"All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing" Edmund Burke
As the story of Nidal Hassan unfolds, it becomes painfully clear that the Jihadi Shrink who opened fire on US troops at Fort Hood did everything but spray paint, "I Am Going To Kill You All" on the wall, before he actually carried out his attack.
Not only did Hassan put a Jihadist abbreviation on his business cards, he delivered repeated lectures justifying Jihad, accused the soldiers he was supposed to treat of War Crimes and was already being investigated for contacts with Al Queda and for defending suicide bombing online.
But the thing that Nidal Hassan had going for him, that the snow globes and baby bottles filled with breast milk didn't, is that Hassan was a Muslim, and ever since 9/11, Americans have been repeatedly warned against criticizing Islam.
Told over and over again that Islam is the Religion of Peace, and that just because all our foreign terrorists happen to be Muslims acting in the name of Islam does not actually matter. Just as all those Japanese planes flying toward Pearl Harbor and the German factories producing tanks meant nothing in the 1930's.
Hassan's superiors were well aware of what he was, but none of them wanted to risk a charge of Islamophobia. And so they remained silent and soldiers died. That is not a chant you will hear from anti-war activists at the gates of the White House, but that is exactly what happened.
And Hassan's case is far from unique. There is no telling how many terrorists have flown under the radar because officials were afraid to be accused of profiling or charged with racism. We may never know what reports were never paid attention to because it has become more acceptable to lose American lives, than detain a Muslim.
In the face of Islamic terror, there are endless desks staffed by good men who do nothing and say nothing. Because they have been told that it is more important to be silent, than to take action, when it comes to the Islamic Jihad against all non-Muslims.
It is more important to search everyone, than to profile Muslim terrorists. It is better to have lax security, than to have good security that may make some of our friends from Saudi Arabia or Pakistan feel upset. That is how we did it before 9/11. And that is how we are doing it today, as Khalid Sheikh Mohammed gets his lawyers and the media does the hard work of manufacturing Nidal Hassan's PTSD by Proxy defense for him out of thin air, and the radical Imams whom Nidal Hassan came into contact with are whitewashed with the usual thin paste of the Religion of Peace.
But silence on Islam kills. It kills when we remain silent about the Nidal Hassans in our midst. It kills when people look away as honor killings among Muslim families continues to grow.
It kills as Muslim gangs like the Muslim Boys in the UK form and it kills as Muslim riots claim the lives of innocent people, as they repeatedly do in Europe. But when it comes to Muslims, there is a code of silence that falls over even the most committed officials. A directive that warns them to look away, to make excuses and to blame anything and everything but Islam. To deny the truth and cover up the crime.
While Hassan is one example of the cost of silence, honor killings are another.
The willingness of American and European social workers to ignore abuse in Muslim families as "part of their culture" or worse yet to recruit Muslim police officers who often take the victim right back to the abuser, is part of the same Culture of Silence on Islam.