Truth versus Ideology.

Here is another example of how ideology creates a dangerous congitive dissonance. 

The Ft. Hood shooting has finally been the subject of a careful after-action analysis — a study that DOD should have done but didn’t. The analysis was done instead in a bipartisan report by Senators Lieberman and Collins, who lead the Homeland Security committee. Their report reveals few new facts but offers disturbing insights into DOD’s cultural dysfunctions.



On November 5, 2009, witnesses say, Maj. Nidal Hasan leaped on a desk at a Ft. Hood readiness center, shouted “Allahu Akbar” and began executing the unarmed soldiers all around him. Thirteen people were dead and thirty-two wounded before an armed police officer managed to shoot Hasan five times. Now confined to a wheelchair, Hasan is expected to go on trial shortly.


Anyone who paid attention to news coverage after the rampage knows that the Army had plenty of warning about Hasan’s Islamist views. Classmates say that he questioned whether he could fight against other Muslims and made presentations justifying the murder of non-Muslims, suggesting that Muslim-Americans in the armed forces might kill other servicemembers, defending Osama bin Laden, and justifying suicide bombers. The servicemembers in the audience were so appalled that the instructor finally stopped one of Hasan’s presentations. Off the record, it seems, everyone thought Hasan was dangerous, a nutjob, or an Islamist, and perhaps all three.

On the record, though, no one would criticize him. You don’t rise in the armed forces if you can’t read your superiors. And the rising officers who met Hasan knew what their superiors wanted without having to be told. Islam was a religion of peace, and Muslims in the Army were a welcome sign of diversity. Treating Hasan as a dangerous Islamist would put those messages at risk.

And:
 

DOD quickly stood up an independent review of the Ft. Hood shooting by former Secretary of Veterans Affairs Togo West and retired admiral Vern Clark. A staff of full-time contractors and military personnel served West and Clark, who were asked to look hard at internal threats to the military. The result of all this effort is a model of politically correct mush — a classic of contractor-speak, in fact.


Fifty members of the military community were gunned down, their ears still ringing with “Allahu Akbar!” shouted by a man wearing their own uniform. And the official DOD report on the attack never mentions Islam once. In contrast, it touches on the threat posed by “low self-esteem” four times.

The closest the report comes to blaming Islamic extremism for the attack is a single sentence identifying the sources of domestic terrorism. In case you’re wondering, they include “animal rights, environmentalism, nationalism, white supremacy, religious causes, and right-wing politics.”

And:

Okay, that’s a little unfair to Secretary West and Adm. Clark. But only a little. In its delicate sidestepping of Hasan’s obvious motivation, and its irresponsible sidestepping of the shocking PCness epitomized by Hasan’s evaluations, the West/Clark report is part of DOD’s problem. It stands in stark contrast to the aggressive DOD action in 1996, when two Army soldiers carried out a racially motivated murder of an African-American couple. Then, the Army had no trouble adopting a policy on extremist activities that forthrightly named white supremacist activities as a basis for disciplining soldiers.