Good Morning, Conflucians. The big story of the day is the massacre at Fort Hood in Texas. Last night it was reported that the shooter, Major Malik Nadal Hasan, was dead. But he is still alive and in stable condition even though he was shot several times. It still isn’t clear what motivated Hasan, who was a both a devout Muslim and a psychiatrist and was going to be deployed to Iraq at the end of November. A short time ago, the 13th shooting victim died. Reports say that 31 victims were injured.
From The New York Times: Suspect Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment to War
Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist.
But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia.
He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying Da
Hasan may have posted sympathetic writings about suicide bombers on the internet. Someone with the same name did so, according to this and other stories. Hasan had not told his family he was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq.
More Stories on the Shooting and Aftermath:
Army post shooting rampage leaves 13 dead, 30 hurt
NYT:
Army Doctor Held in Fort Hood Rampage
NYT: Shooting Victims Flood Local Hospitals
Raw Story: Muslims fear backlash in wake of Fort Hood massacre
Other stories on Hasan:
SF Examiner: Troubling portrait emerges of Army psychiatrist suspected in rampage at Fort Hood, Texas
Roanoke Times: Suspected Fort Hood shooter Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan: Social awkwardness kept with him into adulthood
Analysis of the Fort Hood Story
There is an excellent discussion of the significance of the story by Dahr Jamail at Truthout: Mass Shooting Indicates Breakdown of Military
Jamail interviewed a soldier at Fort Hood who spoke on condition of anonymity.
The soldier says that the mood on the base is “very grim,” and that even before this incident, troop morale has been very low.
“I’d say it’s at an all-time low – mostly because of Afghanistan now,” he explained. “Nobody knows why we are at either place, and I believe the troops need to know why they are there, or we should pull out, and this is a unanimous feeling, even for folks who are pro-war.”
After a similar incident in May, in which
a US soldier gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling center at a US base in Baghdad. Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, told reporters at a news conference at the Pentagon that the shootings occurred in a place where “individuals were seeking help.”
“It does speak to me, though, about the need for us to redouble our efforts, the concern in terms of dealing with the stress,” Admiral Mullen said. “It also speaks to the issue of multiple deployments.”
Commenting on the incident in nearly parallel terms, US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates said that the Pentagon needs to redouble its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war zones; stress that is further exacerbated by limited time at home in between deployments.
The condition described by Mullen and Gates is what veteran health experts often refer to as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).
How much longer will our government continue sending people back to Iraq and Afghanistan even though they are suffering from serious psychological disorders?
We need to end both of these wars, but will President Obama have the courage to do it when it might mean he’ll be a one-term President? That is what Gary Wills claims in a recent blog post at The New York Review of Books blog. Wills foolishly believes that Obama has the will and the guts to do what Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon didn’t do when we were in Vietnam. Poor Gary. He’ll wake up to reality eventually, no doubt.
OTHER NEWS
Wall Street Firms getting H1N1 Vaccine ‘ahead of hospitals’
Pelosi scrambles for health care votes
Details on Health Care Bills in House, Senate
Pentagon pursuing new investigation into Bush propaganda program
Deal Over Honduran Crisis ‘Dead’
Families in Cleveland Wait for ID’s of Victims
Texas polygamist sect member found guilty of sexual assault
After all that horrible news, here’s an interesting story from developmental psychology and specifically my own field–language development.
Babies ‘cry in mother’s tongue’
Babies Cry With an Accent, Study Finds
Newborns Cry With the Melody of Their Parent’s Language
I hope today will be a better day than yesterday.
THANK GOODNESS IT’S FRIDAY
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Filed under: Barack Obama, morning news | Tagged: Dahr Jamail, Fort Hood, Gary Wills, Goldman Sachs, H1N1, language development, Malik Nadal Hasan, mass murder, Morning News Links, post-traumatic stress, Swine flu vaccine, violence against Women | 84 Comments »
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