The Fort Hood Massacre
So much of this story defies simple common sense that it is difficult to get to grips with it.
I don't know who was crazier, the shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan, or the people that assigned someone with his profile the task of treating traumatized soldiers returning from fighting Muslims.
It seems to me pure sadism on the US Army's part.
In the course of his work Nidal Malik Hasan was hearing the stories of soldiers returning from harrowing combat duty in Muslim countries, where the enemy was of the same religion as he is, and in the case of Iraq, of the same ethnic group as his.
Imagine the dynamic:
Dr/Maj Hasan is a first generation Palestinian-American and a pray-five-times-a-day-type, devout Muslim, surrounded in the US Army by a disproportionate number of born-again-Christian, racist and red-neck-scotch-irish-southerners, many of whom consider his religion a form of satanism and his ethnic group little more than animals.
I would imagine that quite often in treating these soldiers that many of them, as part of their "therapy", would express extremely racist and hostile attitudes toward Islam and toward Muslims and narrate in great and explicit detail the atrocities they may have committed or the fantasies they might entertain of committing against Muslim men and women. Doing this would probably be a healing "catharsis" for the soldiers, but it might just have produced a malignant catharsis in Dr/Maj Hasan.
It may have been that Dr. Hasan became radicalized by this daily bombardment and had begun to identify with the Muslim suicide bombers that his patients pursued.
All said, what Hasan did was very American, he didn't strap on an explosive belt and go for the 72 virgins, he got a gun and went on a shooting spree.... American as apple pie.
We take our comfort where we can these days.
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Recommended reading, by Muslim soldier that prayed with Hasan, and argued with him:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/kamran-pasha/a-muslim-soldiers-view-fr_b_348973.html
November 7, 2009 1:38 PM | Reply | Permalink
I think the problem was one of a therapist, not a soldier.
Imagine that as a therapist you had been abused as a child and as a psychiatrist for the penal system you were forced to treat child abusers. Or an African-American shrink forced to treat KKK activists or a Jewish one forced to treat nazi-skinheads... it might drive you around the bend. I think Hasan was forced in his work to hear too many ghastly stories too much hate directed toward his religion and ethnic group.
It would be tough enough to be a US Muslim on the American side of the "Long War" without having to hear the outpouring of these mentally disturbed soldiers.
November 7, 2009 1:54 PM | Reply | Permalink
If I were Hasan's lawyer I would enter a plea of temporary insanity and I would encourage victims to bring charges of negligence against the US Army for placing both Hasan and the soldiers he was treating in this situation.
It is not only that Hasan is a Muslim, he is also a first generation Palestinian, with all the baggage that carries. Palestinian is not the same as the "prosperous South-Asians" that Tom's Huffington Post article talks about. And being an Arab in the USA since 9-11 has got to be a wrenching experience: certainly a huge number of the world's Muslims, probably most of them, think that the USA is at war with Islam and almost all Palestinians think of the USA as their enemy's number one enabler, protector and best friend.
The army should have given Hasan an honorable discharge and sent him on his way years ago.
My dad was an officer in the US Army for 12 years, before and during WWII and he often regaled me with stories of the army's boundless, mind bending stupidity... This entire affair brings his stories all to life for me .
November 7, 2009 2:14 PM | Reply | Permalink
I had similar thoughts, not put as nicely as you of course.
I cannot get my arms or my head around this one at all.
And what the f...is that fascist governor on cable all the time when he declines to comment? It is a Federal installation is it not? I mean he surely has a role to play as a citizen's rep who will support the military in their important investigation blah blah blah
I do not know why he was chosen for this particular gig either.
November 7, 2009 6:12 PM | Reply | Permalink
David, I agree with all of your points. But psychiatrists are trained to find ways of dealing with terrible situations in a healthy way. Regardless of the horrible judgement of putting him in this situation, there is something more, something beyond being pissed off, and being in pain going on here. Temporary insanity? Maybe, but from what I heard about his giving away his furniture, etc makes me think that he also made a grim decision.
There are things that people do that are unforgivable even if they are sick, and this is one of them. I personally know a doctor who went through med school on the government's dime and then reneged on his contract. All he had to do way pay for his education, so it is NOT impossible to get out of the army even if they paid for your education.
From what I've read there seems to have been a fair amount of premeditation here. And come to think of it, how could the army legitimately assign people to only do tasks that they are philosophically okay with?
OK, I'm thinking out loud here.
November 7, 2009 8:01 PM | Reply | Permalink
Not to take away from your bigger point but apparently he did try to get out by paying for his education but was denied. Military policy can change in an instant. The army has quotas to meet. Keeping him in helped them meet their quota for doctors even if it was counterproductive to [mental] health care.
November 7, 2009 8:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
Yes. I agree. It sounds like torture.
November 7, 2009 9:33 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't see any evidence that he was crazy. He worked with mental health experts and they didn't think he was crazy.
It seems quite obvious that Hasan was motivated, at least in part, by his religious/political beliefs. He knew exactly what he was doing. His attack was planned, diliberate, and focused directly at the U.S. military.
November 8, 2009 1:48 AM | Reply | Permalink
Hasas fits the profile of a multiple murderer of this sort: a male asocial loner with difficulty making social contacts, no successful romantic relationship, limited social support and trauma in his background (loss of both his parents) and facing a job crisis.
It is precisely this type of individual -- weakened by his difficulties -- who can be triggered by an absolutist type of (political) ideology AND the sadistic job situation he chose to remain in.
This also appears to be suicide by army -- once he could define a 'suicide bomber' as sacrificing oneself to save comrades, he felt free to throw away his life in this fashion despite the prohibition in his religion against suicide.
So multiple causation:
1. damaged personality
2. political ideology with grievances real and imagined.
3. choosing the other side in what he perceived as a fight between Americans and Muslims
4. Job situation which was psychologically grueling on several levels.
Not clear that he is either a psychopath or a criminal -- he may just have been someone who decided to be a soldier on the other side of the war we are fighting.
November 8, 2009 7:24 AM | Reply | Permalink
cville you cant have it both ways, if you use the word sick so loosely, for example (mental illness) is sickness of the mind and the 2 most commonly known forms when a crime is involved are delusion & insanity; if you are insane there is no culpability no matter how dire the crime, however, in law culpability can be proven in suspects deemed delusional also known as temporarily insane.
November 8, 2009 4:10 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think Hasan was crazy in a clinical sense, I think he was "crazed" by a crazy situation. A situation that I consider pure sadism on the army's part.
During WWII the Japanese-American, Nisei battalion, fought heroically against... the Germans ... nobody asked them to fight the Japanese. I think this showed plain common sense.
November 8, 2009 6:05 AM | Reply | Permalink
We don't know if he was crazy in a clinical sense.
Up here in the "German Heartland" the veterans' cemetaries are full of German-Americans who fought Germans in two wars.
November 8, 2009 10:14 AM | Reply | Permalink
German-Americans were quickly assimilated into the WASP elite, just as soon as they learned English. This is not, repeat NOT true of any other immigrant ethnic group... certainly not Arab or Muslim-Americans.
November 8, 2009 10:40 AM | Reply | Permalink
Well, plenty are more like the stone cold conservative German Catholics who make up Michele Bachmann's district.
I do agree about the problems of assimilation across cultures but that's very complicated and I'm mainly concerned about the rush to judgement. The military is caught in a bind here. How do you cross that cultural divide and make sense of the wars you've bumbled into if you exclude those most likely to have empathy with the peoples they are fighting? We're not fighting the kind of unconditional surrender nuke them till they quit kind of war we fought with Japan (nor are we creating camps for Muslims in the Dakotas, I hope).
November 8, 2009 11:13 AM | Reply | Permalink
My paternal great-grandfather, a conservative, Catholic emigrated to Saint Louis, MO from Paderborn, Germany in 1845 and was immediately welcomed into the establishment. The only thing I remember a little bit "ethnic", was my Grandfather changing the family last name from Vennewitz to Vennewitte during the depression because Vennewitz sounded Jewish. My father always said that "Hitler scared the 'witz'" out of my grandfather.
November 8, 2009 12:05 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't know if he is/was clinically mentally ill. Even if he was that doesn't take away culpability. Being mentally ill does not automatically mean you are incapable of responsibility for what you do. There are plenty of people with severe depression and other disorders who lead reasonable lives and don't go on killing rampages.
The pre-meditation (gun bought in August), giving away furniture, etc indicate planning and lucidity in his decision-making. Saying that a person who is ill is still responsible for their behavior is not "having it both ways." If, in fact we find out that he was completely delusional and didn't know the consequences of his actions, he still would need to be segregated from society, because what if he got that way again? BTW, I don't expect that to be the case, considering the other things I mentioned.
November 8, 2009 1:49 PM | Reply | Permalink
In retrospect, it's easy to say that the military should have let him our or found something else for him to do other than go to Afghanistan.
One might suppose that Hasan was in emotional turmoil, but nobody forced him to go on a killing spree. He cose his own path. There were plenty of alternatives to mass killing. During the Vietnam war, many American's fled to Canada rather than fight in war they didn't believe in. Some went to jail. Many continued to resist the war, long after they left the military.
Hasan decided to join the enemy and inflict as much carnage as he could.
November 8, 2009 10:15 AM | Reply | Permalink
I think that as a Palestinian, as an Arab and as a Muslim he had joined the "enemy" in his heart and that his was a military action, just like a suicide bomber. I think he was crazed, not crazy. So far he holds some sort of record for American soldiers killed by a Muslim terrorist.
November 8, 2009 10:44 AM | Reply | Permalink
I see your point and yes, he was driven.
There should have been some intervention before it got this far.
But it did get this far. He bears the primary responsibility for his actions.
In my view, the term "terrorist" implies indiscriminate violence. Hasan's targets were members of the U.S. military, not a crowded market or innocent employees at an office building.
November 8, 2009 11:45 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think it really matters that he bears "primary responsibility" or if it does matter, it is of little interest. The real question is how this situation arose, because it was predictable to anyone with any sense.
It is so dumb as to be fascinating... How could the army be so stupid. If the federal government has no idea of what is happening inside its own organizations, how are they supposed to protect the rest of the population?
November 8, 2009 11:59 AM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think any army can totally prevent attacks from within its troops from time to time, just like intelligence organizations can't prevent moles. It's to be expected.
What is much more egregious is something like the Sept. 11 attack on the Pentagon by a civilian airliner. Now that's something I would expect a military to have protected, especially their central command, and indeed there were those theorizing it could happen.
November 8, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
A 2003 example.
By the way, I didn't mean to suggest that this is a "mole-like" case, it's pretty clear to me it's not; just that it's similarly hard for any organization to protect against what is in people's minds. Banks can get embezzled by thoroughly screened employees, when they get desperate for money, it's a "shit happens" kind of thing.
November 8, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
Who bears responsibility matters. It matters to family members of the victims. It matters to his colleagues and superiors. It matters to taxpayers who have to pay for the whole mess. It will matter to the courts, judges, and/or juries who must decide this issue. It matters to the formation of pulic opinion. It matters to history.
Peace.
November 8, 2009 12:11 PM | Reply | Permalink
Criminal law is about actions, not about the source of beliefs -- it states to the actor that if you act in a certain way, no matter the basis for your belief, you will be punished.
Liberals, like myself, are forever pointing out that the crimes committed by the children of the slums are a foreseeable result of their situation and that harsh punishment compounds the problem. We deem it unlikely that it is a statistical accident that people with moral failings leading to crime happen to live in one neighborhood. We look for what the situation contributes to the causality.
One of the most striking applications of criminal law stating to all holding a certain belief that we do not care how you came to hold that belief we will punish you if you act on it was holding Patty Hearst responsible for her actions after she was brainwashed by her captors.
So if Hasan was in his right mind at the time he committed the massacre was he guilty of Article 3, Sec. 3 Treason?
Section 3. Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court. The Congress shall have power to declare the Punishment of Treason, but no Attainder of Treason shall work Corruption of Blood, or Forfeiture except during the Life of the Person attainted.
November 8, 2009 12:04 PM | Reply | Permalink
Hasan, if he lives, is toast: traitor-smaitor, killer-smiller, the important thing is how something this predictable could be allowed to transpire in the midst of the US Army.
I think the main thing is to determine the negligence of the authorities in allowing such and obviously dangerous situation to develop.
November 8, 2009 12:09 PM | Reply | Permalink
I don't think his actions were predictable.
The statements from people who knew him had absolutely no indication that he would comit mass murder.
He never did anything to suggest that he was psychotic or dangerous. Some thought he was a bit troubled, but nothing serious enough to warrant intervention.
My view is that he was not at all mentally ill. He knew exactly what he was doing. He did what he wanted to do. His pattern of behavior seems quite similar to the Afghan police officer who recently killed five British soldiers. This is war.
November 8, 2009 12:44 PM | Reply | Permalink
Enlisted soldiers who kill the designated enemy are normal people but anyone else who kills a largish number of people is ipso facto a deranged killer?
Welcome to George Orwell's world -- let's just -- al la Soviet Russia -- incarcerate in mental wards all those so opposed to the actions of our nation that they resort to killing.
Two things are terrifying -- the idea that a mass killer might have been sane and the impact on the
nation's ability to maintain non-discrimination after acknowledging that this particular Palestinian-American may have chosen to be a traitor.
Let's look the other way.
November 8, 2009 12:47 PM | Reply | Permalink
You can bet your sweet M-16 that the Fort Hood slaughter is sending shock waves through the military. The immediate result will be fear and anger towards Muslims and anyone of Arabic descent. It's likely to spread to anyone suspected of disloyalty.
The military has a big problem on it's hands. Lot's of soldiers have doubts about these wars.
Add those with doubts to the ones with psychological problems and it may well be the majority of U.S. combat personel. What a mess.
November 8, 2009 1:06 PM | Reply | Permalink
yeah,
tough to have an organization whose main line of business is killing brown people be also the organization committed to "integrating" brown people.
What a conundrum!
November 9, 2009 6:32 AM | Reply | Permalink