoid worldview in which the United States has waged war on pious, peace-loving Muslims. That the United States is fighting self-identified Muslims in two Islamic nations, of course, only makes it easier for jihadists to win over Muslims.
Hasan didn’t just parrot jihadist lines about evil America, though. He openly argued for Islamic violence against the United States. And that was just what he said in front of his colleagues.
Yet despite a pattern of truly incendiary comments—such as telling colleagues during a PowerPoint presentation on Islam in 2007, “We love death more then [sic] you love life!”—he remained in uniform. Much of the evidence points to a critical question: Was Hasan treated differently because he was a Muslim?
Perhaps the simplest analysis is by way of comparison. In one reported instance, Hasan told his colleagues that he supported the Muslim who shot two soldiers, killing one, at a military recruitment center in Little Rock, Ark.
Imagine if Hasan had instead been a secular, garden-variety anti-American radical who told his colleagues that he supported the murder of his fellow soldiers. Is there any doubt such remarks would have generated at least more than the indifference Hasan’s various comments did?
Just as Muslim soldiers should not be presumed unpatriotic, less cannot be expected of them than from their non-Muslim peers.
Defending terrorists and openly identifying with the enemy should be an obvious infraction for any soldier. The same goes for demonizing America or contacting known terrorists.
If the military doesn’t change the mind-set that allowed those actions to be ignored or shrugged off, the consequences could be even more devastating the next time.