FORT HOOD

was it an act of terrorism? i have no doubt that it was.
my question is what caused this man to become radicalised like he did. what if there is a movement in the US, in or outside the military, that is using a psychological campaign to undermine the morale of the muslims in the services?
what if this man became psychologically unhinged and reached out to radical Islam as an anchor? perhaps it is possible to redirect that to a less radical solution.
it is just way too easy to say that because he was already muslim he had a diposition to do this- and if we accept so simple a solution then we are allowing our politicians and military to keep going the way things are. perhaps in the end he may prove to be a deep undercover agent for some Muslim group or government- but perhaps not. we need to know which.

transferred PTSD is a controversial subject- ask ten different psychologists and you will get ten different views. personally i do not believe that this has been the case here.
the most probable explanation is that the major has become frustrated by his inability to help so many- i am not sure how the American set-up works but i suppose that Hasan would be giving initial care to physically injured patients before passing the majority onto civilian or other military psychologists without seeing major improvements. in some ways it would be akin to a surgeon operating on a person's leg for the first half of the procedure but then having to pass them onto another surgeon and starting the process all over again without seeing what the final result of any one surgery was. what he is getting is all the stress with little or no reward for his efforts in seeing his patients' improvements. this may have led to a process of disassociation from the concerns of the others around him. given that his mind seems to have really given way after being assigned to Afghanistan this is the most likely cause of psychological breakdown- the sudden realisation that none of his new patients will be getting better.
another possibility is simple transference- identifying with a particular patient to the point where he 'becomes' the patient. as he seems to have been in provision of initial treatment only this is highly unlikely.
 
bren122 said:
was it an act of terrorism? i have no doubt that it was.
my question is what caused this man to become radicalised like he did. what if there is a movement in the US, in or outside the military, that is using a psychological campaign to undermine the morale of the muslims in the services?
what if this man became psychologically unhinged and reached out to radical Islam as an anchor? perhaps it is possible to redirect that to a less radical solution.
it is just way too easy to say that because he was already muslim he had a diposition to do this- and if we accept so simple a solution then we are allowing our politicians and military to keep going the way things are. perhaps in the end he may prove to be a deep undercover agent for some Muslim group or government- but perhaps not. we need to know which.

transferred PTSD is a controversial subject- ask ten different psychologists and you will get ten different views. personally i do not believe that this has been the case here.
the most probable explanation is that the major has become frustrated by his inability to help so many- i am not sure how the American set-up works but i suppose that Hasan would be giving initial care to physically injured patients before passing the majority onto civilian or other military psychologists without seeing major improvements. in some ways it would be akin to a surgeon operating on a person's leg for the first half of the procedure but then having to pass them onto another surgeon and starting the process all over again without seeing what the final result of any one surgery was. what he is getting is all the stress with little or no reward for his efforts in seeing his patients' improvements. this may have led to a process of disassociation from the concerns of the others around him. given that his mind seems to have really given way after being assigned to Afghanistan this is the most likely cause of psychological breakdown- the sudden realisation that none of his new patients will be getting better.
another possibility is simple transference- identifying with a particular patient to the point where he 'becomes' the patient. as he seems to have been in provision of initial treatment only this is highly unlikely.
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You say that you have no doubt it was an act of terrorism, and then list a series of what ifs and perhaps? Nobody is trying to say that he wasn't radical, but I don't think your assesment is too well thought out. First of all, who told you that the Army refers a "majority" of cases to civilians? Secondly, how do you know that he only gave initial care and then passed any patients off?

I am not denying that there is a global militant muslim movement and that a law enforcement perspective doesn't address all of it. Going from a law enforcement perspective, in regards to terrorists means that you wait for them to attack, try to stop them, and pick up the pieces. That was the mindset for the Khobar Towers, the first WTC attack, the USS Cole, and others and obviously it didn't work. I just don't see how you can be so sure that terrorism is the answer here... I mean the guy was IN the Army, so it would be a little hard to stop him from going where he wanted to on post. I really don't think the guy was a deep cover operative.... that is just too far out there. Why would he waste all those years in medical school if he was a deep cover operative... I seriously doubt being a counselor helped out the enemy war effort. The man was born in the US... if he was deep cover, he could have gone into Military Intelligence... or hell, he could have been a combat MOS and had access to heavy military hardware. That explanation doesn't make any sense.... why spend all those years in training just to bust out 2 pistols... he could have done that the day he got in the Army and it would have had the same effect. You say not to accept the "simple solution" and then arrive at a conclusion that takes all of 2 seconds to reach.
 
Yep.
Like I said earlier, it has more parallels with the VA Tech shooting than other cases of terrorism.
If any other individual (a non Muslim) had done this, the word "terrorism" wouldn't even have played a part. When that's the case, you have to question whether it really was terrorism or just a case of a highly unstable guy that went off the deep end.
Terrorism almost always has some kind of political goal or motive and this attack seemed to lack it. I know the attacker had his sentiments about the war and all, but that isn't enough. He had to have left a message with a demand or something. Why do you think suicide bombers make a video before they blow themselves up? There is something they seek to achieve that is larger than venting their frustration.
 
Kinda disagree with that.

When George Tiller was killed by the anti-abortion activist the media and administration was pretty quick to throw out the domestic terrorist label.

I personely don't agree that ethier incidents were terrorist acts in the common sense but a belief system played a part in each and both acts made the desired statement.
 
Some of you guys make a good argument against the "terrorism" label ... but at the end of the day it's just a label and I don't want to dwell on it. The bullets don't act any differently ... the dead are not ever coming back to us and the wounded won't heal any sooner.

And more importantly, it takes us away from the real PC issues at work here.

Should this guy have been dealt with months or even years ago so this event never occurred? And since this didn't happen, was it political correctness that prevented corrective action for an under-performing officer that spouted Islamo-Fascist rhetoric?

The mainstream (leftstream) media is going WAY out of their way to try and blame something other than radical muslim teaching. They are more concerned with an American anti-Islam backlash than they are with the dead and wounded on the ground. That is wrong beyond words.

Here's an article written by a former patient of Walter Reid about 2nd-hand PTSD being nonsense:

http://www.jrsalzman.com/post/2009/11/07/PTSD.aspx

This is backed up by Dr. Charles Krauthammer, psychiatrist and conservative columnist, who said that he had never heard of a diagnosis before this incident.

The media invented this (or took an obscure phenomenon and blew it way up) to get away from the issue that radical Muslims are a potential danger in this country. That's the whole PC angle taking us in the wrong direction. The media are so steeped in PC, they don't even see what a danger this is. Instead, they are beside themselves about a possible/theoretical backlash by conservative Americans.

And just months ago, the current US administration was looking at vets (read: rednecks) returning home as potential domestic terrorists.

So many things so wrong on so many levels. Whatever happened to simple, rational thought?
 
19kilok4

Look, I don't know why I cannot seem to get through to you, perhaps you are very upset at what happened at Ft Hood and therefore not fully understanding me. But nobody else seems to have the problems you do in understanding me. Just so we are clear; I am not patronizing you, nor criticizing you, nor am I disrespecting your service (which I do thank you for). I didn't serve, something I now regret, but of my most of my family wore US Army uniforms. So don't think for a second I am anti-military. And I truly sympathize with some of your adjustment problems, I wish you a speedy recovery and all the best.

But clearly you missed again what I said. On PTSD, I never actually stated an opinion, because I really don't have one. A quick run-down:

"I actually read a article a day or so ago" -this means this isn't my own opinion, only an article I found in the news. It refers to what Bren122 suggested as "transferable PTSD". Thats wasn't the term my article used, but it was the same concept. Unfortunately I don't think I will be able to find this article, unless I get lucky, if I do Ill post it so that you can read it. The gist of the article was that the author suggested that such a thing was indeed possible. Neither he nor I suggest stated that this is what caused Hasan to snap. If you disagree with this, bring it up with him, I really don't have the experience or knowledge to offer my opinion, only to inform USMC03 that someone out there had a possible explanation.

"I found another (article) that said this was impossible -this means that this author disagreed with the first one. Again, this is not my opinion, but the opinion of a Doctor who I am going to say knows more about the condition than you do. Article is below:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/scott-mendelson-md/major-hasan-did-not-catch_b_349911.html

"Two contradictory arguments. I am not a doctor, Ill leave this one for the experts". This means there are two different opinions given by two people knowledgeable in the field. I have never seen nor suffered PTSD nor am I a licensed MD in the field of psychology, therefore I will remain neutral to who is right or wrong. I neither agreed nor disagreed with either article. I am not a doctor or a soldier I wouldn't possibly know. All I know is that the arguments for and against exist. This is all I said.

And while your knowledge of PTSD might be greater than mine, if a certified expert in the field tells me that transferable PTSD is possible than I am going to trust that opinion over yours. Sorry, but I trust Medical Science Experts much more than I trust what people say on the internet.

Its not the radical part, its the Islamic part. Meaning -Nobody is trying to justify radical Islam except radical Muslims who are a tiny percentage of the population. You have only been here a few weeks correct? I am been a pain in everyone's backside here since 2005. I am sure even USMC03 will testify to that. :-D

So I will tell you from experience here that the line drawn between "radical Muslim" and "Muslim" tends to get a little blurred. I am not saying you are doing it or anyone in your unit, only that it does happen and that I have seen it. All I am reminding people is to remember, that while there are terrorists that a lot more good ones than bad ones. But thanks largely to the media, we are led to believe that every muslim out there is just waiting for an opportunity to murder you in your sleep.

Now I think I have been pretty clear. If you cannot understand this, I really cannot argue the matter any further with you. We will just have to leave it at that and agree to disagree.

Godspeed.

USMC03

I disagree. The suspect in the Tiller murder had made threats against Tiller and others prior to the murder. Terrorism isn't the use of violence, its the threat (or fear) of the use of violence. In Tillers case, Scott Roeder had attempted to "terrorize" into abortion providers into compliance and when Tiller refused to be intimidated that's when he turned to actual violence. It would seem based on the evidence (so far) on this case that there was any attempt to use fear, either prior or after the incident. Of course this could change as later on based on what we later learn.
 
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I agree with USMC03 on this one, I agree withevidence that I have read from DOD news and the armed forces press service, I still think that this is still a criminal act, many are quick to label it terrorism, was terror involved? You bet, any shooting like that is terrorizing, but what if he was non Islamic? It would be labeled criminal and people would forget about it being a terror plot.

Another point I agree on, is once people get it stuck in their minds that it's an act of terror, most people seem quick to stereotype the crime and just believe its an terror attack and are not willing to change that mindset no matter wat evidence is presented before them. In fact, some of those people just stick to their assumptions and will not continue to research the facts cause they have their mind made up.

My opinions and thoughts are fluid on this, I try to stay that way on many things, if I see some good solid proof that it was linked to a terror plot or organization. Then yea, I will change my opinions. But remember after 911? It seemed like terror plots were being uncovered every other day for at least a few months afterwords, it was like our country had dozens of behind the scenes terror plots uncovered every week world wide.

This guy just doest have it, it would be like me writing a letter to the local fire chief, and me getting a letter back, if a fire breaks out at my neighbors house and the house burns to the ground, it would be like blaming me because I wasn't there to put it out, solely on the premises I wrote a letter the Fire Department I am supposed to be a qualified firemen?

(o and I am getting allot of good points and counter points on this topic in this thread, it would be a shame for it to be locked, so please consider the rules of the milforum before posting)
 
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Yes we're getting good points and I think all sides have good intent so I don't see why we should resort to nastiness.

As for political correctness. I'd agree with Bror if there was overwhelming evidence to suggest that this guy was recruited by terrorists, left a message regarding demands towards the US Army and actually planned an attack with the aim of affecting US Army or US policy then you could have a strong case that this was a terrorist attack. However, even if all those conditions were met, we have a problem: the target was military.
If we conducted an unmanned drone strike against enemy combatants who were relaxing in the rear, lying down in the sun and washing in a river, would that be a terrorist attack? What if we had a man in deep cover who was among the enemy and set explosives in their compound while they were in the rear? Would that be terrorism?
There's a lot of action North Korea took against the South but only a small minority of it can be considered acts of terrorism.
I know it's not what people want to hear but if we have this blatant double standard, we fall victim to hypocracy and when that happens, every time there is an outcry in the US, even those sympathetic will laugh.

The main political correctness problem is the fact that this man was a ticking time bomb and no one could say anything because of his ethnicity and religion. THAT needs to be corrected yesterday.
 
Sukio said:
You bet, any shooting like that is terrorizing, but what if he was non Islamic? It would be labeled criminal and people would forget about it being a terror plot.
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You cannot really pull him being muslim away from this issue though. He opposed the war based on his faith. He didn't just shoot a random group of people, he shot people who were deploying to a war that he had an idealogical problem with due to his faith. I agree that this is not terrorism, but his faith most certainly played a role.

As for the political correctness, if anyone recalls the other thread, I said that people were afraid of an Army EO complaint from day 1... now all the sudden a bunch of people come forward saying that the only reason people didn't take action against him was due to fear of EO complaints. Right now EO, sexual assault and drug/alcohol abuse are the fastest ways to have your Army career ended. I firmly beleive that soem people looked the other way on this.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/time/20091110/us_time/08599193733400

Additonally, the FBI claims they didn't see anything wrong at the time with his corespondance with the radical imam in Yemen because Hasan claimed to be writing a research paper on the effects of the war on troops.... I fail to see how someone who has ties to AQ and publicly states that muslims should rise up and kill us could have contributed anything to such research. This guy was a doctor at Walter Reed for 6 years, people should have been asking HIM about the effects of war on the troops. I just can't see how a radical imam with no experience in either theater of war could have contributed anything useful to a research paper conducted by an Army doctor in regards to the Army troops that he himself treats. I'm pretty sure he had another agenda in communicating with radicals.


mmarsh, of course you should trust medical doctors over me on the PTSD issue as I have limited training on it and do not even fully understand my issues yet. Obviously radical islam constitutes a small percentage of all muslims. Unfortunately you are not admitting that radical islamists constitute an overwhelming majority of terrorists worldwide. To say that not all muslims should be blamed is true, but too say that most terrorists in the world today don't use radical islamic teachings as their core foundation would be ridiculous. THAT is why nobody harps on christian and jewish extremism in the same way, as you've asked. You're talking about some isolated cluts, and a nut job here and there while the rest of us are talking about extremist organizations that have accounted for thousands of dead civilians and soldiers in the past decade. If you don't understand why one gets more closely looked at than the other, then I don't know what to tell you.

P.S. now that I know you are a pain in the neck to everyone, it makes me feel better. I won't take it personally :p
 
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Thats something to think about 19Kilo, that fact that extremism in other religions other than Islam have not developed to the point of large attacks, or continued campaigns of violence.

But on that premises, what if the guy was Christean or some other religion? And shouted "in the name of Christ" or something while he carried out the attack?

Let's turn back the clock a bit, looking at the crusades in the 10Th 11Th centuries, back when Christendom was fighting in the Middle East, some of the campaigns were conducted for political reasons, just faith was used as a front to cover many of them. But out of crusades you had military orders such as the Knights Templar that were founded and formed solely to fight the Muslims for control of the the Holy land, they may have had other made up reasons, like to escort Christrains through the dangerous regions on their pilgrimages to the holy sites in the Middle East.

But the fact is once the crusades were over, and the holy land lost to the Christians, these orders now had no purpose. Like with these terror groups of today, if they were giving their official demands, I guarantee you they would have a Marjorly hard time going away.

Where the shooter here ties into all of this is on the agruement that he acted in support of terrorists, basically holding up his lighter so to speak. I can go outside right now and yell I support rainy days and if it rains tomorrow will the world think that I am the one who caused it? Not really... If I did that in front of a crowd and starting hosing them? Then mabye I would be called a pagist lunatic, if I had some friends that formed a group like that with me? Am I a cult, or a terror group? Is it a matter of size or a matter or popularity? Because the behavior is the same.
 
Sukio said:
But on that premises, what if the guy was Christean or some other religion? And shouted "in the name of Christ" or something while he carried out the attack?
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I see what you are getting at, but I am talking about the scale and commonality of attacks lately, not in the crusades. When a car bomb hits an embassy, many assume it's radical islam, and guess what? They are almost always right. When a restaurant blows up in Israel, people assume it's radical islam, and they are almost always right. When a hotel blows up in Jordan, or Egypt people assume radical islam and they are almost always right. To ignore the frequency and severity of all the attacks conducted in the name of radical islam world wide is to ignore facts and statistical trends.

Now, in the Ft Hood case, as most of you know I am stationed there. My unit is deployed from there. When we first heard of this attack, nobody here assumed it was a terror attack.... do you want to know what all of us thought? We all thought it was probably a lower enlisted soldier with multiple deployments and horrible PTSD that just snapped... sad huh? When we found out the guy had not deployed, we were stunned. When we found out that he was a Major, we were mindboggled... I mean, why kill soldiers getting ready to deploy? Then when we found out he was against the war and had ties to radical islam it started to come together. There is no way that his faith had nothing to do with this. You want to talk about history? Here's a little:

in 1968 the US Dept of State tracked 150 incidents of terrorism involving 124 fatalities and 220 injuries. Pretty bad eh?

In 2007 the US NCTC reported 14,499 incidents of domestic and international terrorism resulting in 22,685 dead, 43,310 wounded, with the overwhelming majority being perpetrated bu islamic extremists. You can say "what if?" all you want about Christian terrorists, but please just do some research on the numbers. If cancer cases had multiplied by 96 times annually since 1968 there would be a pandemic declared, yet islamic terrorism rises by that much and people still make excuses? I wonder why. The 43,310 wounded probably wonder why too, and the families of the 22,685 dead probably have a pretty good idea. And that was just in 2007. When Christian terrorist groups do that much damage, I'll start worrying about them too, but right now I don't care about "what ifs" and a stupid cult coming around once every few decades.
 
19kilo30K4 said:
You say that you have no doubt it was an act of terrorism, and then list a series of what ifs and perhaps? Nobody is trying to say that he wasn't radical, but I don't think your assesment is too well thought out. First of all, who told you that the Army refers a "majority" of cases to civilians? Secondly, how do you know that he only gave initial care and then passed any patients off?
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the act can be regarded as separate to the motivation. what prompted this particular person to perform a terrorist act? my examples were merely that- examples.

i said in my post that i was not sure how the American system worked but that i was making an assumption. as i understand it the initial treatments are undertaken in major centres before the patients are sent to hospitals, military or civillian, closer to home. if i am mistaken i apologise.
 
I think the reason why this doesn't make any sense is the guy who perpetrated this didn't make any sense.
No, no one should discount the effects of radical Islam. There is something about those guys that sets them apart from most other fanatics.
I can't seem to ignore the parallels this has with the VA Tech shooting but it seems that radical Islam did have a bigger role to play in this than I previously thought. His ties with the radical Imam may seem weak at first but I'm sure there must have been some kind of communication other than email or other electronic means.

19K, I think the reason why people are afraid to accuse radical Islam of stuff is because they can't tell it apart from pretty "mainstream" (I use this word loosely) Islam. I don't think it's hard to know why. There are times when something happens and mainstream Islam becomes radicalized for a while. That's when things usually hit the news.
Screw this... I think profiling should be IN. Watch those "places of worship" or whatnot like a hawk and you know what? I think this shouldn't even be denied. The message will be that until they clean up their act, this is the treatment they will get. Militias and other groups got this much attention from authorities in the 90's I think so I don't think it's without precedence.
And the First Ammendment may need to be clarified or heck, ammended. As in, you can't say death to America and praise its enemies and expect nothing to happen to you in return. I think there should be some kind of policy to deport such people, cancel their citizenship and drop them off at a country or territory that they seem to like so much. They can apply for asylum there.
You CAN criticize your country but "DEATH TO AMERICA" is beyond criticism.
Political correctness be damned.
 
bren122 said:
i said in my post that i was not sure how the American system worked but that i was making an assumption. as i understand it the initial treatments are undertaken in major centres before the patients are sent to hospitals, military or civillian, closer to home. if i am mistaken i apologise.
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That's part of what threw me off a bit. The people he worked with at Hood don't get sent "closer to home" because they already are home. Hood is a huge installation, and my kids go to school on it, my housing is on it, my motorpool is on it, my ranges are on it. It's an active duty place, for active duty soldiers, so if you are seeking help, you'll get it there. If they have to seperate you from the service due to your issues, it will be after you've been treated for a long time already. If you aren't a soldier at Ft Hood, they don't just send you there and refer you out, it's for people who live and work there. It's much cheaper for the Army to treat you on post, 5 minutes away from your home, than somewhere else. I know other armies may be different, but that's not how ours works. It's much less of a burden if they just treat you at your home installation.
 
19kilo30K4 said:
That's part of what threw me off a bit. The people he worked with at Hood don't get sent "closer to home" because they already are home. Hood is a huge installation, and my kids go to school on it, my housing is on it, my motorpool is on it, my ranges are on it. It's an active duty place, for active duty soldiers, so if you are seeking help, you'll get it there. If they have to seperate you from the service due to your issues, it will be after you've been treated for a long time already. If you aren't a soldier at Ft Hood, they don't just send you there and refer you out, it's for people who live and work there. It's much cheaper for the Army to treat you on post, 5 minutes away from your home, than somewhere else. I know other armies may be different, but that's not how ours works. It's much less of a burden if they just treat you at your home installation.
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the media here (in Aus) are saying that he was only sent to Hood for his pre-deployment. if i have misunderstood i apologise.
 
When this story broke and I heard the shooter’s name: Nidal Malik Hasan and I said to myself, "You have got to be f--kin' kidding me!" I instantly figured he was an Islamist extremist that came uncorked.

But then the facts began to come out. Even I didn't think this guy would be such a caricature of an Islamic terrorist ... and then the scandalous lack of preemptive action by Army higher-ups to discipline/stop him. 19kilo30K4, I hear you about equal opportunity (EO) complaints. I'm a civil servant working for New York State and the same goes in government service. One of the quickest way to lose your job ... or at least any chance for advancement is to be accused of discrimination in one form or another. Still, what happened here is absolute insanity and has got to stop. The first thing that has to happen is the bureaucrats in the Army that ignored reports about this guy need to lose their jobs!

In addition to the typical left/liberal political correctmess that simply disgusts me (pundit and TV host Chris Matthews more recently went on to blame this particular incident on the U.S. gun culture) I think another part of the problem in this country is leftover guilt from the internment camps we used to house Japanese-Americans during the Second World War. That was a seriously sad chapter in the history of this country … but we need to get over it and not let the nuts of today slaughter us because of misplaced guilt over a half-century old.
 
bren122 said:
the media here (in Aus) are saying that he was only sent to Hood for his pre-deployment. if i have misunderstood i apologise.
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Not so much. If you are at Ft Hood you are going to get deployed sooner or later. Ft Hood has been the Army's largest contributor of troops to Iraq, but we deploy smaller numbers of troops to Afghanistan. Hasan had been at hood for a while, and sooner or later your number comes up. Him going to Hood wasn't a product of his pending deployment. His pending deployment was a product of his being stationed at Hood. If you are a soldier at Hood, spend your time wisely because you won't have much of it. I've been a soldier at Hood for 72 months.... minus 38 months for Iraq service (March 04-March 05, OCT 06-JAN 08, FEB 09-present) leaves 34 months at home... minus NTC rotations, a JRTC rotation, 3 gunnerys, 3 ex evals means approximately 25 months of off time in the last 6 years and I use the term "off time" loosely (weapons ranges, local training, vehicle services, etc). Being a soldier at Hood doesn't really sit well with a lot of people (Hood has the highest suicide rate in the Army, and we have an absurd number of soldiers with divorce issues and marital issues). See why an Army pyschiatrist gets assigned to Hood? Luckily for me, I like my job.

Oh, and Bror I'm with you on all of that.
 
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Also agree with Bror.
This political correctness to the point where an obvious danger can't be identified has got to stop.
 
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