The Defense Department continues to duck the hard questions about the Fort Hood massacre. As many as eight Army officers might take the fall for not reporting Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan’s abnormal behavior in the years leading up to his Nov. 5 terrorist rampage. But as Bill Gertz reported yesterday on the front page of The Washington Times, fear of being perceived as insensitive played a critical role in those officers keeping Maj. Hasan in the force. There’s no sign the military’s politically correct climate is about to change.
On Friday, while discussing the results of the Defense Department’s investigation of the Fort Hood terrorist attack, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates noted that personnel management systems are “generally organized to withhold and compartmentalize troubling information about individuals, as opposed to sharing it with the people and leaders who need to know.” But what one person perceives as troubling behavior might be another person’s expression of cherished religious beliefs. Maj. Hasan was exhibiting signs of a radical jihadist orientation that were frighteningly obvious to those around him, but they were unwilling to take the necessary action because they might have faced an official backlash.
“One of the core functions of leadership is assessing the performance and fitness of people honestly and openly,” Mr. Gates said. “Failure to do so, or kicking the problem to the next unit or the next installation, may lead to damaging if not devastating consequences.” This sounds nice, but it’s well understood in the defense establishment that honest and open assessments of the fitness of some personnel is a guaranteed ticket to potentially career-ending controversy. The system encourages passing the buck.
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A bitter diatribe with no solution. The author doesn’t even explicitly say (s)he wants a return to the good ol days of unequal opportunity … though it can be implied by equating equality of opportunity -supposedly a staple of classical liberalism- to political correctness.
There certainly is a solution. Treat everybody the same. How difficult would that be? There can be little doubt that if the Muslim named Hasan had instead been a WASP named Smith this would have been handled entirely differently and a lot of people would in all likelihood still be alive today. Political correctness is a cancer on society.
Heightened awareness/vigilance across many institutions has resulted, no matter what this editorialist is implying.
Re: #1 — I think the author is correct. My view is that Muslims, Hindus (and whomever else) should be subjected to the same “political correctness” that Christians are.
Now you can talk about religion but only on this entry. Warning: I’ll delete entries which cause me “legal concerns”.
Treating people unequally is not equal opportunity.
Affirmative action, a liberal agenda, opposes equal opportunity and is the reason why womens and minorities behaviour problems are too often overlooked.
You can’t guarantee both equal opportunity and equal result.
Mr. misek, I’m gratified to read you’re plugging for equality. I recall responding to you many weeks ago and your response was “yawn.” Hmmm… I overlooked your mentality then, but God speed you now, guy.
Get a load of the sidebar article
Ed Schultz: I’d cheat to prevent Brown from winning.
Unabashed gall, right out in the open. A democratic failure for immediate correction.
I don’t recall the situation Dora, but you can be sure I was sincere then and now.
Affirmative action, a liberal agenda, opposes equal opportunity and is the reason why womens and minorities behaviour problems are too often overlooked.
You can’t guarantee both equal opportunity and equal result.
So we end up with laws that say “be nice, everyone” and the good ol boys who still are in charge of the companies have absolutely no reason to change what they were doing in the first place. After all, how can you prove why someone wasn’t hired? Equality of opportunity, but certainly not equality of probability.
Affirmative action does nothing to prevent corruption in the workplace. The good ole girls model the book “Animal Farm”.
One thing we shouldn’t do is create laws that oppose our rights.
We should create laws that support our rights and at the same time choke out corruption.
The only way to choke a weed is to kill the root, the root of corruption is lying.
When we create laws that support the truth by criminalizing lying we will progress without losing any rights.
Lying has always been illegal where we could control it in the past, in courtrooms and contracts. Now with micro personal recording devices and email, we can control it everywhere. We just need some laws to protect the use of these devices and the corrupt will eventually be brought to justice.
If we however choose to value and protect lying or public privacy, why would we ever expect to trust or believe anything anyone says.