Petition: Stop Columbarium Conversion of Chicago's Three Arts Club!

Of all the icky real-estate deals I've heard of, this has to be the ickiest. The charming and beautiful Three Arts Club of Chicago--once a residence for single female artists, adorned with beautiful bas-reliefs and courtyards-- is facing a planned conversion to a columbarium for the remains of cremated Chicagoans.

Chicago Tribune story here.

ArchitectureChicagoPlus blog post here.

Crain's Chicago Business story here.

A petition drive to stop this has been launched online. You may add your signature by clicking here. The text is pretty straightforward:

To: Alderman Brendan Reilly, 42nd Ward, Chicago, Illinois, USA
Petition To Alderman Reilly
Against Columbarium Proposal
for Three Arts Club Building
1300 North Dearborn
Chicago, Illinois, 60610


To: ALDERMAN BRENDAN REILLY
42nd Ward
Chicago City Hall
121 North LaSalle Street, Room 300
Chicago, Illinois 60602
phone: 312-744-3062
email: brendan@reillyforchicago.com

DEAR ALDERMAN REILLY:

We, the undersigned, do not want a columbarium or any related facilities at the Three Arts Club building, 1300 North Dearborn, Chicago, Illinois.
Sincerely,

The Undersigned

James Taranto on the Ft. Hood Massacre Media Party Line

This essay on Best of the Web really made me think. An excerpt:

Some have detected in the Fort Hood coverage a return to a pre-9/11 mindset, and there is some truth to this. In particular, the left-liberal tendency to stereotype servicemen and veterans as psychopaths, suckers and victims is a return to form. But the bending over backward to explain away the role of religious fanaticism in the Fort Hood massacre is, it seems to us, something new--something distinctly post-9/11, or post-post-9/11.

Politically correct sensitivities have, of course, long been with us. But as we noted Monday, journalists and political leaders really seem to be going to extremes to avoid acknowledging the evident religious motivations for Hasan's alleged crimes. We'd suggest that there are three reasons for such denial, all of which grow out of 9/11:

First, the liberal left has embraced the notion that America overreacted after 9/11, was beastly toward Muslims, and now needs to "reach out" and atone. There is very little truth to this. President Bush constantly reminded the world that we were not at war with Islam, which he called a religion of peace. But Bush-was-too-aggressive rhetoric is a much better fit with liberals' natural inclination toward inaction than the Bush-wasn't-aggressive-enough rhetoric that Barack Obama occasionally used while still a candidate.

Second, it is comforting to think that 9/11 was a one-off rather than the most horrific example (so far) of a continuing threat. From this standpoint, it's psychologically preferable to emphasize that the Fort Hood suspect appears to have been a lone nut rather than that he seems to have espoused an ideology similar to that of the 9/11 terrorists.

Third, the impulse to protect a religious minority from prejudice and discrimination is a noble one. Muslims are not collectively guilty for the worst crimes of their coreligionists. We've encountered enough anti-Muslim prejudice to say that fears of it are not unfounded.

But the denialist attitude is counterproductive on all three grounds. Willful ignorance of the enemy's ideology is of no help in fighting the enemy--or preventing future attacks. In any case clarity, not obfuscation, is the enemy of prejudice.

Frank Gaffney Charges Ft. Hood Massacre Exposed Pentagon's Islamist Fifth Column

He names a name, too. Writing in Newsmax.com, Gaffney charges that there are agents of the Muslim Brotherhood working in the Pentagon, who bear responsibility for policies that led to the Ft. Hood massacre:

The run-up to the Ft. Hood massacre and the official response in its aftermath demonstrates the extent to which U.S. government civilian and military agencies have allowed themselves to be influenced, penetrated, and suborned.

The problem goes beyond political correctness and an attendant, inadequate oversight of an obviously problematic individual. Neither can it be excused away as an isolated instance of incompetence in the chain of command, the intelligence community and/or law enforcement.

What is at work here is, in the words of Stephen Coughlin, a comprehensive and collective failure of the “professional duty to know” our enemy, what animates him, and the nature of his intentions and his strategy for actualizing them.

Coughlin, another major in the U.S. Army (Reserves), used to warn against this practice as a contractor supporting the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Until, that is, he was purged from the George W. Bush Pentagon by an influential friend of the Muslim Brotherhood in then-Deputy Secretary of Defense Gordon England’s office.

As National Review Online’s Andy McCarthy has pointed out, the message to those in and out of uniform could not have been more clear: You will jeopardize your livelihood if you are not adequately “sensitive” — which is to say acquiescent to — Muslim sensibilities. No one with any ambition, or simply with a well-developed sense of self-preservation, wants to risk ending a career by being called a “bigot,” “racist,” or “Islamophobe.”

CAIR, in particular, was in a position powerfully to imprint this message on FBI agents (including, presumably, some who found unobjectionable Hasan’s many interactions with the terrorist-tied imam, Anwar al-Awlaki) in mandatory “sensitivity training” sessions it regularly ran for the Bureau until last year when the latter broke off the relationship. (Incredibly, the FBI now uses another Brotherhood front, ISNA, to desensitize our front line of defense against domestic terrorism.)

We are witnessing in the collective cognitive dissonance over Shariah’s role in the Fort Hood massacre the cumulative result of the Muslim Brotherhood’s success in intimidating not only government officials but journalists and the public at large since shortly after the 9/11 attack.

My question is still whether Senator Lieberman has the guts to follow this investigation wherever it may lead...

UPDATE: In hindsight, this 2003 article by Frank Gaffney in FrontPage magazine looks prophetic.

And now for something completely different...

It's a link to the website of the National Arts Program, the organization behind a National Press Club art exhibition that includes one of my drawings, Pears. Their mission statement:

The National Arts Program® was established in 1983 to identify, showcase, and reward the visual artistic talent in America. Today we sponsor 86 annual venues within 44 states and the District of Columbia with steady growth.

Their motto: "Never hide your talent."

Michelle Malkin on Veteran's Day

From MichelleMalkin.com:

A few years ago, I had the great honor and thrill of interviewing several of the surviving WWII Doolittle Raiders for Hot Air. Watch the clip here. I asked Lt. Col. Dick Cole, Jimmy Doolittle’s co-pilot, for his thoughts on America at war today. He answered bluntly:

“We’re at war. We ought to get on a war footing and get the job done.”

From Lt Col. Cole’s lips to the White House’s ears…

President Obama's Ft. Hood Address

An excerpt from WhiteHouse.gov:

Tomorrow is Veterans Day. It's a chance to pause, and to pay tribute -- for students to learn the struggles that preceded them; for families to honor the service of parents and grandparents; for citizens to reflect upon the sacrifices that have been made in pursuit of a more perfect union.

For history is filled with heroes. You may remember the stories of a grandfather who marched across Europe; an uncle who fought in Vietnam; a sister who served in the Gulf. But as we honor the many generations who have served, all of us -- every single American -- must acknowledge that this generation has more than proved itself the equal of those who've come before.

We need not look to the past for greatness, because it is before our very eyes.

This generation of soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines and Coast Guardsmen have volunteered in the time of certain danger. They are part of the finest fighting force that the world has ever known. They have served tour after tour of duty in distant, different and difficult places. They have stood watch in blinding deserts and on snowy mountains. They have extended the opportunity of self-government to peoples that have suffered tyranny and war. They are man and woman; white, black, and brown; of all faiths and all stations -- all Americans, serving together to protect our people, while giving others half a world away the chance to lead a better life.

In today’s wars, there's not always a simple ceremony that signals our troops’ success -- no surrender papers to be signed, or capital to be claimed. But the measure of the impact of these young men and women is no less great -- in a world of threats that no know borders, their legacy will be marked in the safety of our cities and towns, and the security and opportunity that's extended abroad. It will serve as testimony to the character of those who served, and the example that all of you in uniform set for America and for the world.

Here, at Fort Hood, we pay tribute to 13 men and women who were not able to escape the horror of war, even in the comfort of home. Later today, at Fort Lewis, one community will gather to remember so many in one Stryker Brigade who have fallen in Afghanistan.

Long after they are laid to rest -- when the fighting has finished, and our nation has endured; when today’s servicemen and women are veterans, and their children have grown -- it will be said that this generation believed under the most trying of tests; believed in perseverance -- not just when it was easy, but when it was hard; that they paid the price and bore the burden to secure this nation, and stood up for the values that live in the hearts of all free peoples.

So we say goodbye to those who now belong to eternity. We press ahead in pursuit of the peace that guided their service. May God bless the memory of those that we have lost. And may God bless the United States of America. (Applause.)

Why Isn't Anwar al-Awlaki in Jail?

According to the Toronto Star, the US citizen and radical imam is pretty clearly giving aid and comfort to the enemy from his new home in Yemen, most recently in this praise of Nidal Malik Hasan's killing spree at Ft. Hood. Why hasn't he been extradited, tried, and jailed or executed for treason?

Given this latest disaster, the FBI, CIA, DIA, and State Department had better have a pretty good explanation...I wonder, will Senator Lieberman have the guts to pursue this matter--or is his announced investigation into the Ft. Hood slaughter mere political grandstanding?

UPDATE: This from Reuters: "YEMEN: Yemen signed an agreement with the United States for cooperation on military intelligence and training , its official news agency reported, as the Arabian peninsula state faces a worsening rebellion in the north. The two countries signed the agreement in Sanaa on Tuesday after two days of talks, the second round of such negotiations, Saba reported."

Why not demand extradition of Anwar al-Awlaki in connection with the Ft. Hood massacre as part of any defense agreement? How could the US act to defend a government which is harboring a terrorist who has just incited and celebrated an attack on a US military base--that's nuts, IMHO...

UPDATE 2: More on al-Awlaki, including a look at his Facebook page, from Pamela Geller.

UPDATE 3: The Weekly Standard's Thomas Joscelyn has more on the FBI's relation to al-Awlaki. IMHO, after reading this article, I would guess that the cleric has been protected for reasons as yet unknown by British (he went to London after 9/11) and US (he has not been extradited from Yemen despite years of openly recruiting online for Al Qaeda) intelligence agencies. I wonder if Senator Lieberman will have the guts to pursue this--and the intestinal fortitude to stand up to charges of "McCarthyism" should he take on the FBI and other intelligence agencies over their manifest failures (or worse)?

Hugh Fitzgerald on NPR Coverage of Ft. Hood Massacre

He calls it "A Nest of Ninnies"

Though I watched many different programs, one stuck in my mind. Because I could listen to it first in the morning and then to the rerun the same evening, I managed to take more complete notes (the first time round, I was too stunned by the varieties of idiocy on parade to do so). This was Tom Ashbrook's "On Point" on NPR. His guests, along with his fellow commentator Jack Beatty (who is permitted to phone in his work from Hanover, N.H. and never need make the trek to Boston and WBUR) were Hendrik Hertzberg, who writes for Talk of the Town in The New Yorker, and an editor on the Dallas Morning News, Bill McKenzie.

Ashbrook got the whole thing going on a note of youth-wants-to-know gosh-darn-it puzzlement, asking "what could have driven Major Hasan to this?" What, indeed? What could it have been? During the entire program there was not a single mention of Major Hasan's deep commitment to Islam, not a single attempt to ask what might be in the Qur'an, the Hadith, the Sira, that might, conceivably, possibly, explain not only the behavior of Major Hasan, but of the thousands of Muslims picked up, before, during, and after planned, or foiled, or unsuccessful, or successful, attempts at waging Jihad violently, and directly, rather than waging Jihad through other means. There was not a syllable about Islam inculcates, not a question about it, for it was simply nervously assumed that of course it couldn't be Islam - how could it be? For if it could, what in god's name would that mean? What would that require us to think, or - horribile dictu - even possibly to do, in policies both foreign and domestic?

The calls came in, fast and furious, no doubt most of them vetted for their contents ahead of time. Anyone who was likely to mention the little matter of Islam was kept out, or kept out until the very end, when one tiny one-sentence mention managed to slip by Ashbrook's call-vetters and handlers, who are given instructions as to what to allow on, and what lines of inquiry or inquirers are to be kept, under one pretext or another ("we'll get to that in another show" or "we don't think this is the time to focus on that" or "we already have a question about that lined up" or "gee, we are running out of time but we'll see if we can get to you" and so on) to keep ruthlessly off (I know this, from informants on the inside).

One person, a former army psychiatrist during the Vietnam war, was chosen to offer a comment about Nidal Hasan's performance as an army psychiatrist -- "he had a subpar performance evaluation" - which of course makes one think that Hasan may have sought vengeance as a "disgruntled employee." In other words, his massacre had nothing to do with his deepest lifelong beliefs, and everything to do with that comforting alternative, "going postal."

Then someone else offered her (or was it his) two bits. "This guy was a graduate of Virginia Tech. A lot of stuff went on there. This guy was a time-bomb." Get it? It's all the fault of that campus killing a few years ago at Virginia Tech. He went there. He was therefore a time-bomb, just waiting to go off. I wonder how many parents, siblings, employers, are expected to now be eyeing uneasily their children, siblings, employees, the ones who made the fatal mistake of going to Virginia Tech and are now walking "time-bombs" like Major Nidal Malik Hasan.

Then someone else called to Blame The Army (And The System, And While We Are At It, Amerikka Too). The army has taken "an enormous toll on clinicians" who are "already on the edge." And Nidal Malik Hasan was "very affected by the physical and mental injuries." Do you think so? Do you think Nidal Malik Hasan was "very affected" by the physical and mental injuries suffered by the Infidel servicemen he was supposed to treat? Or do you think, rather, that he wasn't upset with those injuries at all, but only with what he learned, or what he imagined, about the injuries suffered by Iraqis, or Afghans, or any Muslims at all, non-Iraqi and non-Afghan, who might have been lending a hand in either country to the war against the American infidels? What a preposterous and ludicrous idea! A devout Muslim such as Major Nidal Hasan made no secret of his views. To classmate Val Finnell he was "a Muslim first and an American second." He posted on websites under his real name (Nidal Hasan) that "if one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory" a few months before he tried to kill "100 enemy soldiers" (falling 87 short, but not for want of trying - rather, only because someone armed, a policewoman, appeared on the scene). It is absurd to think he would have been upset - as others were upset - by the spectacle of any Infidel suffering.

But other callers kept up that theme: "The strain these people suffer." Who? Army people? Army psychiatrists? People who served in the war or people who are about to be deployed, even if, like Major Nidal Malik Hasan, in non-combat positions? No doubt the army is understaffed and psychiatrists often find themselves troubled, because they feel sympathy with, identify with, those who have come back deeply scarred in one way or another. But there is no evidence that Major Nidal Malik Hasan felt any sense of identification, any sympathy whatsoever, for those he was assigned to help, and it is silly to believe, or pretend to believe, that he would. And it is doubly offensive given that this belief or pretend-belief is offered in order to deflect attention from what Major Nidal Malik Hasan so obviously and openly believed deeply truly madly in -- Islam.

Punctuating these phone calls were approving comments of both Ashbrook and his two guests, Bill McKenzie, whose voice, and the sentiments that he expressed, made one think of Ned Flanders, the comically goody-goody neighbor of Homer Simpson, while smooth nieuw-amsterdamer Hendrik Hertzberg (Jonathan Schell! Jake Brackman! The Crimson! Mr. Shawn!), though slightly more urbane, was equally comical in his amazing ability to avoid the obvious.

More, more, more calls, all about the psyches of American soldiers. You see, still another of those vetted callers-in "joining the conversation" said, "the kind of war we are fighting is much harder on the psyches of soldiers." And yet again, someone said (it doesn't matter who): "In Afghanistan and Iraq our soldiers are subject to almost a 24/7 anxiety." Oh, I have no doubt it is hard on the psyches of American soldiers, who are deeply demoralized by what their generals and civilian leaders tell them, and what they observe, up close, about the people, the Muslim people, whom they are expected to trust, and in some cases trust with their lives, in order to make life better for these Muslim people who seem so strangely ungrateful, and whining, and treacherous, and dangerous, and yet the generals keep saying we must do this, we must do that, to win their hearts and their minds - and that is a very large part of the psychic distress from which our soldiers and Marines suffer, the disconnect between what they are told is the mission, and what they must believe in order to accomplish that impossible mission, and what they see, what they experience, for themselves.

But the subject of "On Point" was not supposed to be the psychic damage done to many of our soldiers and Marines coming back from Iraq and Afghanistan. It was not supposed to be about the post-traumatic stress disorder (mentioned again and again, as a leitmotif of that particular edition of "On Point") of "our soldiers" as in the phrase that was uttered by yet another caller - or was it Ashbrook himself (I forget): "In Afghanistan and Iraq our soldiers are subject to almost a 24/7 anxiety." The subject was supposed to be not "our soldiers" but one particular Muslim soldier who killed "our soldiers," that is the mass-murderer Nidal Malik Hasan, who hasn't spent a single second in Iraq or Afghanistan, who has been consumed not with pity for the squandering of American lives, and the miserable missions they have been asked to fulfill, but rather consumed with hatred for the very Americans, the non-Muslim Americans, who trust him so much that they allow him to live among them, even to treat them, even to be deployed, possibly, as an army psychiatrist, to Afghanistan or Iraq, where the army naively assumed he would not pose a threat any more than they thought he would pose a threat at Fort Hood. But there was every sign that this man took his Islam seriously. Nothing more need be known.

Still, the program continued in its complacent display of idiocy. Ashbrook alluded a little nervously, I thought, to the American military, which was now "a military of such diversity, a diversity which we celebrate" and therefore, apparently, it would be A Very Bad Thing Indeed to raise any issue or matter that might impinge or infringe on that celebrated Diversity Of Which We Can All Be Very Proud.

Then, toward the end of the program, one lone voice somehow got through. Was it because there had been dozens of would-be callers who wished to express the same thing, and Ashbrook decided to let one short call stand for all of them, in the interests of "fairness" in order to head off potential future complaints? Or was it a case where the caller simply lied about what he intended to say, in order to get on, and then said it, quickly? He said something of such obvious truth that it startled the proceedings. And this is what he said. He said that all the attention deflected onto PTSD and other forms of craziness ignored the main point, and the main point was this: "An American Muslim who has decided to be a Jihadist in the military."

An uneasy silence, and then, after that single moment of illumination, they put out the light. Or rather, they dimmed those lights, dimmed them quickly. Tom Ashbrook, and Jack Beatty, and Bill McKenzie, and Hendrik Hertzberg dimmed them, so that listeners would, as it were, see once again as through a glass, darkly, and it was quickly back to the dismal mixture as before. You know, the terrible "stress" felt by soldiers who had been in Iraq and Afghanistan (where Nidal Malik Hasan, remember, had never been), and the terrible "stress" felt by the overworked psychiatrists who had to deal with those soldiers who had felt that stress in Iraq and Afghanistan. But their suffering, as Infidels, would have been a matter certainly at most of indifference to Nidal Hasan. More likely their suffering, mental and physical, was a source of great secret pleasure by Nidal Malik Hasan.

Jack Beatty intervened quickly with "we just don't know enough.... the horrors of war... affected him." And then Beatty outdid himself, by choosing to deflect attention not to Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder and overwork in the military, but to a theme of Injustice. And what was the Great Injustice? It wasn't the fact that the bigshots, in the government, in the military, and in the media, have done their damnedest to prevent any of us from seeing steadily and whole the texts, tenets, attitudes, and atmospherics of Islam, which might make both soldiers and civilians much more secure, and not incidentally, save a few trillion dollars along the way by pointing up the folly of military intervention, as a way to combat the worldwide Jihad, in Iraq and Afghanistan. No, what exercised the voice-from-Dorchester Jack Beatty, who never forgets the Plight of the Common Man (of which he is a perfect exemplar), is that many soldiers enlist, he said, because of "lack of economic opportunity" (as well, he hastened to add, also out of "patriotism"). And that, somehow - don't ask me how - the fact that many people enlist out of the economic injustices of our society, that by allowing the current system of enlistment, we in the larger society engage in "ratifying the injustice of our own society."

Tiens! Now there is no doubt that there is plenty of injustice in our society, and there is no doubt that one reason rich people tend not to enlist is that they do not need to do so for economic reasons (so that anyone well-off who joins the army is doing so for quite different reasons), but for god's sake, Jack and Tom and Hendrik and Bill, the program today, On Point, was supposed to discuss what prompted someone who was born and raised in this country, whose entire medical school costs were borne by the American taxpayers, to decide to mass-murder as many of his fellow soldiers as he could. And the "economic injustice" of American society, and the fact that no doubt many of those he murdered were from the identifiable class of economically "disadvantaged," is utterly irrelevant. Or it is irrelevant unless your goal is to quickly make everyone forget the caller who mentioned, in a moment of rare truth on this comically confused and confusing program, that Nidal Malik Hasan was "an American Muslim" who had decided to be a Jihadist, and on an army base. He was just like Muslims in Iraq or Afghanistan who try to kill Infidel soldiers on army bases, or like some Muslims a year or two ago were planning to attack an army base in New Jersey, or the attack on the recruitment center just a few months ago, or any of the many attacks by Muslims, in this country, and in Canada, and in Great Britain, and in France, and in Belgium, and in Germany, and in Denmark, and in Italy, and in Spain. All that carefully went unmentioned by Jack, by Tom, by Bill, by Hendrik.

Apparently neither Ashbrook, nor the equally egregious Beatty, nor ned-flandersish McKenzie, nor child-of-refugees-from-Hitler Hertzberg, thought they had any duty to treat their listeners with anything other than contempt, a contempt expressed in their apparent belief that they could get away without addressing, without coming close, to Islam - to at least asking, just once - gosh, shouldn't we look into the texts of Islam to find out what it was this Major Nidal Malik Hasan believed? Shouldn't we demand that they, or those who one hopes will soon take their places, take all of their places, do so? Don't we owe it to the living, and the dead?

Dr. Ali Alyami: Nidal Hassan is a Jihadist Murderer

Dr. Alyami, founder of the Center for Democracy and Human Rights in Saudi Arabia, sent us a copy of his letter to the editor of the Arab News:

Editor:

With due respect, Dr. Nadal Hassan has many options not to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. He could have refused and get court martialled, he could have claimed conscientious objector statues and he could have fled the country. He could have claimed insanity and he could have disguised himself and live in California without being found for decades or ever. According to his medical colleagues, he has become a religious extremist who condemned non-Muslims on many occasions.

He has described terrorists as heroes. He went to work the day he massacred his colleagues (people he is supposed to help) in his Muslim outfit, mind you he is a major in the US military; even in Saudi Arabia, military personal must wear military uniform when on duty. Some eyewitnesses are reported to have said, he prayed first and during his murderous rampage was screaming, Allah o Akbar. How could anyone say he is not driven by religious hate? He is a Jihadist murderer. He could have gone to Iraq or Afghanistan and defected to his Muslim brethrens if he did not want to be a US citizen instead of gunning down people that trusted him and looked up to him for help.

Do you really believe if the US withdraws from Iraq, Afghanistan and the rest of Arab and Muslim countries, Muslim terrorists and religious Jihadists would cease to exist? Do you think religious incitements against non-Muslims and Muslim minorities would stop in Saudi mosques and schools? Saudi Arabia is the birth place of Islam and home to its holy shrines; and from what we hear and read, religious extremists, (Albeia’h Althallah or deviants) and large amounts of weapons are apprehended and confiscated frequently. Saudi Arabia is protected by the West from external (and internal) threats, so why not be grateful for such service?

Can you print this response on your paper so Saudis and others could debate the issue publicly and address the root causes of religious hate and extremism? You can use factitious name if using Ali Alyami will cause swift reprisal by the authorities, Naif and his long arm religious extremists.

Thank you,

Dr. Ali Alyami

UPDATE: The Washington Post has posted Hasan's Walter Reed PowerPoint Presentation about Islam on its website.

Why Nidal Hasan Did It...

On Counterterrorism Blog, Evan Kohlmann quotes from sermons of the Yemeni-American imam tied to Al Qaeda--whom the FBI suspiciously released to flee to Yemen shortly after 9/11:

One of the key questions for investigators who are now looking into potential links between radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki and the accused perpetrator of the massacre at Ft. Hood, Maj. Malik Nidal Hasan, is understanding to what degree al-Awlaki's extreme sermons may have influenced Hasan's actions. Toward that end, they should be keeping an especially close eye out for one such al-Awlaki sermon in particular--"Constants on the Path of Jihad"--which itself is based upon an Arabic-language text penned by the founder of Al-Qaida's network in Saudi Arabia, Yousef al-Ayyiri. In order to bring al-Ayyiri's words to an English-speaking audience, al-Awlaki dedicated a lengthy lecture to his work--a lecture that over time has become the "virtual bible" for lone wolf Muslim extremists. In "Constants", al-Awlaki argues:

“Jihad does not end with the disappearance of a person. Jihad must continue regardless because it does not depend on any particular leader or individual… Jihad does not depend on any particular land. It is global. When the Muslim is in his land, he performs jihad… No borders or barriers stop it. The message cannot be conveyed without jihad. If a particular people or nation is classified as… ‘the people of war’ in the Shariah, that classification applies to them all over the earth. Islam cannot be customized to suit the conditions where you are, for instance Europe.”

According to Awlaki, al-Ayyiri also instructed that “victory” cannot be limited to mere “military victories” alone, and should also include “sacrifice. The Mujahid sacrificing ‘his self’ and his wealth is victory. Victory of your idea, your religion. If you die for your religion, your death will spread the da`wa… Allah chooses Shuhada (martyrs) from amongst the believers. This is a victory.”

It is thus perhaps little surprise that Anwar al-Awlaki's name and his sermon on "Constants on the Path of Jihad" seem to surface in every single homegrown terrorism investigation, whether in the U.S., the U.K., Canada, or beyond. For a sense of what role Awlaki and his message play in these cases, take for instance the New Jersey-based conspirators behind the attempted terror plot at Ft. Dix...

Daniel Pipes on the Ft. Hood Massacre

From DanielPipes.org:

When a Muslim in the West for no apparent reason violently attacks non-Muslims, a predictable argument ensues about motives.

The establishment – law enforcement, politicians, the media, and the academy – stands on one side of this debate, insisting that some kind of oppression caused Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, to kill 13 and wound 38 at Ft. Hood on Nov. 5. It disagrees on the specifics, however, presenting Hasan as the victim alternatively of "racism," "harassment he had received as a Muslim," a sense of not belonging," "pre-traumatic stress disorder," "mental problems," "emotional problems," "an inordinate amount of stress," or being deployed to Afghanistan as his "worst nightmare." Accordingly, a typical newspaper headline reads "Mindset of Rogue Major a Mystery.".

Instances of Muslim-on-unbeliever violence inspire the victim school to dig up new and imaginative excuses. Colorful examples (drawing on my article and weblog entry about denying Islamist terrorism) include:

1990: "A prescription drug for … depression" (to explain the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane)
1991: "A robbery gone wrong" (the murder of Makin Morcos in Sydney)
1994: "Road rage" (the killing of a random Jew on the Brooklyn Bridge)
1997: "Many, many enemies in his mind" (the shooting murder atop the Empire State Building)
2000: A traffic incident (the attack on a bus of Jewish schoolchildren near Paris)
2002: "A work dispute" (the double murder at LAX)
2002: A "stormy [family] relationship" (the Beltway snipers)
2003: An "attitude problem" (Hasan Karim Akbar's attack on fellow soldiers, killing two)
2003: Mental illness (the mutilation murder of Sebastian Sellam)
2004: "Loneliness and depression" (an explosion in Brescia, Italy outside a McDonald's restaurant)
2005: "A disagreement between the suspect and another staff member" (a rampage at a retirement center in Virginia)
2006: "An animus toward women" (a murderous rampage at the Jewish Federation of Greater Seattle)
2006: "His recent, arranged marriage may have made him stressed" (killing with an SUV in northern California)

Sgt. Hasan Karim Akbar, convicted of the 2003 murder of two fellow soldiers.
Additionally, when a Osama bin Laden-admiring Arab-American crashed a plane into a Tampa high-rise, blame fell on the acne drug Accutane.

As a charter member of the jihad school of interpretation, I reject these explanations as weak, obfuscatory, and apologetic. The jihadi school, still in the minority, perceives Hasan's attack as one of many Muslim efforts to vanquish infidels and impose Islamic law. We recall a prior episode of sudden jihad syndrome in the U.S. military, as well as the numerous cases of non-lethal Pentagon jihadi plots and the history of Muslim violence on American soil.

Far from being mystified by Hasan, we see overwhelming evidence of his jihadi intentions. He handed out Korans to neighbors just before going on his rampage and yelled "Allahu Akbar," the jihadi's cry, as he fired off over 100 rounds from two pistols. His superiors reportedly put him on probation for inappropriately proselytizing about Islam.

We note what former associates say about him: one, Val Finnell, quotes Hasan saying, "I'm a Muslim first and an American second" and recalls Hasan justifying suicide terrorism; another, Col Terry Lee, recalls that Hasan "claimed Muslims had the right to rise up and attack Americans"; the third, a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan, described him as "almost belligerent about being Muslim."

Finally, the jihad school of thought attributes importance to the Islamic authorities' urging American Muslim soldiers to refuse to fight their co-religionists, thereby providing a basis for sudden jihad. In 2001, for example, responding to the U.S. attack on the Taliban, the mufti of Egypt, Ali Gum'a, issued a fatwa stating that "The Muslim soldier in the American army must refrain [from participating] in this war." Hasan himself, echoing that message, advised a young Muslim disciple, Duane Reasoner Jr., not to join the U.S. army because "Muslims shouldn't kill Muslims."

If the jihad explanation is overwhelmingly more persuasive than the victim one, it's also far more awkward to articulate. Everyone finds blaming road rage, Accutane, or an arranged marriage easier than discussing Islamic doctrines. And so, a prediction: what Ralph Peters calls the army's "unforgivable political correctness" will officially ascribe Hasan's assault to his victimization and will leave jihad unmentioned.

And thus will the army blind itself and not prepare for its next jihadi attack.

Was Nidal Hasan Linked to 9/11 Plotters?

From The Telegraph (UK) (ht Michelle Malkin):

Major Nidal Malik Hasan worshipped at a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a "spiritual adviser" to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001.

Ft. Hood Gunman's Name Was Nomme de Guerre of Famed Palestinian Terrorist

Was the alleged Ft. Hood assassin named after Abu Nidal, "Father of the Struggle?" Sounds like a chip off the old block to this observer, but if not, who is Nidal Hasan named after? More on Abu Nidal on Wikipedia:

Abu Nidal (Arabic: أبو نضال‎) (May 1937 – August 16, 2002), born Sabri Khalil al-Banna (Arabic: صبري خليل البنا), was the founder of Fatah–The Revolutionary Council (Arabic: فتح المجلس الثوري), a militant Palestinian group more commonly known as the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO).[1] At the height of his power in the 1970s and 1980s, Abu Nidal, or "father of the struggle", was widely regarded as the most dangerous and ruthless of the Palestinian political leaders.[2] He told Der Spiegel in 1985: "I am the evil spirit which moves around only at night causing ... nightmares."[3]

Part of the secular, left-wing, Palestinian rejectionist front, so called because they reject proposals for a peaceful settlement with Israel, the ANO was formed after a split in 1974 between Abu Nidal and Yasser Arafat's Fatah faction within the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). Setting himself up as a freelance contractor, Abu Nidal is believed to have ordered attacks in 20 countries, killing or injuring over 900 people.[4] The group's most notorious attacks were on the El Al ticket counters at Rome and Vienna airports in December 1985, when Arab gunmen high on amphetamines opened fire on passengers in simultaneous shootings, killing 18 and wounding 120. Patrick Seale, Abu Nidal's biographer, wrote of the attacks that their "random cruelty marked them as typical Abu Nidal operations".[5]

Abu Nidal died of between one and four gunshot wounds in Baghdad in August 2002. Palestinian sources believe he was killed on the orders of Saddam Hussein, but the Iraqi government insisted he had committed suicide.[6] The Guardian wrote on the news of his death: "He was the patriot turned psychopath. He served only himself, only the warped personal drives that pushed him into hideous crime. He was the ultimate mercenary."[7]

Another Reason for President Obama to Fire General Casey

This statement, as quoted in The Telegraph (UK):

But General George Casey, the Army's Chief of Staff, said it was "speculation" that military authorities failed to pick up on warning signs. "I don't want to say that we missed it," he said.

Memo to the President: Fire General Casey for Ft. Hood Massacre

This statement in Politics Daily gives evidence that as Chief of Staff of the Army, General George Casey's military personnel policies may have been at least in part responsible for the climate which permitted the massacre to take place:

Casey expressed concern that speculation about Hasan and his views and motives "could potentially heighten backlash against some of our Muslim soldiers. And what happened at Fort Hood was a tragedy, but I believe it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here."

Bob Schieffer on Ft. Hood Massacre

From CBS News:

(CBS) The President has asked the nation not to jump to conclusions about what happened at Fort Hood, which is usually good advice, but it is also what government officials generally say when the government fouls up.

Good advice or not, I am jumping to an obvious conclusion: This should not have happened. That doctor should not have been at Fort Hood.

I don't care how hard-up the Army is for mental health professionals - a government psychiatrist with bad performance ratings who had been trying to get out of the Army and who had been saying what Dr. Hasan had been saying about the war on terrorism, should not have been shipped off to Fort Hood to give grief counseling.

What do you suppose he was telling the soldiers, that after what they had done they OUGHT to feel bad?

Certainly, no officer with his record would have been allowed to lead soldiers into combat.

Sadly, this shows that the Army still does not take protecting soldiers' mental health as seriously as it does training them to shoot.

And then there is the other part that often happens in government: Don't deal with a problem, shuffle it off to somewhere else. When he had problems at Walter Reed Hospital, the doctor was just packed off to Fort Hood.

Investigators confirm now that someone by his name had been posting messages on the Internet about how suicide bombers are as heroic as American soldiers who fall on grenades to save their comrades.

But the investigators say it is not clear if Dr. Hasan actually wrote those messages.

Based on what we know so far, my question is, do you suppose anyone has even asked him?

David Horowitz on Ft. Hood Massacre

In his interesting blog post, David Horowitz neglects to mention that George W. Bush and the Republicans were in charge when Major Nidal Hasan was commissioned and promoted as an officer in the United States Army, not the editors of The Nation:

A Muslim fanatic with an Internet site praising Islamic suicide bombers as defenders of their comrades is a Major in the U.S. Army with access to military intelligence and lethal weaponry. And it’s not as though the army didn’t know that he was a Muslim fanatic and supporter of the Islamic jihad against the West. He was under investigation for six months because of his anti-American, jihadist rantings. He did not want to be deployed. He wanted to be discharged.

But despite his identification with America’s enemies, the army kept him in its officer corps. How in God’s name was this possible? But it was. And so, after calling America the “aggressor” in Afghanistan and Iraq this Muslim jihadist traitor army officer picks up his semi-automatic weapons and heads for the center at Ft. Hood where soldiers are being deployed to fight the jihadists in Afghanistan to conduct his massacre. Yet this morning the Fox News Channel chiron says “Investigators search for a motive in the Ft. Hood killings.” Is everybody out of their mind?

The Ft. Hood killings are the chickens of the left coming home to roost. Already the chief political correspondent of The Nation has decried even mention of the fact that the jihadist killer Hasan is a Palestinian Muslim. According to The Nation this is “Islamophobia.” This fatuous attempt to protect America’s enemies carries on The Nation’s 60-year tradition as the leading fifth column collaborator with America’s enemies — defender of the Rosenbergs, defender of Hiss, defender of their boss Stalin, defender of Mao, defender of Castro and now defender of Islamic terrorists. But The Nation is only the tip of an iceberg. The fifth column formed out of the unholy alliance between radical Islam and the American left is now entrenched in the White House and throughout our government. And in matters like the Muslim jihadist Major Hasan our military is its captive.

The Fort Hood massacre is the first of the preventable atrocities we have been warning about on our websites since 9/11 — the atrocities which are apparently necessary for Americans to wake up to the threat that confronts us. We have a vast internal threat in this country in the form of this unholy alliance between the anti-American Left and radical Islam – whose Muslim Brotherhood network extends through our universities, our government and our military. It is “politically incorrect” to recognize this fact. You can be barred — as I have been — from speaking at universities for even talking about it. The embargo of discussion of the Islamo-fascist threat puts every American (including the infidel collaborators) at risk. Hasan had semi-automatic weapons. But they weren’t nuclear. That possibility is just around the corner unless we undergo a sea change in our attitudes and marshal the intelligence and the courage to recognize the threat.

President Obama's Ft. Hood Proclamation

Honoring the Victims of the Tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas
- - - - - - -
By The President of the United States of America
A Proclamation

Our Nation's thoughts and prayers are with the service members, civilians, and families affected by the tragic events at Fort Hood, Texas. The brave victims, who risked their lives to protect their fellow countrymen, serve as a constant source of strength and inspiration to all Americans. We ask God to watch over the fallen, the wounded, and all those who are suffering at this difficult hour.

As a mark of respect honoring the victims of the tragedy at Fort Hood, Texas, I hereby order, by the authority vested in me by the Constitution and the laws of the United States of America, that the flag of the United States shall be flown at half-staff at the White House and upon all public buildings and grounds, at all military posts and naval stations, and on all naval vessels of the Federal Government in the District of Columbia and throughout the United States and its Territories and possessions until sunset, Tuesday, November 10, 2009. I also direct that the flag shall be flown at half-staff for the same length of time at all United States embassies, legations, consular offices, and other facilities abroad, including all military facilities and naval vessels and stations.

IN WITNESS WHEREOF, I have hereunto set my hand this sixth day of November, in the year of our Lord two thousand nine, and of the Independence of the United States of America the two hundred and thirty-fourth.

BARACK OBAMA

NPR: Walter Reed Psychiatrists Missed Hasan Warning Signs

From NPR News:

INSKEEP: I understanding you've spoken with someone who knew him, worked with him at Walter Reed.

ZWERDLING: Earlier today, I spoke to a psychiatrist who worked very closely with Hasan and knows him very well. And he said, you know, from the beginning -and Hasan was there for four years - the medical staff was very worried about this guy. He said the first thing is he's cold, unfriendly. At least that's who he came off. He did not do a good job as a psychiatrist in training, was repeatedly warned, you better shape up, or, you know, you're going to be in trouble. Did badly in his classes, seemed disinterested. But second of all - and this is, perhaps, you know, more relevant. The psychiatrist says that he was very proud and upfront about being Muslim. And psychiatrist hastened to say, and nobody minded that. But he seemed almost belligerent about being Muslim, and he gave a lecture one day that really freaked a lot of doctors out.

They have grand rounds, right? They, you know, dozens of medical staff come into an auditorium, and somebody stands at the podium at the front and gives a lecture about some academic issue, you know, what drugs to prescribe for what condition. But instead of that, he - Hasan apparently gave a long lecture on the Koran and talked about how if you don't believe, you are condemned to hell. Your head is cut off. You're set on fire. Burning oil is burned down your throat.

And I said to the psychiatrist, but this cold be a very interesting informational session, right? Where he's educating everybody about the Koran. He said but what disturbed everybody was that Hasan seemed to believe these things. And actually, a Muslim in the audience, a psychiatrist, raised his hand and said, excuse me. But I'm a Muslim and I do not believe these things in the Koran, and then I don't believe what you say the Koran says. And then Hasan didn't say, well, I'm just giving you one point of view. He basically just stared the guy down.

INSKEEP: So we have a picture of a man, then, who, at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, was disliked by his colleagues. Or maybe disliked is not the word. Disturbed some of his colleagues is perhaps a better way to put it.

ZWERDLING: No, and disliked is also a relevant word.

INSKEEP: OK. And then?

ZWERDLING: Then he - the psychiatrist this morning said people generally considered him a blank bag. You, you know, can guess what they say.

INSKEEP: And then he is sent to Fort Hood, Texas, and he knows at the point that this shooting allegedly begins, that the shooting begins of which he is accused, that he's about to be deployed by Afghanistan...

...ZWERDLING: I want to add something else about Hasan at Walter Reed. The psychiatrist I talked to today said that he was the kind of guy who the staff actually stood around in the hallway, saying: Do you think he's a terrorist, or is he just weird? And now, apparently, Walter Reed is in a lockdown mode where they've been instructed - all the staff has been instructed: Do not talk to anybody about this investigation, except military people. Do not talk to the FBI, because they're afraid, potentially, what if people decide investigating this that people missed potential warning signs about the guy? You know, this is speculation still, but�

INSKEEP: How can they not talk to the FBI?

ZWERDLING: Well, our colleague Dina Temple-Raston has heard that from the FBI, and this military officer is telling me the same thing from Walter Reed.

Robert Spencer: Ft. Hood Massacre Fits Jihadist Terror Attack Pattern

From Frontpagemag.com:

...Major Hasan’s motive was perfectly clear — but it was one that the forces of political correctness and the Islamic advocacy groups in the United States have been working for years to obscure. So it is that now that another major jihad terror attack has taken place on American soil, authorities and the mainstream media are at a loss to explain why it happened – and the abundant evidence that it was a jihad attack is ignored....

...Maybe he just snapped, perhaps under the pressure of his imminent deployment to Iraq. But it’s noteworthy that if he did, he snapped in exactly the same way that several other Muslims in the U.S. military have snapped in the past. In April 2005, a Muslim serving in the U.S. Army, Hasan Akbar, was convicted of murder for killing two American soldiers and wounding fourteen in a grenade attack in Kuwait. AP reported: “Prosecutors say Akbar told investigators he launched the attack because he was concerned U.S. troops would kill fellow Muslims in Iraq. They said he coolly carried out the attack to achieve ‘maximum carnage’ on his comrades in the 101st Airborne Division.”

And Hasan’s murderous rampage resembles one that five Muslim men in New Jersey tried to carry out at Fort Dix in New Jersey in 2007, when they plotted to enter the U.S. Army base and murder as many soldiers as they could.

That was a jihad plot. One of the plotters, Serdar Tatar, told an FBI informant late in 2006: “I’m gonna do it….It doesn’t matter to me, whether I get locked up, arrested, or get taken away, it doesn’t matter. Or I die, doesn’t matter, I’m doing it in the name of Allah.” Another plotter, Mohamad Shnewer, was caught on tape saying, “They are the ones, we are going to put bullets in their heads, Allah willing.”

Nidal Hasan’s statements about Muslims rising up against the U.S. military aren’t too far from that, albeit less graphic. The effect of ignoring or downplaying the role that Islamic beliefs and assumptions may have played in his murders only ensures that – once again – nothing will be done to prevent the eventual advent of the next Nidal Hasan.