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Fort Hood Jihad Victims Won’t Be Getting Purple Hearts As Long as Obama is in Office

Posted By Daniel Greenfield On December 6, 2014 @ 12:07 pm In The Point | 10 Comments

Senate Democrats have apparently decided to stop fighting a measure that would allow the American servicemembers wounded and killed by Fort Hood Muslim Jihadist Nidal Hassan.

Congress is set to make victims of the 2009 Fort Hood shootings eligible for Purple Hearts and combat injury benefits after the Obama administration has denied them the status for the past five years.

House Republicans, working with the Democratic-controlled Senate Armed Services Committee, added a provision to the defense authorization bill that would give battlefield recognition for the victims of the deadliest attack on a domestic military installation in U.S. history. It passed on a voice vote with strong bipartisan support.

The measure, which is expected to pass Congress next week, also would end a five-year effort by Texas GOP Reps. John Carter, Michael Conaway and Roger Williams to give the victims the status, the Military Times first reported. Texas GOP Sens. Ted Cruz and John Cornyn introduced the bill in the Senate.

The victims have long asked the Pentagon to label the attack terrorism so they would be eligible for the Purple Hearts and added combat-related benefits. But Defense Secretaries Robert Gates, Leon Panetta and Chuck Hagel have stuck to the original assessment that the attack by Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan was an act of workplace violence.

And Ashton Carter will go on sticking to it. Obama won’t veto over this, though he has made threats in the past, but there’s no way that he is going to allow Hassan to be viewed as an enemy terrorist. Neither will the Pentagon bureaucracy which has gone to great lengths to prevent even Hassan’s stated motive from becoming a factor.

The idea of it is so dangerous to the Jihad Denial establishment because it recognizes that “domestic terrorist attacks” are not domestic or civilian, but the work of a foreign enemy. We’re at war. And that’s something liberals have desperately tried to cover up.

The unfortunate truth is that even if Romney had won in 2012, there would be a great deal of resistance to this from within.

The latest authorization draft stipulates that Purple Heart medals will be awarded to “members of the armed forces killed or wounded in domestic attacks inspired by foreign terrorist organizations.”

The new measure would make Purple Hearts available to those injured or killed by attackers who had been “in communication with the foreign terrorist organization before the attack” and whose actions were “inspired or motivated by the foreign terrorist organization.”

Pentagon officials for years have said the shooting victims are not eligible for the Purple Heart and certain combat-injury compensation. Families of the victims have said they’ve faced thousands of dollars in uncovered medical expenses that would have been covered if the same injuries occurred in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The new Purple Heart regulations would change that, allowing defense officials to review the cases and award both the medal and the benefits to the Fort Hood victims as well as victims of similar domestic attacks.

You can guess how that will work out. This was never an issue of the letter of the law. The letter of the law doesn’t exist under Obama except when it comes to blocking something he doesn’t want anyway on a technicality. Removing the technicality removes the excuse, it doesn’t get it done.

The problems though go beyond Obama. The military has been infected with a culture that says that covering up Islamic terrorism is the only way to defeat it and that therefore granting Purple Hearts and treating Fort Hood as an enemy attack would actually be a victory for Al Qaeda.

It’s utterly perverse thinking that is frighteningly commonplace in the military and law enforcement.


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