Instead of tough, immediate action against every cog in the military machine that promoted, pampered and palliated the mass murderer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, victims got a commission of inquiry.

Or in Pentagon Speak, “a broad 45-day review.”

The state’s response to the slaughter at Fort Hood of 13 of its own by a Muslim Army psychiatrist, who also wounded more than 30 in the shootings at the Texas military post on Nov. 5, will be met, first, with more bureaucracy — more salaries for more slackers — and, thereafter, with a brick-thick report!

When asked what he would do if he were in charge of a soldier who was making radical statements, Mike Mullen, chairman of the joint chiefs ─ and an adherent of the military’s look away doctrine ─ mumbled about the need “to ensure that we treat everybody fairly.”

Everybody but the good guys. For his part, Attorney General Eric Holder has since promised to “work with this committee on ways in which we can prevent such a tragedy from occurring again.” And Tom Rooney, a Republican congressman from Florida, has begun the “difficult” work of exculpation: “telltale signs that [Hasan] was a disgruntled major were not as apparent as the rumors you’ve heard,” he informed reporters.

Was the Congressman referring to Hasan’s attempts to convert his patients to Islam? Or maybe to his hobnobbing with known Jihadists online? How about Hasan’s praise of suicide bombers, and the Soldier-of-Allah embossed calling card? Maybe Rep. Rooney means to imply that Hasan delivering lectures on Islam, instead of on the requisite course work, was no “telltale sign.”

Besides, if the military cares so much about the psyche and soma of the neediest of its men and women ─ why did it knowingly inflict on them an all-round, lousy student and practitioner?

If Rep. Rooney has some comforting news for the guinea-pig grunts the military forsook to Hasan’s ministrations, he had better be more specific.

Back at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan’s psychiatric supervisors ─ they practice a faith even more wicked than his own ─ had surmised, in their infinite wisdom, that he was probably delusional but not dangerous. These experts decided to give Hasan … time.

Sure, Maj. Scott Moran ─ he runs the residency program at Walter Reed ─ cautioned about “a pattern of poor judgment and a lack of professionalism.” Maj. Moran nevertheless recommended that Major Nidal go on to graduate. Apparently, he felt that Nidal would, in the fullness of time, experience a spontaneous improvement.

While it promotes and grants inordinate privileges and protections to incompetent Muslim miscreants ─ you don’t believe Hasan is an exception? ─ the military machine moves swiftly and speedily against patriotic Americans.

For coming out, Dan Choi, West Point graduate, Arabic linguist, and a Lieutenant in the United States Army, was fired in no time at all. No sooner did it become known that Choi was gay than he was dismissed. The same goes for “Sandy Tsao, who was booted from the military after telling her superiors she was gay back in January.”

When it comes to discharging gays and lesbians, the military is one fast and efficient bureaucracy.

You’ll be equally relieved to know that the same bloated behemoth is proceeding at full throttle against three U.S. Navy SEALs. Petty Officers Matthew McCabe, Jonathan Keefe and Julio Heurtas are accused by Ahmed Hashim Abed ─ thought to be behind the premeditated murder and mutilation of four U.S. contractors in Falluja in 2004 ─ of punching him.

As I’ve argued since September of 2002, Americans have no business in Iraq. But so long as our servicemen are there, they should not be hobbled in defending themselves, which is precisely what is happening. Before they are permitted to detain their attackers, soldiers are required to double up as cops, and go through a CSI-like protocol.

“Circumstances permitting,’ states a memo CNN obtained from the military, “evidence of criminal activity should include ‘photographs of the physical evidence,’ ‘photographs of the detainee at the crime scene or place of capture,’ as well as ‘photographs of the detainee next to the evidence.’ Other evidence should include a sketch of the crime scene, all physical evidence of the crime, and ‘statements written by first-hand witnesses to the criminal activity.'”

About the frustration of being forced to release most captured combatants, a soldier said this: “We’ve repeatedly found ourselves fighting the same enemy again and again.”

Thinking of enlisting? You’ll be fighting not for country and countrymen; but will be granting a banal bureaucrat a lien on your life.

As for the inquiry cobbled together to stop future Hasans: Permanent Secretary Sir Humphrey Appleby, a fictitious, but oh-so-real character in the brilliant British satires “Yes Minister” and “Yes Prime Minister,” would agree with me when I say that government commissions are where accountability goes to die.

To claim you correspond with an al Qaida recruiter for purposes of “research” is like saying you read Playboy Magazine for the articles.

The Jihadi who committed fratricide at Fort Hood would never have advanced such fatuities. Leave such deception to the nation’s military and intelligence establishment: Last December, no less than two Joint Terrorism Task Forces finessed Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s extensive correspondence with the infamous radical cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi as an innocent exchange.

The Muslim-American who murdered 13 people and maimed 31 on a United States Army post had been straightforward about his sympathies throughout his military career. Honest Hasan took every opportunity to inform his colleagues and classmates that he was a Muslim first, an American and an officer second, and that Islamic law usurped the Constitution. That minor tidbit failed to rattle the military.

During his secure career as a psychiatrist in the Army Medical Corps, Major Nidal, as he was known, openly proselytize for his faith. Preaching Islam to already traumatized patients did not hinder his rise through the ranks.

Since the Army was indifferent to Hasan’s place of worship─”a mosque led by a radical imam said to be a ‘spiritual adviser’ to three of the hijackers who attacked America on Sept 11, 2001″─it should come as no surprise that the FBI was equally unexercised about the man’s internet postings back in May of this year. On the Scribd.com website, user name “NidalHasan” compared “the actions of an American soldier who threw himself on a grenade in Iraq with those of Islamist suicide bombers.”

Hasan’s poor powers of reasoning─the analogy doesn’t work!─did not arise in a vacuum. Those “abilities” were hothoused in the military’s Jihadi-hospitable hospitals. Before unleashing Hasan at Fort Hood, his higher-ups had him practice his anti-kafir “craft” on damaged soldiers in the venerated VA system, the Walter Reed Army Medical Center, to be precise. A mother whose son was left to the mercies of the Major described him as scary, inappropriate and without empathy.

Instructed to “make a presentation on a medical topic of his choosing as a culminating exercise of the residency program,” Hasan came up with this: “The Koranic World View As It Relates To Muslims In The U.S. Military.” The Washington Post tells of how the man “stood before his supervisors and about 25 other mental health staff members and lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting in the Muslim countries of Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Would that his supervisors had at least failed this incompetent for his curricular creativity. As witnesses now crawling out of the woodwork attest, the products of the Major’s lazy, one-track mind drew no more than “really upset looks.” Substandard professional performance would get one purged from the private sector. It did nothing to undermine Hasan’s employment status, rank, six-figure income, and secret security clearance in the military.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s calling card advertised his commitment. Besides typos, the card features the SoA acronym which stands for “Soldiers of Allah.” Perhaps his superiors thought Hasan was a fan of a Muslim rap group that goes by that moniker.

If you doubt that psychiatry is quackery, read on. In mulling over Hasan’s devotional zeal, Army psychiatrists concluded that while he might be delusional, he was not dangerous. As an antidote to his preoccupation with Islam, Hasan was prescribed, wait for this, a course of lectures on Islam, the Middle East and terrorism.

The Diversity Doxology is clearly instantiated in the umpteenth iteration of the psychiatric Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. Duly, the Army’s voodooists accepted Hasan’s “areas of interest” as merely “different.” Difference, as you know, is to be cherished.

From YouTube footage we glean that the military minded not a bit that Hasan breezed about the base in his Jihadi jumpsuit. The wise monkeys of the military saw no evil, heard no evil, and most certainly spoke no evil of Holy Hasan. A Muslim driven by devotion─a potential murderer to the men around him; a martyr to his ilk─Hasan was being Hasan.

As an extension of government, I submit to you that so too was the military being true to itself. When Republicans and conservatives cavil about the gargantuan growth of government, they target the state’s welfare apparatus and spare its war machine. Unbeknown to these factions, the military is government. The military works like government; is financed like government, and sports many of the same inherent malignancies of government. Like government, it must be kept small.

Conservatives can’t coherently preach against the evils of big government, while excluding the military mammoth.

For all its faults and infractions, it is inconceivable that Blackwater Worldwide would, as a matter of policy, expose its warriors to a man like Major Nidal. No private security firm would subordinate the safety of its prized assets to the missions of left-liberalism.

Leave that to Lieutenant General Robert W. Cone, commander of III Corps at Fort Hood.

Manacled by multiculturalism, Cone was, moreover, careful to keep his grunts defenseless. “As a matter of practice, we don’t carry weapons here, this is our home,” he bragged about the “no-guns” policies on base. It remained for the victims at Fort Hood to wait for civilian police officers to rescue them from a lone gunman.

For 13 of the fragged men and women it was too late.

Grunts are not the only Americans who’ll soon be at the mercy of a dhimmi, DC-dominated, Jihadi protection program. Hasan was a medicine man─a “healer”─ in a system governed by codified laws of non-discrimination and political correctness. Rest assured that B. Hussein’s hulking healthcare ministry will hot-house more such Jihad-prone practitioners.