Several new reports suggested that Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan saw a deployment to Iraq as his "worst nightmare" and recounted how he had treated victims of combat-related stress and was upset about the war. He began having second thoughts about a military career a few years ago after other soldiers harassed him for being a Muslim.
Alluding to these reports Prof. Esposito pointed out that it apparently wasn't challenging enough to figure out an already complex puzzle:
(1) Why had this American-born psychiatrist, a serious, quiet, and reserved military officer, who joined the Army over his parents' initial objections in order to serve his country, made substantial efforts to get out of the military in recent years?
(2) What was the connection between reports that Hasan had been deeply affected by his work with veterans from the Iraq war and his refusal to accept the fact that he was to be deployed to Iraq?
(3) How serious and substantial were reports that post-9/11 harassment by colleagues over Hasan's Muslim name had contributed to his growing disaffection with and desire to get out of the military?
Did all of these factors push him over the edge psychologically or was his horrific act of mass murder more calculated? Instead, reports that Hasan was a practicing Muslim were seen as an immediate reason to focus on the "religious angle," Prof. Esposito lamented.
Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, argues that trauma of war is contagious. "The stress of war damages beyond belief--years and years after serving in the military, troops can still be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But one thing we may not have sufficiently appreciated is this contagion. Witnesses to violence, those who work with people who have experienced war directly, also can become severely traumatized.
As our thoughts go out to Fort Hood today, let us really see war in its ever widening effects and really count the cost, she argued.
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