Sure, Nidal Hasan communicated with known radicals, denounced national defense strategy, claimed to be a “soldier of Allah” on his business cards, told fellow doctors “infidels” should be beheaded or boiled in oil and shouted the jihadist battle cry before allegedly opening fire at Fort Hood, Texas, earlier this month.

But who could have predicted the 39-year-old Army major and psychiatrist was a security threat? After all, he'd been a frequent visitor to a local strip club - and everybody knows real terrorists desire only heavenly virgins, not lap dances.

So I'll not join the now-tired chorus of people who have used the luxury of hindsight to point out how political correctness - the fear of being labeled “anti-Islam” - seems to have prevented what is supposedly the bravest and most powerful military on Earth from investigating a soldier who was, at the very least, guilty of obvious insubordination.

Now that 13 people are dead and another 29 are wounded, however, those who continue to deny the link between Hasan's professed beliefs and his actions deserve no such charity. Hasan is, by any meaningful definition, a terrorist - and to deny that fact, for either religious or political reasons, is as dishonest as it is dangerous.

In the immediate aftermath of the event, it was perfectly legitimate for President Obama to caution Americans against “jumping to conclusions” about the gunman's motive - even though he showed no such reticence when criticizing Massachusetts police for acting “stupidly” just hours after their arrest of a prominent black college professor in July.

But as we now know, some of the very people urging caution were in fact guilty of jumping to a conclusion that was, and remains, unsupported by the facts: the desire to blame almost any motive but the obvious one.

“I cringe that he's a Muslim. I mean, because it inflames all the fears. I think he's probably just a nut case,” said Newsweek's Evan Thomas, parroting the idea that Hasan, who never saw combat, might have suffered some sort of mental breakdown merely from having counseled soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan.

Even former Fort Wayne Mayor Paul Helmke tried to capitalize on the carnage: “This latest tragedy at a heavily fortified Army base ought to convince more Americans to reject the argument that the solution to gun violence is to arm more people with more guns and more places,” said Helmke, now head of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. Does he really think the outcome would not have been just a bit different had some of the victims been toting loaded assault rifles?

The reaction of top Obama officials was even more troubling. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano was strangely quiet about Hasan's background and beliefs, but quickly reassured the Arab world that the U.S. would try to prevent any anti-Muslim backlash.

And Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey, in a statement too bizarre for parody, said the shootings were “a tragedy, but it would be an even greater tragedy if our diversity becomes a casualty here.”

In other words, 13 deaths under his command were somehow less troubling than the possibility that soldiers' extreme beliefs might come under increased scrutiny, possibility preventing them from “serving” their country.

As for our commander in chief, whose administration will bring some of the Sept. 11 masterminds to trial in a New York courtroom and wants to investigate how the Bush administration compiled some of the evidence likely to be presented there, has urged Congress not to investigate the Fort Hood rampage for fear it could devolve into a “political theater.”

Too late.

There is, at least for now, no evidence Hasan was part of any conspiracy. But a lone terrorist is still a terrorist, and when so many powerful, smart and influential people insist on ignoring reality, and ask millions of others to do the same, their priorities are questionable, to say the least.

Even the Washington Post's Eugene Robinson, who never misses a chance to criticize racial profiling, began a recent column by pointing out the “difference between sensitivity and stupidity.” Indeed.

“Sensitivity” is the willingness to acknowledge that most American Muslims, and members of other religions, seem to find no conflict between serving both their god and their country.

“Stupid” is the possibly fatal refusal, in time of war, to identify a genocidal enemy it may be necessary to kill, but somehow wrong to offend.