Out of the tens of thousands of Trump supporters protesting in Washington, D.C., on Jan. 6, just one of them has been positively identified as being both a member of the military and a participant in the riot at the U.S. Capitol. Naturally, that has Democrats and the media sounding the alarm about a rash of “white supremacy” and “extremism” within the armed forces.
Pentagon press secretary John Kirby said this week that military leaders had been ordered to “stand down” for some unspecified period of time over the next two months to have “needed discussions” with service members about extremism.
Similarly, back in mid-January, the New York Times reported that the Defense Department “is intensifying efforts to identify and combat white supremacy and other far-right extremism in its ranks as federal investigators seek to determine how many military personnel and veterans joined the violent assault on the Capitol.”
The FBI is reportedly investigating 25 individuals at the riot who might be active service members or veterans, according to the Military Times. Almost nothing is known about the status or details of any of the investigations. The only service member who authorities have fingered as part of the siege on the Capitol is Timothy Louis Hale-Cusanelli, an Army reservist.
But yes, let’s panic over some unknown element of “extremism” that has seized our military.
By the way, back in 2012, the FBI said it was tracking more than 100 active-duty members who were suspected of being Islamic extremists. Has that threat just suddenly disappeared? I don’t recall the military pausing for any “needed discussions” about that kind of extremism.
In fact, the media were adamant that it didn’t exist, even after Army Maj. Nidal Hasan, a serviceman of Palestinian descent, shot up Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 people. Hasan was known to have been communicating with Muslim extremists, and yet, the Army never even labeled the massacre an act of terrorism.
The riot in the Capitol was no picnic. It resulted in the deaths of five people. That’s still not as many as Hasan took with him, and incidentally, most of those killed were rioters, not innocent bystanders. (All of those who died were Trump supporters, including the policeman who perished while trying to keep order.)
What’s happening is obvious. The Biden administration is simply using an unfortunate incident to keep the media frothing about their favorite subjects — racism, “white supremacy,” and “right-wing extremism.”
Every corner of the administration has been doing this each day since it began. The military is no exception.
