MUSLIM POPULATION IN THE MILITARY RAISES DIFFICULT ISSUES
Yochi J. Dreazen
Wall Street Journal, November 9, 2009

The deadly rampage at Fort Hood is forcing Pentagon officials to confront difficult
questions about the military's growing Muslim population. The military has worked
hard to recruit more Muslims since the start of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,
and the number of Muslim troops, while still small, has been increasing. There were
3,409 Muslims in the active-duty military as of April 2008, according to Pentagon
statistics.

Military personnel don't have to disclose their religions, and many officials believe
the actual number of Muslim soldiers may be at least 10,000 higher than the Pentagon
statistics. For instance, the military "Officer Record Brief" of Maj. Nidal Malik
Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood shootings, said he had "no religious preference"
and didn't identify him as a Muslim....

The push to boost Muslim representation has proven to be a double-edged sword for
the military, which desperately needs the Muslim soldiers for their language skills
and cultural knowledge, but also worries that a small percentage of those soldiers
might harbor extremist ideologies or choose to turn their guns on their fellow soldiers.
In one of the military's most notorious cases of fratricide since Vietnam, Army
Sgt. Hasan Akbar, a convert to Islam, rolled a grenade into a tent filled with other
soldiers in April 2003. The attack killed two officers and wounded 14 others....

Muslim soldiers also face challenges stemming from their dual identities as adherents
of the Islamic faith and as members of the U.S. military. In Iraq and Afghanistan,
Muslims serving in the U.S. military often use fake last names to avoid being singled
out by insurgents as traitors and to prevent reprisals against their families elsewhere
in the world.

The Pentagon's outreach to the Muslim community has expanded significantly in recent
years. Today, recruiting more Muslims is a top priority for many branches of the
 military. Under the Army's "09 Lima" program, Muslims willing to enlist and serve
in Iraq and Afghanistan as military translators and cultural advisers receive hefty
signing bonuses and expedited paths to citizenship. The Army recently established
its first full unit of Muslim personnel recruited under the program, the 51st Translator
Interpreter Company at California's Fort Irwin. The unit has more than 120 soldiers
who are native speakers of Arabic, Farsi, Pashto and Dari....

Army officials at the Pentagon said that Muslim soldiers who felt their religion
 prevented them from fighting in Iraq or Afghanistan could claim conscientious objector
status and seek noncombat assignments in the U.S. But they weren't aware of any
Muslim soldiers who had done so.

*********************************************************************

CALL THIS HORROR BY ITS NAME: ISLAMIST TERROR
Ralph Peters
New York Post, November 7, 2009

On Thursday afternoon, a radicalized Muslim US Army officer shouting, "Allahu akbar!"
("God is great!") committed the worst act of terror on American soil since 9/11.
 And no one wants to call it an act of terror or associate it with Islam.

What cowards we are. Political correctness killed those patriotic Americans at Fort
Hood as surely as the Islamist gunman did. And the media treat it like a case of
 nondenominational shoplifting.

This was a terrorist act. When an extremist plans and executes a murderous plot
against our unarmed soldiers to protest our efforts to counter Islamist fanatics,
it's an act of terror. Period.

When the terrorist posts anti-American hate speech on the Web; apparently praises
suicide bombers and uses his own name; loudly criticizes US policies; argues (as
 a psychiatrist, no less) with his military patients over the worth of their sacrifices;
refuses, in the name of Islam, to be photographed with female colleagues; lists
his nationality as "Palestinian" in a Muslim spouse-matching program and parades
 around central Texas in a fundamentalist playsuit -- well, it only seems fair to
call this terrorist an "Islamist terrorist."

But the president won't. Despite his promise to get to all the facts. Because there's
no such thing as "Islamist terrorism" in ObamaWorld. And the Army won't. Because
 its senior leaders are so sick with political correctness that pandering to America
haters is safer than calling terrorism "terrorism." And the media won't. Because
 they have more interest in the shooter than in our troops -- despite their crocodile
tears....

But Hasan isn't the sole guilty party. The US Army's unforgivable political correctness
is also to blame for the casualties at Fort Hood. Given the myriad warning signs,
it's appalling that no action was taken against a man apparently known to praise
 suicide bombers and openly damn US policy. But no officer in his chain of command,
either at Walter Reed Army Medical Center or at Fort Hood, had the guts to take
meaningful action against a dysfunctional soldier and an incompetent doctor.

Had Hasan been a Lutheran or a Methodist, he would've been gone with the simoom.
 But officers fear charges of discrimination when faced with misconduct among protected
minorities. Now 12 soldiers and a security guard lie dead. At least 38 people were
wounded, 28 of them seriously. If heads don't roll in this maggot's chain of command,
the Army will have shamed itself beyond moral redemption.

There's another important issue, too. How could the Army allow an obviously incompetent
and dysfunctional psychiatrist to treat our troubled soldiers returning from war?
An Islamist wacko is counseled for arguing with veterans who've been assigned to
 his care? And he's not removed from duty? What planet does the Army live on?

For the first time since I joined the Army in 1976, I'm ashamed of its dereliction
of duty. The chain of command protected a budding terrorist who was waving one red
flag after another. Because it was safer for careers than doing something about
him.

Get ready for the apologias. We've already heard from the terrorist's family that
"he's a good American." In their world, maybe he is. But when do we, the American
public, knock off the PC nonsense?... Muslim terrorist wannabes are busted again
 and again. And we're assured that "Islam's a religion of peace." I guarantee you
that the Obama administration's nonresponse to the Fort Hood attack will mock the
memory of our dead.

(Ralph Peters' latest novel is The War After Armageddon.)