Jack & Jill Politics

One consequence of having been alive through a lot of modern American history is remembering a lot of mass shootings. I was working at a high school summer job when news came over the radio that Charles Whitman had gunned down more than 40 people, killing 14, from the main tower at the University of Texas at Austin. I was editing a news magazine during the schoolyard killings in Paducah, Kentucky in 1997 and sent reporters to try to figure out what it all meant. I can remember where I was when the live-news coverage switched to the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, and the shootings at the one-room schoolhouse in the Amish country of Pennsylvania, and the Virginia Tech shootings two years ago. And all the rest.

In the saturation coverage right after the events, the "expert" talking heads are compelled to offer theories about the causes and consequences. In the following days and weeks, newspapers and magazine will have their theories too. Looking back, we can see that all such efforts are futile. The shootings never mean anything. Forty years later, what did the Charles Whitman massacre "mean"? A decade later, do we "know" anything about Columbine? There is chaos and evil in life. Some people go crazy. In America, they do so with guns; in many countries, with knives; in Japan, sometimes poison.

We know the emptiness of these events in retrospect, though we suppress that knowledge when the violence erupts as it is doing now. The cable-news platoons tonight are offering all their theories and thought-drops. They've got to fill time. I wish they could stop. As the Vietnam-era saying went, Don't mean nothing.

RIP.

According to this Washington Post report, the shooter at the Ft. Hood massacre, Major Nidal M. Hasan was an American citizen born in Arlington, Virginia of Palestinian American parents. He had never married, and was a devout Muslim by all accounts. He had also allegedly asked for a discharge from the military for several years after suffering abuse and harassment by other members of the military for his religious beliefs following the attacks on September 11, 2001, according to his aunt.

He prayed every day at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, a devout Muslim who, despite asking to be discharged from the U.S. Army, was on the eve of his first deployment to war. Yesterday, authorities said Maj. Nidal M. Hasan, a 39-year-old Arlington-born psychiatrist, shot and killed 13 people at Fort Hood, Tex.
In an interview, his aunt, Noel Hasan of Falls Church, said he had endured name-calling and harassment about his Muslim faith for years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and had sought for several years to be discharged from the military.

"I know what that is like," she said. "Some people can take it, and some cannot. He had listened to all of that, and he wanted out of the military, and they would not let him leave even after he offered to repay" for his medical training.

The Wapo report describes a solitary figure who had spent his entire professional career in the US Army. He had worked at Walter Reed Hospital for most of his career treating trauma victims, his medical education and training had been paid for by the US military, and he was reported to be an adamant opponent of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. He had also allegedly come to the attention of law enforcement for posts he made on an internet website comparing suicide bombers to Japanese Kamikazi pilots who flew suicide missions against the US Navy in the Pacific during WWII.

According to his aunt, his work at Walter Reed for 8 years with trauma victims from Iraq and Afghanistan, and witnessing on a daily basis the effects of their psychological and physical injuries had had a profound effect on him. She describes him telling her of the patients he worked with who had suffered severe wounds, including one individual who had been so badly burned "that his face had nearly melted." The portrait Hassan's aunt paints of him is of a quiet, serious, solitary individual, who was frustrated by the Army's refusal to grant him a discharge. She claims he must have "snapped" under the pressure of all that he had experienced since 9/11 and under the deadline of his coming deployment to a war zone. Last night on the Rachel Maddow show, Rachel reported on conversations Major Hassan allegedly had with a man, a fellow Muslim, who worked at a convenience store that Hassan frequented each morning to buy coffee. In one of those conversations Major Hassan reportedly stated that he had qualms about being deployed to a war zone where he might be faced with the possibility of harming or killing fellow Muslims. She showed video surveillance tape from the store security camera of Major Hassan, dressed in tradition Arab garb, on the morning of the shooting. Here's video from CNN which ran the same footage:

A cousin of Major Hassan, Nader Hassan, stated to Shepard Smith of Fox News, in a live interview that Hassan had never told his cousin or other family members that he was scheduled to be deployed overseas. His cousin describes conversations with Major Hassan regarding his work at Walter Reed and the "horrific things" he heard from his patients about the war. He also confirmed Hassan's aunt's statements to the Washington Post that Major Hassan had experienced harassment at Walter Reed because of his faith and ethnicity. This cousin, Nader Hassan, stated that Major Hassan had at one time employed an attorney in an attempt to obtain a discharge, and that he had been seeking to leave the military for several years. The cousin also stated that Major Hassan had no history of past violent behavior, or of making statements condoning violence to members of their family. Nader Hassan described the family of his cousin as being in shock over what happened.

These details suggest that Major Hassan acted alone based on his personal experiences and beliefs, and that his failure to obtain a discharge from the Army plus the upcoming deployment he faced was the likely trigger that led to this incident. If Major Hassan is the shooter at Ft. Hood as alleged, he seemingly fits many of the characteristics of a disgruntled employee who commits mass murder at his workplace. He was socially isolated at work, a loner by nature, and had for a long time repressed his feeling of isolation, anger, stress and anxiety regarding his work situation. Such individuals, seeing no other way out make a deliberate choice to murder their colleagues as an act of vengeance against the institution which they feel has wronged them.

If all these claims are are proven to be true in the upcoming days and weeks, the fact that Major Hassan was not allowed to leave military service based on his objections to the wars and the stress he experienced as a result of his job will be shown to be a grave error. If he had been allowed to leave, this tragedy likely could have been avoided.

YOUR OBLIGATION

Your active duty service obligation to the U.S. Army is one year of service for every year you receive the scholarship. Your minimum obligation depends on your health care field. For example, the minimum obligation for medical students is two years. Dental, psychology, optometry and veterinary students are obligated to serve no fewer than three years. There is an additional obligation for residency and fellowship training.