12 dead, 31 injured in shooting at Fort Hood Texas

A: I never claimed to know the whole story Looked like a pretty categorical statement to me ... maybe I read it wrong or maybe you've thought it through a little more.

B: The military is there to train to kill There is not theraputic prority to the military. you know how many people are in the military and how many join every week? Literally millions of military members. And there is the conflict I'm talking about ... it is necessary for the military to carry out its mission. It is also necessary for the military to provide some basic necessities for soldiers so that it doesn't lose troops unnecessarily. It is the job of military health care personnel to heal/fix/cure soldiers' ills so that they can return to duty - or not - fit to do their jobs. There is not an unending supply of soldiers to replace those who are too damaged to fight. It is reasonable to wonder if health care personnel are sometimes pressured to return a soldier to duty who is physically fit but not mentally (which doesn't show at first glance, after all). That is the conflict I was talking about.

C: Based on history if the shooter shouted christain phrases there would people al over this decrying in the media, governmaent and even on here. We have seen it happen too many times in the past for anyone to try to deny it. The mans religious views guided what he did not any treatment (and apperantly from the news reports it was crappy treatment) that he was giving to soldiers. Then you should know better ... if it's wrong to do to Christians, it's wrong to do to anyone. It is perfectly reasonable to ask whether the man's unpopular religious convictions had anything to do with his behavior ... but to dismiss him as a religious terrorist and only that is an overly simplistic explanation and I don't buy it.

D: As far as PTSD is comcerned, I really do have my serious doubts about it. And before I get flamed for this I have a brother that suffers from it supposedly, the VA has made him a drug addiuct who lives on valium. I ALSO have been in many intense combat situations for many years doing things that many would consider questionable, I have shot and killed the enemy, I have killed the enemy with my hands, I have seen many friends killed and wounded and disabled severlym, yet I have never had a nightmare from it, nor have any of my old buddies had noghtmares according to them. That makes about as much sense as saying that since my grandma smoked tobacco for sixty years and lived to be 95, then tobacco must be harmless. I'm glad you and your buddies were resilient enough to come through without serious emotional damage. It would be useful to hear your thoughts on why that happened for you and not for others ... what made the difference?

My responses look like this:



To address point C a little further: I want to make my position a bit clearer. As a number of us have noted, the shooter's Muslim faith has fed into his behavior in a big way.

I think it is important to think about how religion morphs into religiosity and becomes a justification for immoral and evil acts. This can happen in any religious tradition - and it has. I also seem to remember that excessive religiosity is a characteristic of a number of mental disorders ... perhaps the psych nurses among us can illuminate that.

It is a deeply frightening subject because it means looking at the ways in which our various religions are warped and distorted into something evil - and the notion that one's own religion might be used to justify evil is horrifying.

It is, however, the price we pay for religious freedom. It is learning to discern the line between deeply held faith and fanaticism, between upholding and witnessing one's own faith and trampling on another's. If our ideal is co-existence, then seeing that line as clearly as possible is critical.

What I will not do is use this man's crime to demonize Islam.

All good points - if his religion made him more susceptible - it would be the hijacked Islam, as many Muslims have been saying since 9/11 (and before actually).

It is hard to criticize THAT . . . because folks jump on it as criticizing all Islam. Like when folks criticize Christianity when they see the hijacked form that some people unfortunately use as justification for violence.

We can't just say "Islam" did this.

Right now - we don't know enough to even blame the hijacked form.

steph

Today Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., said he would begin a congressional investigation into whether the Army missed warning signs regarding the Nov. 5th Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, that should have led to his being discharged earlier.

“Really, in the U.S. Army, this is not a matter of constitutional freedom of speech. If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamic extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance.

Now there will be a Congressional investigation to determine if it was an act of terrorism...

Today Chairman of the Senate Homeland Security Committee Sen. Joe Lieberman, ID-Conn., said he would begin a congressional investigation into whether the Army missed warning signs regarding the Nov. 5th Fort Hood shooter, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, that should have led to his being discharged earlier.

“Really, in the U.S. Army, this is not a matter of constitutional freedom of speech. If Hasan was showing signs, saying to people that he had become an Islamic extremist, the U.S. Army has to have zero tolerance.

http://blogs.abcnews.com/thenote/200...e-terrori.html