The US army’s report on the Fort Hood shooting is being used as fodder for the right-wing’s attack on ‘political correctness’ because it does not mention Nidal Hasan or Islam by name.
“The report demonstrates that we are unwilling to identify and confront the real enemy of political Islam,” says a former military colleague of Hasan, speaking privately because he was ordered not to talk about the case. “Political correctness has brainwashed us to the point that we no longer understand our heritage and cannot admit who, or what, the enemy stands for.”
The authors have defended the report, saying that the focus of their investigation was ‘actions and consequences not motivations.’
Mark Lynch wrote about the broader right-wing response earlier:
A lot of people — some well-meaning, some clowns or worse — evidently want the American response to the Ft. Hood shootings to revive the post-9/11 “war of ideas” and “clash of civilizations” anti-Islamic discourse. It’s a jihad, they shout, demanding careful scrutiny of the loyalty of American Muslims. That’s what they seem to mean by the demand to throw away “political correctness” and confront the ideological menace. The overall effect of their recommendations, however, would be to revive the flagging al-Qaeda brand and to greatly strengthen the appeal of its narrative. And that’s exactly what we should not want.
