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Fort Hood shooting: portrait of a lone misfit begins to emerge
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(Getty)
Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, allegedly opened fire Thursday afternoon at the post's Soldier Readiness Center, where troops deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan receive last-minute medical checkups.
The gunman shouted "Allahu Akbar!" --God is great-- before opening fire. (Some witnesses say the didn't hear any of that at all.)
Hasan remains hospitalized, unconscious and on a ventilator; he's paralyzed and expected to recover.
The president has ordered all flags to fly at half staff until Veteran's Day.
Though military officials have refused to discuss Hasan, a complicated picture is beginning to develop of what appears to be an angry misfit. But in seeking to understand why a psychiatrist trained to help soldiers cope with the stress of warfare instead turned on them, the media has patched together little more than fragmentary and contradictory stories so far.
He was born in the D-C area --Arlington, VA. His parents were Palestinian immigrants. Hasan himself went to local schools, graduated from Virginia Tech. He then joined the Army --that's how he got his medical education, trained as a psychiatrist who served for several years at Walter Reed Medical Center, specializing in treating soldiers with combat stress. He was transferred earlier this year to Fort Hood.
He is a devout Muslim who took his faith very seriously. Whether this is relevant or not, it's too early to tell.
He was put on probation early in his postgraduate work at the Uniformed Service University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, MD. He was disciplined for proselytizing about his Muslim faith with patients and colleagues, according to the source, who worked with him at the time.
In an interview with the Washington Post, Hasan's aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, VA, said he had been harassed about being a Muslim in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and that he wanted out of the Army.
"Some people can take it, and some people cannot," she said. "He had listened to all of that and he wanted out of the military."
The Houston Chronicle talks to a 7-Eleven manager who says nothing seemed out of the ordinary early yesterday when Hasan went into the store for his daily hash browns. "He came in [Thursday] morning just like normal," she said, "nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary." A few hours later, Hasan was in the largest U.S. military facility in the world, and he just began shooting.
7-Eleven surveillance video
It's already been reported that he was said to be upset by his deployment to Iraq. It's also been reported that he was upset by the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Terry Lee, a retired Army colonel who knew Hasan, told Fox News about a story he heard secondhand. He said a fellow colleague had told him that Hasan had made "outlandish comments" about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and U-S involvement in them and that "Muslims had a right to rise up and attack Americans in Iraq and Afghanistan."
"[He] made comments about how we shouldn't be over there – you need to lock it up, Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor," Lee added.
But the suspect's cousin, Nader Hasan, gave Fox News a different picture. He said his cousin had never deployed but was affected by the war and had been concerned about his impending deployment.
"He would tell us how he would hear things, horrific things, things from war probably affecting him psychologically," Nader Hasan said.
One story that is still being mined is to what degree his years working as a military psychiatrist affected him in counseling stressed military veterans.
Mental health issues have come to the forefront at the Pentagon because of the stress of repeated deployments over the past eight years with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a consequence, mental health counseling at the nation's various military posts has become increasingly important.
(NY Times)
Three days before the shooting, Fort Hood base commander, Lt. Gen. Robert Cone, issued a new mental health policy aimed at reducing the stigma associated with mental health counseling and encouraging soldiers to seek help, reassuring them that seeking such help wouldn't be held against them for security clearances and such. The directive makes clear that it's the responsibility of base commanders and psychiatric personnel to see to it that soldiers seek counseling and treatment.
Just being deployed can be stressful, and Hasan had never seen combat. There are many cases of suicide in the military, both before and after deployment.
One psychiatrist at Walter Reed who knew and worked with Hasan says that for most of his four years at Walter Reed, Hasan was lazy in his training, and not always punctual --he often didn't show up for work on time. He wasn't focused in his work and didn't seem to take it seriously. He was counseled by a number of supervisors.
The second thing the fellow psychiatrist at Walter Reed said was that he and co-workers were not at all worried that he was a devout Muslim but it was the way he talked about it. A couple of years ago he gave a Grand Rounds presentation. That's when all the doctors come into a big auditorium and you take turns giving a lecture on procedures, diagnosis and treatment and so forth --the best treatment for bipolar, or schizophrenia, etc.
Instead of giving an academic lecture, Hasan gave a lecture on the Koran, and it wasn't informational as much as it was his own interpretation of it --as the co-workers put it. He talked about how if you're a non-believer, the Koran says you should have your head cut off, you should have burning oil poured down your throat, you should be set on fire.
Another Muslim in the audience, another psychiatrist, raised his hand, quite disturbed and said, "Ya know, a lot of us [Muslims] do not believe these things you're saying."
People actually talked in the hallways afterward whether Hasan was one of these people so tightly wound that he might one day freak out and shoot people --sort of half kidding and half serious.
The rush to judgment is typical and it's also easy because you can close the book on the story and say, oh, jihadist Muslim. It could be, but to automatically decide that just because he's a Muslim is assinine, primitive and prejudiced.
Was it Muslim extremism? The FBI doesn't know. (Islamic groups were quick to condemn the killing after it became clear that the suspected shooter was Muslim.)
Was he angry over his deployment to Iraq? The FBI doesn't know.
Was he a lone nut who snapped? The FBI doesn't know.
Can't we wait until we have more information --ya know, innocent before proven guilty?
Another disturbing question
Fort Hood, though a military base, operates much like a small town. It's very 9-to-5-ish. People live on post, they go to work, they go home. The only difference is that everyone wears the same clothes --a uniform. No one carries weapons on them except when out on training exercises --otherwise, you have to get permission to obtain a weapon. Even your own have to be secured elsewhere. Although if you see someone on post with a gun, it's not like you're going to run and report it. You assume the person with the weapons followed proper procedures to obtain it.
The point being that this is almost beginning to appear as if this couldn't have been prevented. That what we have may be someone who snapped, just like someone might snap at work, go nuts and shoot up the place. We've seen people --people who were fired, let's say-- return to an office and start shooting. We've seen people rejected or ostracized take out their frustration violently --not unlike the Virginia Tech shootings of a couple of years ago.
Here's a troubling question: Do you have people at work who may be wound a little too tightly? A co-worker you think might not be playing with a full deck? What do you do? Report it to a supervisor? Tell a co-worker? The person might be just wired differently than you and be totally safe to be around. How can you tell?
Or do you go to a supervisor and say, "I'm telling you, I see something in this person that is dangerous."
Have you ever been in such a situation? It's scary when you think you're working with someone who might snap, but what do you do? Is there any way to prevent an incident like this from happening, be it a military base or at a civilian place of work?
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