So the emails the terrorist Hasan sent to a jihadist imam in Yemen were not deemed threatening? What if they were in code? American cryptographers succeeded in breaking the Japanese naval codes before Pearl Harbor. But they got messages like: “Climb Mount Iitaka.” How were U.S. intelligence officers supposed to know that that was the code name for the attack on the U.S. Naval Base in Hawaii?

Shouldn’t it be our policy that any contact between anyone in the U.S. and any jihadist abroad would be enough to bring the FBI swooping in? We should not care if our “person of interest” is asking the radical about the weather, or mountain climbing.

That’s what we would be doing if this administration were serious about the war on terror, which it is not. Franklin D. Roosevelt was the most liberal President before Barack Obama. But FDR was serious about our nation’s defense. When German-Americans came ashore planning to blow up electric power grids, Roosevelt had them arrested. He didn’t send them to Club Gitmo to read Mein Kampf under the palms. He had the captured saboteurs tried–in secret, by military tribunal–at the Washington Navy Yard. To make sure his Attorney General didn’t spend his time searching for new precedents on the civil liberties of would-be mass murderers, Roosevelt assigned Attorney General Biddle to lead the prosecution. The convicted terrorists were swiftly executed, by electric chair.

As to the response of the Army brass to Hasan’s obvious, flag-waving jihadism, it keeps getting worse. Reporters viewing Hasan’s Texas apartment found prescription drugs–prescriptions that Hasan apparently wrote for himself. That these prescriptions were apparently filled in military pharmacies shows a near-total breakdown of security. Physicians are not permitted to write their own scrips. That’s basic.

Imagine this scene: “Mo” is a civilian employee in a Navy hospital. He’s a Gulf War veteran. He seems to spend an inordinate amount of time drawing pictures of the Commanding Officer (CO) with a noose around his neck. Other employees, civilian and military, are concerned. Questioned about it, Mo says: “I want to see the CO with a rope around his neck, with his eyes bulging out.”

The Executive Officer (XO), informed by Mo’s immediate supervisor, moves quickly. Mo must go, says XO. There’s resistance from civilian personnel. XO does not budge. XO does not recommend sensitivity training, or counseling by the base chaplain. Mo must go. “Do you realize he’ll still be getting full pay and benefits,” they ask XO. “I don’t care,” says XO, “he’s a danger to my people. He cannot work here.” Unused to such determination, civilian personnel tries another tack: “Captain, have you ever worked with civilian employees before?” “Yes,” says

XO firmly, “for about 25 years. Mo must go.”

Mo went. That day. No compromise was allowed when an employee threatened to go “postal.”

Mo knew where XO lived, just a few hundred yards from the hospital. Mo might have gone into XO’s quarters and shot the place up, killing the family that lived there.

XO knew that when she gave the order “Mo must go.” And I will be grateful forever to my wonderful wife, Captain Kathleen Morrison, for giving that order.

Captain Kathleen Morrison retired from the Medical Service Corps of the U.S. Navy in 2001, three months before 9/11. She served for 30 years.

Tags: President Obama

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