THIS week I experienced an eerie sense of deja vu. As the reports began coming in from Fort Hood Texas, something felt hauntingly familiar. It was those pictures. It was those personality profiles. Those victims. Now dead.
Back when I lived in Israel during one of her most terrorized eras, somehow it was the newspapers specifically the faces printed in those newspapers chronicling the individual human beings, their deaths, those innocents it was that black- on-white print newspaper that bathed the terrorist act with such reality, such finality.
I am shocked at the response of my country to the mass murder at Fort Hood. Every single one of us should have had a visceral reaction of horror toward the mass murderer who committed this crime.
Yes, Ill say it straight out: this terrorist act. The murderer died (or so he thought) with the final words Allahu Akbar on his lips. He declared his religious dedication to his diety before committing this mass murder. He died for a cause.
Instead of acknowledging this, all I have been hearing and reading are defensive and lame excuses about how his religion and his crime are unrelated . . . that as a Muslim he was under tremendous pressure because of the war in Afghanistan (he did not serve in the war) . . . that he feared being deployed . . . you name it, its out there.
And President Obama, commander-in-in chief, shame on him. His memorial was caring and moving, and his role as national consoler was meaningful. But his overall response? Weak. Very weak. In the name of our new religion of PC, his was a sanitized and bland reaction, conspicuously omitting the words Islam and terror. Pathetic. But, more seriously, dangerous.
I am not an alarmist. I am not into fearmongering. I am not against Islam or Muslims. To the contrary, we should all embrace Muslims, and anyone else for that matter, who does not subscribe to an idealogy that essentially promotes the death of . . . of all of us.
But extremist Muslims? Ones who fly planes into buildings? Ones who commit mass murder on US army base in the name of their deity?
Enough with the hiding behind political correctness or not wanting to hurt peoples feelings. Euphemisms are for Alice in Wonderland, not for real life when the consequences involve life and death.
Are you startled and shaken by Fort Hood, and you want to try to build bridges as a result of this horror? Perhaps meet face to face and talk with Muslims? Good! This is a critical reaction as well.
But dont exclude what should be but has been artificially numbed by all the PC talk a natural reaction of recoiling and condemning terrorist bloodshed for what it is.
Who are the victims? Dont get confused. The victim is you. It is me. Not the Muslim community! Let us work together with the Muslim community to marginalize and root out these deadly extremists from our midst.
I UNDERSTAND what motivates our nations need for political correctness.
We, as a nation, have made our share of mistakes. We have judged or discriminated terribly, in the past. We have a rich history as a country, but not without our demons and memories of the wrongs we committed. We certainly have a lot to atone for.
It is good for this awareness to be a part of our national conciousness up to a point. To cultivate a policy or a culture that rejects facing the truth of our current reality as a way of purging past pain, or atoning for the past, is foolish, reactionary, extreme and just plain wrong.
I dont know at what point in this terrible tragedy being PC played a role. But I know it did.
Maybe it was the PC paralysis of the Army itself in the first place, which weakened its ability to report this guy even when he seemed suspicious, and even presented some evidence to this effect.
Maybe its just now, in the way the tragedy is being reported so defensively and untruthfully.
Wherever it is, I hope we choose to have the courage to face the PC for what it is.
I truly hope this was the last edition of a newspaper filled with the heartbreaking little vignettes of innocent people now gone, now dead, that brought them into all of our lives, ever so briefly, this week.
