[progchat_action] 'War comes home' with Ft. Hood shootings
Steven Robinson
by Dahr Jamail The San Francisco BayView November 7, 2009
Phoenix, Ariz. While investigators probe for a motive behind the
mass shooting at the Fort Hood military base in Texas Thursday, in
which an army psychiatrist is suspected of killing 13 people,
military personnel at the base are in shock as the incident "brings
the war home."
"Fort Hood is pretty much a ghost town right now," Specialist Michael
Kern, an active duty veteran of the Iraq war, told IPS by telephone.
"Most units gave their soldiers the day off. Security is heightened
all over. There are soldiers on guard everywhere. In my opinion,
they are afraid of another attack."
Kern, who is based at Fort Hood, served in Iraq from March 2007 to
March 2008.
"Were all in shock," Kern added, "Every single person that Ive
talked to is in shock. Im surprised this hits so close to home, but
at the same time, I knew something like this was going to happen
given what else is happening the war is coming home, and something
needs to be done."
"Innocent civilians are being wounded and killed here at home by
soldiers, and this is completely unacceptable," he said.
The alleged gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, entered a Soldier
Readiness Center (SRC), where troops get medical evaluations and
complete paperwork just prior to being deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan,
and opened fire with two non-military issued handguns.
Maj. Hasan reportedly killed 13 people, 12 of them soldiers, and
wounded over 30 others, before being shot four times by a civilian
police officer. Hasan is now in stable condition in a local hospital,
where he is in the custody of military authorities.
Col. John Rossi, a spokesman at Fort Hood, told reporters that Hasan
was "stable and in one of our civilian hospitals." Rossi added,
"Hes on a ventilator."
Maj. Hasan joined the army just out of high school and is 39 years
old. He had counseled wounded war veterans at Walter Reed Hospital,
and was transferred to Fort Hood in April. He had recently received
orders to deploy to Afghanistan.
His cousin, Nader Hasan, has said in media interviews that Maj.
Hasan was very reluctant to be deployed overseas and had agitated
not to be sent. "Weve known over the last five years that was
probably his worst nightmare," he said.
Responding to the allegations in the media that the attack was based
on his Muslim faith, Kern told IPS that he did not know of anyone
on the base who felt this was the case.
"We all wear the same uniform here; its all green. Ive seen the
news, but most folks here assume its just a soldier that snapped,"
Kern explained. "I have not talked to anyone who thinks what he did
has anything to do with him being a Muslim. There are thousands of
Muslims serving with dignity in the U.S. military, in all four
branches."
Fort Hood, located in central Texas, is one of the largest U.S.
military bases in the world. It contains up to 50,000 soldiers, and
is one of the most heavily deployed to both occupations.
Tragically, Fort Hood has also born much of the brunt from its heavy
involvement in both occupations. Fort Hood soldiers have accounted
for more suicides than any other Army post since the U.S. invasion
of Iraq in 2003.
In this year alone, the base is averaging over 10 suicides each
month at least 75 have been recorded through July of this year
alone.
In a strikingly similar incident on May 11, 2009, a U.S. soldier
gunned down five fellow soldiers at a stress-counseling centre at
a U.S .base in Baghdad.
Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the U.S. militarys Joint Chiefs of
Staff, told reporters at a news conference in the Pentagon at the
time that the shootings occurred in a place where "individuals were
seeking help."
Mullen added, "It does speak to me, though, about the need for us
to redouble our efforts, the concern in terms of dealing with the
stress It also speaks to the issue of multiple deployments."
Commenting on that incident in nearly parallel terms, U.S. Secretary
of Defense Robert Gates said that the Pentagon needs to redouble
its efforts to relieve stress caused by repeated deployments in war
zones 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, or PTSD.
While soldiers returning home are routinely involved in shootings,
suicide and other forms of self-destructive violent behaviors as a
direct result of their experiences in Iraq, we had yet to see an
event of this magnitude on a base in the U.S. until now.
To many, the shocking story of a soldier killing five of his comrades
does not come as a surprise considering that the military has, for
years now, been sending troops with untreated PTSD back into the
U.S. occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan.
According to an Armed Forces Health Surveillance Center analysis,
reported in the Denver Post in August 2008, more than "43,000 service
members two thirds of them in the Army or Army Reserve were
classified as non-deployable for medical reasons three months before
they deployed to Iraq.
In April 2008, the RAND Corp. released a stunning report revealing
that "nearly 20 percent of military service members who have returned
from Iraq and Afghanistan 300,000 in all report symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder or major depression, yet only slightly
more than half have sought treatment."
President Barack Obama, speaking during an event at the Department
of the Interior in Washington, said that the mass shooting at Fort
Hood was a "horrific outburst of violence." He added: "It is
horrifying that they should come under fire at an army base on
American soil."
Victor Agosto, an Iraq war veteran who was discharged from the
military after publicly refusing to deploy to Afghanistan, has had
firsthand experience with the SRC at Fort Hood, where he too was
based.
"I knew there would be a confrontation when I was there, because
the only reason to do that process is to deploy," Agosto, speaking
to IPS near Fort Hood, explained.
Agosto was court-martialed for refusing an order to go to the SRC
to prepare to deploy to Afghanistan.
"I was court-martialed for refusing the order to SRC in that very
same building. I didnt enter the building, but I didnt go in because
I was refusing the process," Agosto continued. "Its a pretty important
place in my life, so its interesting to me that this happened there."
Visit Dahr Jamails website http://dahrjamailiraq.com
Dahr Jamails new book, "The Will to Resist: Soldiers Who Refuse to
Fight in Iraq and Afghanistan," is now available. Order it at
http://tinyurl.com/cnlgyu. As one of the first and few unembedded
Western journalists to report the truth about how the United States
has destroyed, not liberated, Iraqi society in his book "Beyond the
Green Zone," Jamail now investigates the under-reported but growing
antiwar resistance of American GIs. Gathering the stories of these
courageous men and women, Jamail shows us that far from "supporting
our troops," politicians have betrayed them at every turn. Finally,
Jamail shows us that the true heroes of the criminal tragedy of the
Iraq War are those brave enough to say no.
This story first appeared at Inter Press Service.
http://www.sfbayview.com/2009/%E2%80%98war-comes-home%E2%80%99-with-ft-hood-s
hootings/
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