NEW YORK DAILY NEWS.com
BY Michael Mcauliff In Silver Spring, Md. and Kerry Burke and Helen Kennedy
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
DAILY NEWS WRITERS
Originally Published:Friday, November 6th 2009, 1:00 AM
Updated: Friday, November 6th 2009, 9:11 AM
Sklar/Getty
Soldiers wait to enter Fort Hood near the main entrance to the base on Thursday. Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan was a soldier who didn't want to go to war, a man of God who defended murder and a doctor who shot up the soldiers he was supposed to heal.
As he lay mute in a hospital bed Thursday night, investigators were scrambling to figure out what prompted his rampage.
Hasan had been a psychiatrist treating wounded soldiers at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington until bad reviews got him transferred to Fort Hood, Tex., in July.
He was due to ship out to war, and his family said he did not want to go.
"We've known for the last five years that was his worst nightmare," cousin Nader Hasan told Fox News, calling the suspect "a good American."
He said his cousin "was dealing with some harassment from his military colleagues." KXXV-TV reported someone keyed the word "Allah" into Hasan's car last week and he reported it as a hate crime.
A former co-worker told Fox News the Army major opposed the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"He said maybe the Muslims should stand up and fight against the aggressor," Col. Terry Lee said.
"At first, we thought he was talking about how Muslims should stand up and help the armed forces in Iraq and in Afghanistan, but apparently that wasn't the case."
Before being sent to Texas, Hasan, 39, lived in Silver Spring, Md., where a former imam at the Muslim Community Center described him as devout.
He attended daily services and signed up for the mosque's matchmaking service.
"He wanted a wife more religious than him," Faizul Khan told the Daily News. "She had to pray five times a day. She had to wear the hajib. He was a young, good looking guy and a physician but he couldn't find anybody."
Khan said he never heard Hasan express any political opinions. But at least once this year, Hasan apparently went online to defend suicide bombing.
Responding to a treatise on whether suicide bombers could be martyrs when Islam outlaws suicide, Hasan compared them to a soldier who jumps on a grenade.
"You can call them crazy [if] you want but their act was not one of suicide that is despised by Islam," he wrote.
Hasan was born in Virginia to Palestinian parents who emigrated from Jordan.
His carnage followed several other cases of U.S. soldiers turning homicidal against their comrades.
In May, Sgt. John Russell, 44, went on a rampage at Camp Liberty in Iraq, killing five soldiers in an anti-stress clinic. Sgt. Joseph Bozicevich, 39, murdered two superiors at a base south of Baghdad in September 2008.
Suicides are also on the rise. Army suicides are up 37% since 2006, and the military rate is higher than the civilian rate.
Since the 2003 Iraq invasion, 75 Fort Hood soldiers have killed themselves, nine this year. That prompted the base to take steps to reduce stress on soldiers, including cutting work hours and ordering them to be home in time for dinner.
Experts say fighting two wars has put unprecedented stress on soldiers forced to endure multiple deployments in combat zones where battle is unconventional.
"In Iraq and Afghanistan, you're in a constant state of attention, and you don't know who the enemy is," Rizzo said. "The nervous system adjusts to that, but when they come home, some folks have a hard time turning that stuff off."
Bryan Adams, 25, an ex-Army sniper from New Jersey, said it's easy for returning soldiers to turn to violence.
"When you're on deployment, you get used to being overly aggressive," Adams, who served in Iraq in 2004 and 2005, said. "Violent behavior is kind of used to solve problems over there, so when you come back it can be hard to tone that down."
hkennedy@nydailynews.com
With Rich Schapiro, Richard Sisk and James Gordon Meek
My heart and prayers go out to all the victims, their families and friends.
ReplyDeleteFrom all the news reports it appears this Major is a career military man and that in his current position for less than a year and was not going well. He did not want to be deployed and in fact wanted out of the Army, so he paid back his military student loans and hired an attorney.
The reason may have been that he was being harassed and called names like “camel jockey ”. I guess all that sensitivity training for those with bigotry tendencies are all for not. (Can training real change the way you were brought up?)
Another reason is called PTSD by proxy, the stress of treating PTSD in other soldiers make you go a little crazy yourself. Its even more stressful because most of the higher ranks don’t even believe in such thing as PTSD. Their denial prompts them to tell suffering soldiers to “drink it off.” Some civilians in the defense dept feel the same way no doubt IMO, it’s why hardly anything is mentioned of PTSD until one of these violent episodes occurs. These people see PTSD as a cop-out or an excuse. First we need to have an understanding that PTSD actually is real before we can ever hope to help treat it (does anyone believe that being shot at or killing your fellow man is not going to affect you in some way either then or in the future?). I guess with the high soldier suicide rate before and after deployment kinda takes care of the complaints from coming in (so those who said he should have just killed himself, well that’s already happening ). What real ticked me off when I heard that the military was trying to say that some soldiers coming back from this war with PTSD or other psychological disorders had “Pre-Existing Conditions” and that the military would not pay to treat them, I think it has been corrected but what a bunch of asses they break you and don’t want to pay.
The final issue is why does the military want to keep people in their ranks that no longer want to be there is it just sheer number? I mean is it ten percent, twenty percent. Is it that it is the only contract in the US that you can’t get out of unless to kill yourself or kill your fellow soldiers? It does not make any sense to me.
I guess the Major could just be another wacko like Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nicholas, of course McVeigh was executed and apparently because Nicholas became a Christian he received a life sentenced. I real think if he gets that far the Major will get the former and not in a million years the latter.
This is so messed up, hopefully they will make some changes that make sense.