Senator Joe Lieberman appeared on Fox News Sunday yesterday and spoke of Friday’s massacre on Fort Hood where reportedly Army Major Nidal Malik Hasan fired upon his fellow soldiers, murdering thirteen and wounding thirty-eight. In part, Lieberman said, “This was an attack on American troops. You’ve got to see it as if twelve Americans were killed in Afghanistan. … I’m intending to begin an investigation into … whether the Army missed warning signs.”
A majority of soldiers currently based in the U.S. have done at least one combat tour in either Iraq or Afghanistan and, once “safely home,” they supposedly decompress. Deployed, off base and “outside the wire,” it was often difficult to tell the non-belligerents from those who actually posed a threat to their lives; soldiers cope by constantly watching for warning signs and relying on their training.
Bringing in a panel of generals, sociologists and psychiatrists, and other “experts” to testify who have not been forward deployed in an actual combat zone would only mislead Senator Lieberman. The real experts — those wearing one to six stripes, a bar or two, and clusters on their collars — need to tell Senator Lieberman of back home, inside the wire of our military bases, what the command atmosphere concerning Muslims is really like, what is their threat assessment and what training they are being provided to cope with that threat.