OPINION/ANALYSIS:
The general is eager to get the situation in hand, but he's got his tactics backward. And not just the general. So have a lot of other people in the government. Judgment flees in the face of a challenge by goody-goody intentions.
The prospect of mistreatment of Muslims in the uniform is such a concern the general has told his officers "to be on the lookout for it." The tragedy at Fort Hood was bad, he says, but "it would be a shame if our diversity became a casualty as well." He told an interviewer for CNN, as if in a footnote, that he further wants the Army to investigate how Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the suspect in the Fort Hood massacre, got to be a senior officer when he was such
a known collaborator in radical Islamic causes.
Diversity is good. Maybe not as good as the ability to shoot straight, though in the modern, politically correct Army, you never can tell. George Washington, Robert E. Lee, U.S. Grant, John J. Pershing, George S. Patton and even Dwight D. Eisenhower -- pretty good soldiers all -- never acted as if diversity is more important than the ability to kill bad guys and break things that ought to be broken.
So far as we know, those worthies in the wars of yesteryear never tried to make allowances for troublemakers in uniform. A Nazi or a follower of Shinto in the ranks would have been booted out at once.
The intimidation of so much of the government becomes total, so great is the fear of being accused of hurting the feelings of evildoers. Winston Churchill got it right in the run-up to World War II, when good people couldn't bear to look evil in the face.
"The malice of the wicked," he said, "is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous."
http://washingtontimes.com/news/2009...home_headlines