People’s investigation of Fort Hood shootings needed

The shootings at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, which left 13 people dead, have brought into bold relief the terrible strains on soldiers and their families as we enter the eighth year of the alleged “war on terror.”

Washington politicians and Pentagon brass are exploiting the deaths for political gain. A Senate committee headed by Joe Lieberman seeks to conflate the desperate outburst of the alleged shooter, Maj. Nidal Hasan, with a new “terrorist threat,” and to intensify racial profiling inside and outside the military.

Police agencies are exploiting the shooting to obtain more repressive powers. Meanwhile, the corporate-owned media are attempting to implicate Yemeni Imam Anwar al-Aulaqi and the Muslim community as a whole.

But in fact, as ABC News reported Nov. 16, Hasan was repeatedly rebuffed and ignored by his superiors when he sought prosecution of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan that were brought to his attention by Army personnel in psychiatric counseling.

An unnamed federal investigator told ABC, “The Army may not want to admit it, and you may not hear much about it, but it was very big for him.” Hasan was also about to be deployed to an overseas combat zone.

Now Hasan faces 13 counts of premeditated murder. Army prosecutors are expected to seek the death penalty. It is obvious that in a military court he cannot receive a fair trial. Will such a trial allow his defense to include information about U.S. war crimes committed against the people of Afghanistan?

The scapegoating of Muslims that has already accompanied this traumatic event presents a real danger of new violent attacks on Arab, South Asian, Black Muslim and other communities. This danger will grow and intensify as the military case against Hasan proceeds.

It comes as Washington is undertaking a new campaign of repression against Muslims and those who dare to defend them, including the FBI assassination of Imam Luqman Ameen Abdullah in Detroit, the seizure of four mosques in New York allegedly linked to Iran, and the revocation of bail for civil rights attorney Lynne Stewart.

Today millions of military families are struggling to make ends meet. The suicide rate in the U.S. Army will hit an all-time high this year. Workers in the U.S. face the worst unemployment since the Great Depression.

Yet the priority of government and military officials is to make scapegoats while continuing their “endless war.”

The real criminals are those who profit from Pentagon wars and their political mouthpieces who block every attempt to bring the troops home. The deaths at Fort Hood are on their hands, along with the thousands of U.S. soldiers’ deaths and hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan and elsewhere.

It is both appropriate and necessary for labor, community and anti-war organizations to call for an independent people’s investigation of the Fort Hood tragedy; one that takes into account the suffering of Nidal Hasan and other soldiers faced with being killed or killing their sisters and brothers in racist wars for profit and domination.

It is urgent to raise the demand that Washington stop scapegoating Muslim, Arab and South Asian communities and bring all the troops home now.