A fallen hero of the Fort Hood Jihad Massacre received a medal this week. Not, of course, that the Army describes the November 2009 attack in such meaningful terms. Yes, Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan shouted “Allahu akbar” (“Allah is great”) as he killed 14 and wounded more than two dozen. He contacted jihadi cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and frequented jihadist websites. He handed out business cards proclaiming himself a Soldier of Allah, and even presented an unsolicited Powerpoint briefing outlining reasons for Muslims within the U.S. armed forces to engage in jihad.
But no matter. His actions remain a total mystery to the U.S. Army.
“Although we may never know why it happened, we do know that heroic actions took place that day,” Brig. Gen. Joseph DiSalvo said in presenting the Secretary of the Army Award for Valor to Joleen Cahill, widow of Michael Grant Cahill, the only civilian killed by Hasan. “He will forever be a source of inspiration.”
Alas, I have my doubts about the deputy commanding general of Fort Hood. Despite overwhelming evidence that Hasan committed an act of jihad, DiSalvo looks the other way. “We may never know why” the Hasan attack happened, he said without, apparently, turning red or rolling his eyes.
It’s hard to overstate the effect of these words. In honoring the very last thing Cahill did on this Earth, the general omitted its significance, deleting all context from the 62-year-old Cahill’s valorous act — charging Hasan with a chair as Hasan fired on the crowd. The general’s omission takes nothing away from Cahill’s courage. It does, however, wrongly release the rest of us from our debt to Cahill. In treating Hasan’s rampage as no more purposeful than a flood, the general reduced Cahill’s ultimate sacrifice to its most personal level; exemplary, admirable, but of no further consequence beyond the scene, outside the circle. This is morally wrong. It was the general’s duty to place Cahill’s death in perspective, to impress upon us all that he died not only to stop a bloodletting but also in defense of liberty, then and now under attack from jihadists.
In other words, the general flinched. No surprise there. Fort Hood may have been a war zone that day but, with few exceptions neither our government nor our military has the courage to admit it.
There is a ripple effect. This Memorial Day, according to our civilian and military leadership, the Fort Hood fallen do not rate remembrance as war dead. As a result, no Purple Hearts have been awarded for military casualties (as in the 9/11 attacks), no combat death benefits are awarded their survivors, no recognition is given to Hasan’s jihad. As the general says, we may never even know why they died.
This is just the way our leadership wants it — “senseless,” as President Obama put it, describing another 2009 jihadist attack that killed Pvt. William Long and wounded Pvt. Quinton Ezeagwula outside a Little Rock, Ark., recruiting station. That trial, which begins in July, is currently subject to a tug of war between prosecutor Larry Jegley and defendant Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad. Jegley is determined to prosecute Muhammad as “nothing but a street thug” accused of “just a drive-by shooting.” Muhammad, a Muslim convert who may have studied with a jihadist imam in Yemen where he drew the attention of the FBI, is pleading, strenuously, to be tried as a confessed jihadist. Like the rest of our government, the prosecutor is pushing jihad down the memory hole.
Which makes you wonder: By next Memorial Day, who will remember?
Examiner Columnist Diana West is syndicated nationally by United Media and is the author of “The Death of the Grown-Up: How America’s Arrested Development Is Bringing Down Western Civilization.”
