Patrick Poole, a counterterrorism consultant to law enforcement agencies and the military, said he expects more attacks like the one that occurred at Fort Hood because the Pentagon so far is unable to produce a “threat model” that correctly identifies the threat posed by both internal and external jihadism.
“The case of Maj. Hasan is Exhibit A on existing jihadist threats from inside the military,” Mr. Poole told Inside the Ring. “Had anyone dared to officially protest Hasan’s extremism, they would not only have been risking their military careers, but would have certainly faced a harassment lawsuit fully supported by [some Muslim] groups. … It’s not that warning signs were missed, but they were willfully ignored.”
Mr. Poole said Gen. Casey’s comments on diversity were shocking and indicate that “the Pentagon brass are doubling-down on the see-no-evil, speak-no-evil culture responsible for this incident. And more soldiers are going to die until that changes.”
Among the other incidents of Muslim extremism in the military, Mr. Poole noted the case of Ali Mohamed, an al Qaeda military chief who was an Army sergeant at the Special Warfare Center at Fort Bragg, N.C., during the late 1980s. There he gathered intelligence before defecting to help al Qaeda with its war-fighting skills. Mohamed was allowed to continue working at Fort Bragg despite warnings from both the Army and Egypt’s military that he held jihadist beliefs, Mr. Poole said.
Mr. Poole said the military has policies designed to ferret out neo-Nazis, gang members and those with psychological problems from the ranks but is unwilling to do the same with radical Muslims. “Why these existing rules could not be applied to jihadism can only be explained by the delusion that there is no problem to solve,” he said.
“If jihadist ideology is so isolated from institutional Islam as Islamic groups claim, they should have no real fear of trying to weed out the jihadists in the military, because it has nothing to do with the thousands of Muslims who are serving honorably and courageously,” he said.
