The Pentagon has done a quick about-face over an Army Reserve presentation on “extremism” that lumped Catholics, evangelical Protestants, Orthodox Jews and Mormons together with Hamas, al Qaeda and the Ku Klux Klan, among others.
The Army says it has eliminated the material and called this an “isolated incident.” But it suggests the same mentality that led the Obama administration to classify the 2009 Fort Hood massacre as “workplace violence.”
In that attack, self-professed “Soldier of Allah” Nidal Malik Hasan killed 13 people and wounded 32. Still, the Pentagon refuses to award Purple Hearts to the wounded on the grounds that it would be declaring Hasan an enemy combatant — and thus violating his rights at his court-martial. One soldier who was shot six times put it this way to ABC News: “They’re treating us like I was downtown and I got hit by a car.”
In response, three House Republicans, led by Homeland Security Committee chairman Michael McCaul of Texas have asked Attorney General Eric Holder for answers to specific questions — including whether a terrorism investigation was ever even conducted.
The military is no more encouraging. At the time, then-Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey said, “As horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.” From where we sit, even worse is a political correctness that has our Defense Department labeling innocent people “extremist” while refusing to call terrorism by its rightful name.