Ft. Hood: The Rush to Exonerate, and Progressives and Their "Tragedies"

The news, garbled and confused as usual, is coming in re a mass shooting at Ft. Hood. As of this writing many basic facts are unknown. Some outlets are identifying the shooter as an Ivan Lopez, who might or might not have been a soldier. We'll see.

In the press two days ago, there were reports that the FBI and the Army were hunting for an ex-recruit who had been cut because of jihadist tendencies, and was now feared to be a threat to Ft. Hood. Whether that story is connected to the shooting today, we'll just have to wait to see.

While we wait for the facts to come in, there are some legitimate issues we can ponder. Given what happened at Ft Hood five years ago when a wacky jihadi Army psychiatrist opened fire, what had been done to make Ft Hood and other installations safer? Was a double-plus-good policy of "weapon free" zone instituted? Were illegal guns on base made doubly illegal? That would be my guess.

It does not seem that some of the world's most highly trained soldiers are allowed the ability to defend themselves, their colleagues, and their installations from single shooters. In Afghanistan some lone shooter like this would have gotten maybe five feet before he would have been shredded. Our soldiers whom we expect to lay it on the line for us overseas, when home have to cower like scared school children under desks, and behind locked doors, and hope and pray that the cops will come save them.

Something seems terribly wrong with this picture. This administration, let us not forget, was perfectly willing to send thousands of weapons to Mexican drug cartels, but seems incapable of entrusting sidearms to our soldiers on base.

This shooting has, again, prompted the knee-jerk comment from the FBI and other law enforcement that, "The initial assessment is the incident is not terror-related." Yeah, and it's not related to Martians, either. When will the idiots learn to shut-up re this topic. What initial assessment? A couple of FBI agents peering into the base have decided that it is not terror-related? Who made this assessment and on what basis?

We have heard the same nonsense after nearly every terror attack.  I was in LA, July 4, 2002, when an Arab jihadi tried to shoot-up the El Al counter, and was killed by El Al security. The initial assessment: no terrorism involved. Before that, we saw this same "assessment" in the 1999 Egypt Air crash, and more recently in the Boston Marathon bombing, and the MH370 disappearance. I am sure you can come out with many examples of this rush to exonerate the jihadis among us. I don't know that the shooter today was or was not a jihadi, but I'll bet that neither do the cops, and given what happened at Hood before, it would behoove them to keep silent.

Lastly our ponderous and more than dopey SecDef has come out with the standard line about this being a "tragedy." Really? The original use of the word "tragedy" dealt with players who undertook actions that could be foreseen to lead to death, destruction, downfall, but they undertook those actions regardless. So did our SecDef and his minions know that this shooting would happen but undertook actions that either would not prevent it or, perhaps, facilitate it?

Let's ask our Congress, our high military command, our SecDef, and our exalted President, who could not be bothered to cancel his fund-raising trip, what has been done to protect our troops? Hold those in charge accountable.

Heads had better roll on this one, and not just that of some poor security guard.