Responding to Fort Hood
Author(s): Robert Kaplan
Original Post: Responding to Fort Hood
Type: News Article
Date: 11/15/2009
The massacre at Fort Hood, Texas, in which 13 soldiers were shot and killed by Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, paradoxically took my memory back to April 2004, when I was embedded with a Marine battalion during the first battle of Fallujah. The battalion just happened to have in the ranks a corporal of Syrian descent who did double duty as the commander’s translator for his meetings with the Iraqis. The young Muslim corporal was arguably the most valuable member of the battalion: simply by his presence he was able to cast the battalion in a different, more positive light among the locals.
The United States military needs more troops of Muslim origin within its ranks. We need a military that looks like the larger world for the global challenges ahead, such as helping to protect the “commons,” the air space and sea lanes. Think of the Navy’s slogan in its new television recruitment commercials: “A Global Force for Good.”
Inevitably, a minute percentage of these Muslim recruits may be influenced by jihadist propaganda, which certainly seems to have been the case with Maj. Hasan. So what do we do?
Better security surveillance and background checks, as well as better coordination within the defense bureaucracy to ferret out troublesome individuals, make sense. But the Army chief of staff, Gen. George Casey, had it right when he said that he was fearful of a backlash against Muslims within the ranks. Behind the scenes the military needs to be extra vigilant; publicly the military needs to be even more welcoming to minorities. As my Atlantic colleague Jeffrey Goldberg puts it, we need to have it both ways.
Numerous frustrated voices declare that we shouldn’t be shy about declaring that this attack was an incident of Islamic terrorism. That it may well turn out to be, but we would lose far more than we would gain by waving the bloody shirt. The ultimate strategic goal of al-Qaeda is to turn our struggle with it into a “clash of civilizations.” If potential Muslim recruits to the U.S. military quietly decide not to enlist for fear of retribution or prejudice inside the barracks, that would be a victory for al-Qaeda. The consequences for terrorists must be tough, but our rhetoric must remain ecumenical. We should let the investigation take its course, mete out punishment, and quickly move on.
Consider the “Clash of Civilizations” itself, an idea propounded by the late Harvard professor Samuel P. Huntington in 1993 in “Foreign Affairs,” and three years later turned into a book. I defended Huntington’s idea in a profile I did of him in the Atlantic (December 2001), written before 9/11. I argued that his idea was right if a bit simplistic, but it was no less valid a bumper sticker for the world we were entering than that of the “Cold War,” which was also simplistic and didn’t encompass many of the trends of the 1945-89 world, particularly in developing countries. At the same time, I would have been horrified if any official, speaking on behalf of the U.S. government, had subscribed publicly to Huntington’s theory. Huntington could expound it because he was a political scientist, dedicated not to improving the world but to writing honestly about what he thought was going on in it. I could subscribe to it as a writer. But because the only way to win a clash of civilizations is to deny that you are fighting one in the first place, government and military officials must always take the high road in their public statements. That’s why, while we improve our security procedures behind the scenes, we should deal with the massacre at Fort Hood in as low key a manner as possible. More Maj. Hasans may lurk in the barracks and public squares. The way to find them out is not in a shrill witch hunt, but quietly, methodically, and legally, even as we open up our military to a wider spectrum of recruits.
The massacre at Fort Hood strikes at the heart of our democracy. We should be careful to heal the wound, not to inflame it by undermining our own reputation for tolerance. The more we can fight this war behind the scenes, the better off we will all be.
Related:Topic(s): U.S. Military Forces & Operations, U.S. National Security Strategy
Project(s): Future of the U.S. Military
People: Robert Kaplan
