Fort Hood

I’ve been to Fort Hood. I went there on assignment for Parade magazine to interview the widows from the War on Terror.  I have a whole host of friends who have served with the First Cav Division. I’ve stood with them at sunrise at the Vietnam Memorial Wall and mourned their losses with them.

When I think of Fort Hood, I think of the faces I know and I recall the stories I’ve heard. There was the woman who hid around the corner of her house when she saw the Casualty Assistance Officer and the Chaplain at her front door. She believed that as long as she could hide from them, her husband couldn’t possibly be dead.

Every military spouse knows that they don’t come to your home unless your beloved is dead.

I recall the widow who arrived at her military housing to discover a Casualty Assistance Officer and Chaplain waiting for her. They had been there, outside her door, for two hours. All of her neighbors knew before she did that her husband was dead.

I think about how these widows were forced off base shortly after their husbands’ death because at that time military widows were required to vacate the base within 90 days. Now they get a year. I helped push for that legislative change because of the friends I have at Fort Hood.

It was a Fort Hood widow who personally hand-delivered a copy of my memoir to former President George W. Bush. She wanted him to understand what such deaths cost a military family.

I think about these widows and their children and the children they will never bear every day, even on days when they aren’t making headline news.

I’ve been to military bases throughout this nation. I know how seriously Fort Hood takes their security. So like you, I was stunned to hear about the shootings at Fort Hood. I was shocked to find out that the shooter is still alive. I was shocked to discover that he’s a doctor, an officer no less.

I was not shocked, however, to find out that he is Muslim.

I wish I was and I wish he wasn’t.

I worry that the fact that I wasn’t shocked says something troubling about me. I worry that his actions say something troubling about a violent ideology that is, yes sadly, too often associated with the Muslim faith.

I wish he had been Baptist or Charismatic or Greek Orthodox.

I hate it when we play right into our own bad stereotypes.

I would rather think that the guy, who had worked with the wounded at Walter Reed, just went off the deep end. I can understand how someone who works with Post-traumatic patients may get so frustrated he just goes ballistic. It wouldn’t take much for a person to reach that point, given the way Congress has mistreated our veterans over the years: Denying dedicated funds for the VA budget. Closing down VA hospitals in rural areas. Forcing bases to close and consolidate into one big sprawling and almost always unmanageable bureaucracy.

What I cannot understand, however, is how a man who has reportedly made incendiary comments on Internet blog sites, who reportedly has suggested that Muslims ought to strap bombs to themselves and target Times Square, manages to earn a promotion to Major.

Six months. That’s how long officials are now saying Major Nidal Malik Hasan has been on their radar. Yet, they were willing to ignore all the warning signs and let this man deploy with unsuspecting troops?

He was reportedly evaluated before being promoted to Major in April.  Listen, if we have learned anything from Columbine, from Virginia Tech, from Oklahoma City, it ought to be that these sorts of rampages don’t happen in a vacuum.

There is always a history. A pattern of troubling behavior that precedes these violent acts. Yet, the PR folks always insist, “We must remember this is an isolated incident.”

Who are we kidding?

These are not isolated incidents.

There is a pattern of violent behavior from people who feel disenfranchised and marginalized. Someone, usually a lot of someones,  notices that the individual has become more strident in their behavior. They post all sort of troubling stuff on the Internet. They begin to hole up and shut down. Or they fly off the handle for no apparent reason. They almost always become more fervent in their faith.

Yet, for some reason or another, we keep ignoring all the signs and acting as if their actions have been the most inexplicable thing ever.

Maybe the question that needs answering is what’s wrong with us? Could it be that in our effort to be more understanding, we’ve become totally unreasonable?