TruthNews Commentary, November 7, 2009

The U.S. Army has apparently decided to try a different approach to dealing with the psychological stresses inflicted by combat. The new approach is to have the base psychiatrist shoot the soldiers.

Or at least, that’s what it seemed like from the news reports on Thursday night.

This may seem like a tasteless way to open an article about the tragedy at Fort Hood, but I’m trying to emphasize the point that the U.S. Army bears total responsibility for what happened. I’ll lead up to why the Army is responsible, but let’s start at the beginning. Here’s how a news report characterized the event.

A U.S. Army officer opened fire on a large military base in Texas Thursday, killing 13 people and wounding more than 30. Local officials identified the shooter as Major Nidal Malik Hasan, an Army psychiatrist who worked at the base hospital.

For anyone who knows the military, these two sentences seem totally unbelievable. We’ve all heard of people going postal and shooting their fellow workers or fellow students. This isn’t the first time such an event has happened at a military base. What makes this event unique is that the shooter was 1) an officer, 2) not just any officer, but a fairly high-ranking officer, 3) a doctor, and 4) not just any doctor but a psychiatrist.

Let’s take these points one by one. First, officers are specially recruited for their "patriotism, valor, fidelity and abilities," as the officer commission puts it. You have to have a college degree, but you have to have a lot more than that to be considered for a commission. The screening is rigorous, and the selection process is highly competitive. Officers are supposed to take care of their men, not shoot them. Think about it. When was the last time you heard about an officer going berserk and killing the enlisted men? This is about as unbelievable as the President going into a cabinet meeting and shooting everybody on his staff. More unbelievable, perhaps, since officers are more closely screened than the politicians who run for President.

Second, this major got promoted three times, each time being an opportunity to look at his character and determine whether there were any deficiencies. Apparently the Army saw none. But Hasan’s military record wasn't all that great. News reports say that Hasan received a poor performance evaluation during his years of training at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center outside Washington D.C. He required counseling and extra supervision. The news media would have you believe that war veterans are walking time bombs, apt to snap at any minute. This is total malarkey, of course, but Hasan had never even been in combat.

Third, the guy is a doctor, the guy who’s supposed to take care of people, not shoot them. It sort of turns the Hippocratic oath on its head.

And fourth, the doc is a psychiatrist, the one who’s treating other people’s mental problems, yet he’s the one who goes berserk. When was the last time you heard of a psychiatrist killing his patients?

As if this wasn’t enough, there were plenty of signs that Hasan was having problems. At least six months ago, Hasan came to the attention of law enforcement officials because of Internet postings about suicide bombings and other threats, including posts that equated suicide bombers to soldiers who throw themselves on a grenade to save the lives of their comrades. A base commander also said Hasan frequently argued with comrades who supported the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Was the shooting religiously motivated? It’s hard to say. Hasan was a lifelong Muslim, born in the U.S. after his parents immigrated from a Palestinian village near Jerusalem. There are lots of Muslims who’ve served honorably in the armed forces. But soldiers who witnessed the shooting reported that the major shouted "Allahu Akbar!" [Allah is greater!] before opening fire. However, an imam from a mosque regularly attended by Hasan said he was a committed soldier who regularly wore his uniform at prayers, and gave no sign of extremist beliefs.

While Hasan’s motivation may not have been religious, it’s possible Army may have overlooked the previous warning signs because of political correctness. Or maybe the Army is completely desperate for doctors. Or maybe the Army doesn’t care if their officers are obviously whackadoo. None of these possibilities are particularly encouraging.

In response to the shootings, President Obama said, "We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts. What we do know is that there are families, friends and an entire nation grieving right now for the valiant men and women who came under attack yesterday, in one of the worst mass shootings ever to take place on an American military base."

The President is absolutely correct. We don’t have all the facts. We may never have them. But one thing that’s abundantly clear is that Hasan should never have been an Army officer, much less an Army doctor. If he snapped like this just due to the pressures of his job, there’s not telling what he might have done if he’d actually been deployed. The fact that Hasan was recruited, commissioned, and promoted represents a massive failure on the part of the U.S. Army.

It’s interesting that Obama’s statement makes no reference to the fact that the Army is under his authority. The President needs to be less of a sympathizer-in-chief and more of a Commander-in-Chief. In 2007, in the wake of the scandal of poor medical care at Walter Reed army hospital, President Bush fired not only the commander of Walter Reed but also the Secretary of the Army and the Surgeon General of the Army. Will President Obama acknowledge the failures of the Army leadership, or will he simply attribute this to a lone shooter gone berserk? Obama’s radio address on Friday gives us a clue. "On Friday, I met with FBI Director Mueller, Defense Secretary Gates, and representatives of the relevant agencies to discuss their ongoing investigation into what led to this terrible crime. And I’ll continue to be in close contact with them as new information comes in." In other words, not "why the heck was this guy ever commissioned as an officer?" but "why did he do it?"