Fort Hood
Normally I don't pick up on a topic I think is being adequately covered in the media, being dealt with by professionals who are getting paid and able to spend all day sorting the details. I get paid to copy catalog. The library gets the attentive hours of my day, the landlord gets the money. When I feel an issue is being under-covered, a dimension is being missed. When an unhelpful reticence or over-focus has crept into an issue. I try to write something. With the tragic mass shootings at Fort Hood by Army Major Nidal Hasan
Army Doctor Held as Fort Hood Rampage Kills 12 - NYTimes.com, it is critical to try to separate what it was from what it wasn't. It is an issue with deep implications for those of Middle Eastern heritage serving in the U S armed services, and potentially many others as well. It is not the first time issues like this have come to the fore either. In virtually all conflicts, situations involving national religious or ethnic loyalties are involved. Beyond these issues there are considerations for the manpower levels and of the deployment schedule pressures the armed services are trying to maintain.
It was in many ways a classic Lone Gunman shooting. Similar to many other lone gun man style mass shootings. To the Virginia Tech Shootings. To the New York state shootings; where Jiverly Voong a 42 year old Vietnamese immigrant shot 13 people to death in an Binghamton NY immigration Center in April of this year, attracting relatively little attention at the time In Binghamton, Failure and Paranoia Preceded a Massacre - NYTimes.com. It shares traits with a multiple shooting in Iraq during an in-country stress counseling session, last year or the year before
Nidal Malik Hasan case: Are Army psychiatrists overwhelmed? | csmonitor.com. It is similar to Columbine before that. The small arms massacre form seems to be a particular violence pathology. It is notable that issues of ethnicity, minority identity and existence run through many of these incidents.
It almost certainly involve pathology and psychosis, Mental illness. Even if that seems too easy a dismissal of what was involved. It is similar enough that so we can see missed signs. Recognize the disinclination to intercede, question or judge the slipping and confrontational behavior of another
Fort Hood Gunman Gave Signals Before His Rampage - NYTimes.com. We can see this was premeditated. Acting out un-contained murderous rage on long-standing perceived and nurtured grievances. Born from a brooding personality
Fort Hood shooting suspect: a man of contradictions | csmonitor.com. His personal doubts; whether his sense of who he was, his persona was strong enough to withstand the pressures and contradictions inherent in being a Muslim soldier in the U S Army. In potential overseas deployment; being an American soldier in a Muslim country. He seemed to believe that alone might destroy him. He may have been aware of mental illness existing in himself by this point. It had nothing to do with any warrior ethos, he became no soldier of Allah. Unless you admit war is essentially organized violence against the helpless. It was an act of deliberate cowardliness striking at the unarmed in a zone of safety. If the question arises is Hasan a traitor? The answer is certainly Yes. He was A U S soldier and had sworn an oath and took a uniform. He was in that uniform at the time he killed his comrades. A doctor as well and sworn to a transcendent Hippocratic oath to do no harm. His options were to sue for release from his commission and pay whatver financial penalty was required for his medical training, refuse to serve overseas and accept courts martial, or to go even to simply go AWOL and accept whatever punishments might result from that.
What it wasn't was some case of immediate "snapping". Rapid onset mental illness dissipating responsibility. It was not likely Post or pre Traumatic Stress Disorder. Since he had only anecdotal if clinical information of the conduct of the wars in the middle east, not direct experience. As one soldier noted dryly PTSD does not generally lead one to become more organized and carry out complex tasks. It also does not seem to be actual terrorism. Evil Islamic terrorism or otherwise. No reason to go there unless you want already to go there. Unless you want to brand Islam as only a theology of violence and evil. Unless you desire to transition Arabs and Muslims to a second class citizenship throughout the west
Lieberman Suggests Army Shooter Was 'Home-Grown Terrorist'. Terrorism is by definition a political act. To affect the thoughts and emotions of a populace through fear and achieve some deliberate end. In this it is often crippled by the fact that it is applied against an /other, who the instigators of terror often do no understand well. Ironically making it an essentially pointless act in the end. Maj. Hasan's murders were nearly (but not purely) reactive; a desperate and irrational act to destroy or alleviate suffering. Violence performed as anodyne. Nidal Hasan seems to have attempted to reposition his fears as a counter-crusade. A selfless act of self destruction such as the Japanese Kamikaze pilots. Engaging in a removed radicalization to create a rationalization of heroism in his own mind. Showing only the ugliness of his convictions
Hasan on Islam - washingtonpost.com The strains his pathology had taken went beyond beyond anything obtainable through direct reason. Hasim's other rationalization; injunctions against Muslim taking arms against other Muslims is red herring. Agit Prop by those in extremist communities seeking to distance radicalize. Requiring them to overlook widespread wars and internecine violence of the last twenty years as Islamic society struggles primarily with itself. As some seek power and seperation, others to find points of reconciliation with the larger world, West or East. The Hasan murders are also not a marker of reasonable due diligence by the Army or US intelligence agencies. Paralleling the disinclination by his acquaintances and coworkers to deal directly with potential signs of mental instability, is the disinclination of the military authorities to confront the signs that a soldier was turning openly against his mission, becoming increasingly radicalized not merely losing his ability to carry out his duty, but becoming a active threat to his comrades
Blame game erupts over probe of Fort Hood suspect - Yahoo! News. For the US to try to maintain the same level of military involvement in conflicts in the Middle East in the coming decade as we committed ourselves to in the previous decade, without a substantial reduction in the level of violence is a peril that runs as a dark undercurrent throughout this sad story.
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