Fort Hood Lesson

Pre Reading Questions: 1. What is the current governmental policy regarding the war in Afghanistan? 2. How do you feel about Obama’s plan to send another 30,000 troops to fight in Afghanistan? Why do you think this? 3. Do you think there is a better way to do this? 4. What have you heard about the incident in Fort Hood, Texas? 5. How do you feel about this incident? 6. Can you understand the motives of the shooter?

When Soldiers Snap By ERICA GOODE “Every man has his breaking point,” said military doctors in World War II, believing that more than 90 days of continuous combat could turn any soldier into a psychiatric casualty. For Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army psychiatrist who military officials said gunned down dozens of soldiers at Fort Hood, Tex., on Thursday, that point may have come even before he experienced the reality of war; he was bound for a combat zone but had not yet embarked. Major Hasan was being sent not to fight, but to join those ranks of doctors who, over centuries of war, have worried about breaking points — how much fear and tedium soldiers can take; how long they can slog through deserts or over mountains; how much blood they can see, how many comrades they can lose — and have sought ways to salve the troops’ psychic wounds and keep them fighting. Much is unknown about Major Hasan’s motives. He is said to have dreaded deployment, but what he feared is unclear. And officials have not ruled out the possibility that his actions were premeditated or political. One report had him shouting something like “Allahu Akhbar” — Arabic for “God is Great” — before the shooting. But even in this absence of certainty, his case invites a look at the long history of psychiatric medicine in war, if only because of his status as a battlefield psychiatrist, and the chance that his own psyche was, on some level, undone by the kind of stress he treated. Over the centuries, soldiers have often broken under such stress, and in modern times each generation of psychiatrists has felt it was closer to understanding what makes soldiers break. But each generation has also been confounded by the unpredictability with which aggressions sometimes explode, in a fury no one sees coming. The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have claimed more than their share of stress victims, with a rising number of suicides among soldiers and high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder. Such casualties often occur not on the battlefield but after it — or, sometimes, merely in its proximity. In World War I, the disorder was known as shell shock, and the soldiers who fell victim were at first believed to have concussions from exploding munitions. Their symptoms appeared neurological: They included trembling, paralysis, a loss of sight or hearing. Yet it turned out that some affected soldiers had been nowhere near an exploding shell, suggesting “that the syndrome could arise in anticipation of going into a stressful situation,” said Dr. Richard McNally, a professor of psychology at Harvard and an expert on traumatic stress.

Some doctors devised methods to treat shell shock victims — one German doctor tried electroshock to the limbs. But there was also widespread suspicions that the soldiers were malingering. Some soldiers were shot for cowardice. Yet shell shock was simply the Great War’s version of a reaction to combat that has been detected even in the writings of antiquity. Achilles, Jonathan Shay maintains in “Achilles in Vietnam,” (Scribner, 1994) displayed a form of traumatic stress when in the Iliad he grieves over the death of his friend Patroclus. Soldiers in the Civil War suffered from irritability, disturbed sleep, shortness of breath and depression, a syndrome Jacob Mendes Da Costa, an Army surgeon, described in 1871 as “irritable heart.” In World War II, the paralysis and trembling of the early 1900s did not recur. But nightmares, startled reactions, anxiety and other symptoms persisted as “battle fatigue” or “war neurosis,” a condition whose treatment was heavily influenced by the rise of Freudian psychoanalysis. Out of that war emerged a theory of battlefield treatment known as PIE, or proximity, immediacy and expectancy. The doctrine held that if a soldier broke down during combat, he should be treated close to the front, because if he was sent home, he would do poorly and seldom return to battle. Major Hasan, had he reached Iraq, would have practiced a similar approach: Soldiers are treated close to the forward lines and only removed to hospitals farther from the front in the most severe cases. Today, the flashbacks, nightmares and other symptoms of soldiers are diagnosed as post-traumatic stress disorder or P.T.S.D., a term that replaced “post-Vietnam syndrome” and entered the official nomenclature in 1980, appearing in the American Psychiatric Association’s diagnostic manual. Like its predecessors, the disorder has been easier to diagnose than it has been to understand or to treat. Research has yielded some treatments that studies show help soldiers, and the military — now acutely aware of the problem — has taken steps to make the methods widely available. Yet the history of treatments for combat stress has often been a circular one, with experts “remembering and forgetting and remembering and forgetting but never integrating and creating a lasting narrative that could be a blueprint for going forward,” as one psychiatrist put it. Similarly, scientific views of what makes soldiers susceptible to stress disorders have waxed and waned. Some experts, in a modern echo of a view put forward in World War II, argue that soldiers who develop P.T.S.D. have longstanding vulnerabilities — psychological or physiological — that make them unable to withstand the pressures of combat. Others assert, in agreement with the military doctors of World War I, that every soldier simply has a breaking point, and that multiple deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan have contributed to the numbers who return to a second, psychological war at home. Yet no theory seems able to capture the unpredictable effects of sustained violence on human beings, the subtle pressures that years of killing and more killing exert on a soldier, a doctor or a society — or the reality that every war travels home with the soldiers who fight it. “All these people have been under a tremendous amount of stress,” said Dr. Stephen Sonnenberg, a psychiatrist and adjunct professor at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, speaking of soldiers and those who treat them. “They are holding the stress for everybody.” Post Reading Questions: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Who was the shooter in the Fort Hood incident? What do they mean by, “everyman has a breaking point”? Is 90 days of continuous combat a long time? Why? What is the position of the shooter in Fort Hood? Why is this a shocker?

6. According to the article, why would medical personnel suffer psychological problems, even when they haven’t been involved in direct combat? 7. How many wars were mentioned in the article? Which wars are they? 8. In each of these wars, what was the name given to the psychological condition? 9. What is the current term for this? 10. What is one way that the doctors have been trying to deal with this condition? 11. What were some of the problems that the suffers of this condition faced away from the battlefield? Discussion: 1. Is an early detection of this condition possible? Why or Why not? 2. What are some ways that the Fort Hood incident could have been avoided? 3. If you are to be deployed to battle, what are some of the things that you would do to prepare yourself? 4. Is there anything that the military can do to prevent future incidents? If yes, what can be done? Activity: Mock trial of the Fort Hood incident Defense: You think the shooter is innocent, provide three details. Prosecution: You think the shooter should be convicted, provide three reasons. Judge: Use the data provided make a decision. Why did you decide this?

Army Doctor Held in Ft. Hood Rampage By ROBERT D. McFADDEN An Army psychiatrist facing deployment to one of America’s war zones killed 13 people and wounded 30 others on Thursday in a shooting rampage with two handguns at the sprawling Fort Hood Army post in central Texas, military officials said. It was one of the worst mass shootings ever at a military base in the United States. The gunman, who was still alive after being shot four times, was identified by law enforcement authorities as Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, who had been in the service since 1995. Major Hasan was about to be deployed to Iraq or Afghanistan, said Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison, Republican of Texas. Clad in a military uniform and firing an automatic pistol and another weapon, Major Hasan, a balding, chubby-faced man with heavy eyebrows, sprayed bullets inside a crowded medical processing center for soldiers returning from or about to be sent overseas, military officials said. The victims, nearly all military personnel but including two civilians, were cut down in clusters, the officials said. Witnesses told military investigators that medics working at the center tore open the clothing of the dead and wounded to get at the wounds and administer first aid. As the shooting unfolded, military police and civilian officers of the Department of the Army responded and returned the gunman’s fire, officials said, adding that Major Hasan was shot by a first-responder, who was herself wounded in the exchange. In the confusion of a day of wild and misleading reports, the major and the officer who shot him were both reported killed in the gun battle, but both reports were erroneous. Eight hours after the shootings, Lt. Gen. Robert W. Cone, a base spokesmen, said Major Hasan, whom he described as the sole gunman, had been shot four times, but was hospitalized off the base, under around-theclock guard, in stable condition and was not in imminent danger of dying. Another military spokesman listed the major’s condition as critical. The condition of the officer who shot the gunman was not given. Major Hasan was not speaking to investigators, and much about his background — and his motives — were unknown. General Cone said that terrorism was not being ruled out, but that preliminary evidence did not suggest that the rampage had been an act of terrorism. Fox News quoted a retired Army colonel, Terry Lee, as saying that Major Hasan, with whom he worked, had voiced hope that President Obama would pull American troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan, had argued with military colleagues who supported the wars and had tried to prevent his own deployment. As a parade of ambulances wailed to the scene of the shootings, officials said the extent of injuries to the wounded varied significantly, with some in critical condition and others lightly wounded. General Cone praised the first-responders and the medics who acted quickly to administer first aid at the scene. “Horrible as this was, I think it could have been much worse,” the general said. The rampage recalled other mass shootings in the United States, including 13 killed at a center for immigrants in upstate New York last April, the deaths of 10 during a gunman’s rampage in Alabama in March and 32 people killed at Virginia Tech in 2007, the deadliest shooting in modern American history.

As a widespread investigation by the military, the F.B.I., and other agencies began, much about the assault in Texas remained unclear. Department of Homeland Security officials said the Army would take the lead in the investigation. A federal law enforcement official said the F.B.I. was sending more agents to join the inquiry. On Thursday night, F.B.I. agents were interviewing residents of a townhouse complex in the Washington suburb of Kensington, Md., where Major Hasan had lived before moving to Texas. Mr. Obama called the shootings “a horrific outburst of violence” and urged Americans to pray for those who were killed and wounded. “It is difficult enough when we lose these men and women in battles overseas,” he said. “It is horrifying that they should come under fire at an Army base on American soil.” The president pledged “to get answers to every single question about this horrible incident.” Military records indicated that Major Hasan was single, had been born in Virginia, had never served abroad and listed “no religious preference” on his personnel records. Three other soldiers, their roles unclear, were taken into custody in connection with the rampage. The office of Representative John Carter, Republican of Texas, said they were later released, but a Fort Hood spokesman could not confirm that. General Cone said that more than 100 people had been questioned during the day. Fort Hood, near Killeen and 100 miles south of Dallas-Fort Worth, is the largest active duty military post in the United States, 340 square miles of training and support facilities and homes, a virtual city for more than 50,000 military personnel and some 150,000 family members and civilian support personnel. It has been a major center for troops being deployed to or returning from service in Iraq and Afghanistan. The base went into lockdown shortly after the shootings. Gates were closed and barriers put up at all entrance and exit checkpoints, and the military police turned away all but essential personnel. Schools on the base were closed, playgrounds were deserted and sidewalks were empty. Sirens wailed across the base through the afternoon, a warning to military personnel and their families to remain indoors. Military commanders were instructed to account for all personnel on the base. “The immediate concern is to make sure that all of our soldiers and family members are safe, and that’s what commanders have been instructed to do,” said Jay Adams of the First Army, Division West, at Ford Hood. General Cone said the shooting took place about 1:30 p.m., inside a complex of buildings that he called a Soldier Readiness Processing Center. The type of weapons used was unclear, and it was not known whether the gunman had reloaded, although it seemed likely, given that 43 people were shot, perhaps more than once. All the victims were gunned down “in the same area,” General Cone said. As the shootings ended, scores of emergency vehicles rushed to the scene, which is in the center of the fort, and dozens of ambulances carried the shooting victims to hospitals in the region. Both of the handguns used by Major Hasan were recovered at the scene, officials said. Investigators said the major’s computers, cellphones and papers would be examined, his past investigated and his friends, relatives and military acquaintances would be interviewed in an effort to develop a profile of him and try to learn what had motivated his deadly outburst. Major Hasan was assigned to the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood.

The weapons used in the attack were described as “civilian” handguns. Security experts said the fact that two handguns had been used suggested premeditation, as opposed to a spontaneous act. Rifles and assault weapons are conspicuous and not ordinarily seen on the streets of a military post, and medical personnel would have no reason to carry any weapon, they said. Moreover, security experts noted, it took a lot of ammunition to shoot 43 people, another indication of premeditation. It appeared certain that the shootings would generate a whole new look at questions of security on military posts of all the armed forces in the United States. Expressions of dismay were voiced by public officials across the country. The Muslim Public Affairs Council, speaking for many American Muslims, condemned the shootings as a “heinous incident” and said, “We share the sentiment of our president.” The council added, “Our entire organization extends its heartfelt condolences to the families of those killed as well as those wounded and their loved ones.” General Cone said Fort Hood was “absolutely devastated.” News of the shooting set off panic among families and friends of the base personnel. Alyssa Marie Seace’s husband, Pfc. Ray Seace Jr., sent her a text message just before 2 p.m. saying that someone had “shot up the S.R.P. building,” referring to the Soldier Readiness Processing Center. He told her he was “hiding.” Ms. Seace, 18, who lives about five minutes from the base and had not been watching the news, reacted with alarm. She texted him back but got no response. She called her father in Connecticut, who told her not to call her husband because it might reveal his hiding place. Finally, 45 minutes later, her husband, a mechanic who is scheduled to deploy to Iraq in February, texted back to say that three people from his unit had been hit and that a dozen people in all were dead. By late afternoon, the sirens at Fort Hood had fallen silent. In Killeen, state troopers were parked on ridges overlooking the two main highways through town. In residential areas, the only signs of life were cars moving through the streets. In the business districts, people went about their business. In 1991, Killeen was the scene of one of the worst mass killings in American history. A gunman drove his pickup truck through the window of a cafeteria, fatally shot 22 people with a handgun, then killed himself. Fort Hood, opened in September 1942 as America geared up for World War II, was named for Gen. John Bell Hood of the Confederacy. It has been used continuously for armor training and is charged with maintaining readiness for combat missions. It is a place that feels, on ordinary days, like one of the safest in the world, surrounded by those who protect the nation with their lives. It is home to nine schools — seven elementary schools and two middle schools, for the children of personnel. But on Thursday, the streets were lined with emergency vehicles, their lights flashing and sirens piercing the air as Texas Rangers and state troopers took up posts at the gates to seal the base. Shortly after 7 p.m., the sirens sounded again and over the loudspeakers a woman’s voice that could be heard all over the base announced in a clipped military fashion: “Declared emergency no longer exists.” The gates reopened, and a stream of cars and trucks that had been bottled up for hours began to move out.

Suspect Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment By JAMES DAO WASHINGTON — Born and reared in Virginia, the son of immigrant parents from a small Palestinian town near Jerusalem, he joined the Army right out of high school, against his parents’ wishes. The Army, in turn, put him through college and then medical school, where he trained to be a psychiatrist. But Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the 39-year-old man accused of Thursday’s mass shooting at Fort Hood, Tex., began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim, he told relatives in Virginia. He had also more recently expressed deep concerns about being sent to Iraq or Afghanistan. Having counseled scores of returning soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder, first at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington and more recently at Fort Hood, he knew all too well the terrifying realities of war, said a cousin, Nader Hasan. “He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy,” Mr. Hasan said. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.” The Federal Bureau of Investigation earlier became aware of Internet postings by a man calling himself Nidal Hasan, a law enforcement official said. The postings discussed suicide bombings favorably, but the investigators were not clear whether the writer was Major Hasan. In one posting on the Web site Scribd, a man named Nidal Hasan compared the heroism of a soldier who throws himself on a grenade to protect fellow soldiers to suicide bombers who sacrifice themselves to protect Muslims. “If one suicide bomber can kill 100 enemy soldiers because they were caught off guard that would be considered a strategic victory,” the man wrote. It could not be confirmed, however, that the writer was Major Hasan. Major Hasan was wounded and taken into custody by the Fort Hood police after the shooting rampage, in which 12 people were killed and at least 31 others were wounded. Though Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison of Texas reported that Major Hasan was to be deployed this month, that could not be confirmed with the Army on Thursday night. Nader Hasan said his cousin never mentioned in recent phone calls to Virginia that he was going to be deployed, and he said the family was shocked when it heard the news on television on Thursday afternoon. “He was doing everything he could to avoid that,” Mr. Hasan said. “He wanted to do whatever he could within the rules to make sure he wouldn’t go over.” Some years ago, that included retaining a lawyer and asking if he could get out of the Army before his contract was up, because of the harassment he had received as a Muslim. But Nader Hasan said the lawyer had told his cousin that even if he paid the Army back for his education, it would not allow him to leave before his commitment was up. “I think he gave up that fight and was just doing his time,” Mr. Hasan said. Nader Hasan said his cousin’s parents had both been American citizens who owned businesses, including restaurants and a store, in Roanoke, Va. He declined to confirm reports that they were Jordanian but said the parents, who are both dead, had immigrated from a small town near Jerusalem many years ago.

His mother’s obituary, in The Roanoke Times in 2001, said she was born in Palestine in 1952. It described her as a restaurant owner “known for her ability to keep sometimes rowdy customers out of trouble and always had a warm meal for someone who otherwise would not have anything to eat that evening.” Records show that Major Hasan received an undergraduate degree at Virginia Tech and a medical degree at the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences in Bethesda, Md. He did a residency at Walter Reed Medical Center and worked there for years before a transfer to the Darnall Army Medical Center at Fort Hood this year. Major Hasan had two brothers, one in Virginia and another in Jerusalem, his cousin said. The family, by and large, prospered in the United States, Mr. Hasan said. The former imam at a Silver Spring, Md., mosque where Major Hasan worshiped for about 10 years described him as proud of his work in the Army and “very serious about his religion.” The former imam, Faizul Khan, said that Major Hasan had wanted to marry an equally religious woman but that his efforts to find one had failed. “He wanted a woman who prayed five times a day and wears a hijab, and maybe the women he met were not complying with those things,” the former imam said. Mr. Hasan, 40, a lawyer in Virginia, described his cousin as a respectful, hard-working man who had devoted himself to his parents and his career. Mr. Hasan said his cousin became more devout after his parents died in 1998 and 2001. “His parents didn’t want him to go into the military,” Mr. Hasan said. “He said, ‘No, I was born and raised here, I’m going to do my duty to the country.’ ”