The White House has threatened to veto the National Defense Authorization Act — a $642.5 billion spending bill passed by the House last Friday. Among the 32 veto-worthy provisions: the one awarding Purple Hearts to the victims of the Fort Hood and Little Rock shootings.
“The administration objects to section 552, which would grant Purple Hearts to the victims of the shooting incidents in Fort Hood, Texas, and Little Rock, Ark.,” the veto threat states. “The criminal acts that occurred in Little Rock were tried by the State of Arkansas as violations of the State criminal code rather than as acts of terrorism.”
Really?
On June 1, 2009, Abdulhakim Mujahid Muhammad, an avowed jihadist who’d spent time in Yemen, killed one soldier and wounded another in a drive-by shooting on a military-recruiting office in Little Rock. He pleaded guilty to murder, avoiding trial and the death penalty, and was sentenced to life in prison.
Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army major who had e-mail communications with senior al Qaeda recruiter Anwar al-Awlaki, awaits military trial for the Nov. 5, 2009, massacre at Fort Hood, in which 13 were killed and 29 wounded.
How were these attacks not terrorism?
Not for the Obama administration, evidently.
After the Fort Hood shootings, the FBI quickly said there was no evidence of a greater terrorist plot; the Defense Department called it an “isolated” case; and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano said Hasan’s actions didn’t represent his Muslim faith.
Lawmakers, however, are on the case. Bills in both the House and Senate would award the Purple Heart to members of the Armed Forces who are killed or wounded in a terrorist attack perpetrated within the United States.
The administration’s refusal to acknowledge the attacks as terrorism has long rankled Sens. Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Susan Collins (R-Maine), the leaders of the Homeland Security Committee, who investigated the Fort Hood massacre last year.
Announcing the findings of the probe, Collins slammed the Pentagon for failing to act on Hasan’s “obvious radicalization” and the Washington Joint Terrorism Task Force for its measly four-hour investigation into Hasan’s terror ties.
“That is all the time that that the Washington JTTF spent investigating whether a military officer in communication with a known terrorist suspect amounted to a national security threat,” she said. “This hasty decision to close the investigation cost the government its last, best chance to identify the threat posed by Maj. Hasan and to potentially prevent the November 2009 attack.”
In December, the two senators said the White House plan to combat domestic terrorism fell short, noting that it didn’t even designate one agency “to coordinate . . . the national effort to counter violent Islamist extremism at home.”
“We also continue to be disappointed by the administration’s refusal to identify violent Islamist extremism as our enemy,” they wrote.
“To understand this threat and counter it, we must not shy away from making the sharp distinction between the peaceful religion followed by millions of law-abiding Americans and a twisted corruption of that religion used to justify violence.”
Bridget Johnson is Washington editor of PJ Media.