It Was Terrorism: Dick Morris Explains it all

FT. HOOD ATTACK WAS TERRORISM

By DICK MORRIS & EILEEN MCGANN

Published on DickMorris.com on November 8, 2009

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In his nationally televised remarks following the horrendous killings at Ft. Hood, President Obama never mentioned the T word.  The attack was an act "of violence."  No mention of terrorism.

In fact, the Ft. Hood shooting is the first terror attack on American soil since 9-11.  But Obama, reluctant to take the rap for inadequate protections against such attacks, is doing everything he can to make it look like an adult version of the Columbine school shootings.  We are treated to stories about the killer's dread of being sent back to Afghanistan and his deformed personality.

But, the fact is that Major Nidal Malik Hasan jumped on a table, yelled "Alah Hu Akhbar" and began the shooting rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 30 more.

Ilana Freedman, CEO and Senior Analyst for the Gerard Group International, which provides intelligence analysis for business and homeland security, describes Hasan as a "lone wolf terrorist" who acts without apparent coordination with any other person or organization.  But that does not make him any less of a terrorist.
  
The dividing line, of course, between a terrorist and a psychopathic killer is political motivation.  His statements right before opening fire would indicate that Hasan was motivated by fanaticism and a commitment to Islamic fascism, even though President Obama bends over backwards to avoid saying so.

Obama's refusal to call the attack terrorism, and to heed the warning signs about the porous nature of our security system that allowed it to happen on a military base, recalls President Clinton's deliberate decision to downplay the 1993 attack on the World Trade Center.  He did not visit the site of the attack and treated it as a crime, promising to find those guilty and punish them, rather than to attack the international groups that funded and enabled them.

There may be no groups behind Major Hasan's attack, but the fact that he was an officer in the Army, with full access to a military base and its arsenal of weapons, while holding the views he did, is the first indication of a laxity in security under President Obama.  This attack did not take place in a shopping mall or a school, where security procedures are, understandably, relaxed.  It happened on the highest security place of all - a military base!  That the military failed to spot the possibility of an attack and had no measures in place to prevent it must be laid at the feet of the commander-in-chief of that military: President Barack Obama.
   
Many commentators have warned that the diminution of security and the weakening of our anti-terrorist protections would leave us vulnerable to be hit again.  Now it has happened.  And the president is doing everything he can to blur the distinction between murder and terrorism.

It was his failure to understand the difference between an act of war and a crime that undermined President Clinton's administration's anti-terror efforts and led directly to 9-11.  It would appear that President Obama is going down the same road of denial and minimization of political harm.  There may be casualties at Ft. Hood, but Obama is determined that his popularity will not be among them.

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