Likewise in 1991, after the Killeen shootings, the state of Texas responded by enacting a law freeing up gun owners to carry concealed weapons. Gov. George W. Bush signed the law as in 1995, and in 2008, it was he who signed the first federal gun-control law in 13 years, after the Virginia Tech massacre.
So Hasan, whose parents came to the U.S. from Palestine, had plenty of personal connections to “Made in the USA” violence and massacres; and yet there’s a frantic attempt to make him out to be a crazy Muslim monster hell-bent on killing Americans.
Why would he need to take inspiration just from them when Americans already provided so many excellent examples of how to mass murder fellow Americans?
Fort Hood, the largest military base in America, has seen its share of violence as well. For one thing, it holds the record for most soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan — 685 so far — and although we don’t know the figures, it’s reasonable to assume that Fort Hood is responsible for a sizable percentage of the thousands killed in those countries since America invaded them.
Over the same period, 75 soldiers have committed suicide at Fort Hood, 10 in 2009 — the highest of any base. In one weekend in 2005, two soldiers, who had returned from Iraq, killed themselves in separate incidents. Last year, in something right out of Full Metal Jacket, Spc. Jody Michael Wirawan, 21, of the 1st Cavalry Division, shot and killed his lieutenant, and then killed himself when police arrived.
And life in Killeen isn’t much nicer: It has one of the nation’s lowest median incomes and highest crime rates. Earlier this year, a 20-year-old Fort Hood soldier was killed by a Killeen cop who claimed he killed the man after being dragged underneath his SUV. The soldier’s mother filed a lawsuit claiming that the cop was notoriously out of control and violent and that he had shot her son while the car was pulled over.
All of this violence and despair led Fort Hood’s commander, Lt. Gen. Rick Lynch, to build a post-traumatic stress disorder complex called the Resiliency Campus, featuring a Spiritual Fitness Center for soldiers to meditate, and a Cognitive Enhancement Assistance Center. As though a spiritual fitness workout routine could resolve the underlying cause of why a Resiliency Campus was built in the first place.
If the government really were concerned about all the suicides and PTSD cases, it could have prevented Hasan’s deadly mission before it happened. It would have been easy: Hasan had pleaded with his superiors not to be sent to Iraq, where he was scheduled to be deployed, but his requests were denied.
Right-wing bloggers such as Michelle Malkin, and some mainstream outlets, have seized on reports emerging that Hasan supposedly voiced opinions sympathetic to suicide bombers.
But if he was an al-Qaida sleeper-cell suicide bomber, it makes no sense why he would, a) argue with fellow soldiers that the wars are wrong and we should withdraw; and b) that he tried to get out of being deployed to Iraq. The 9/11 terrorists did their best to “blend in” and pretend they were as American as apple pie, because the point is not to draw any attention to yourself if you’re a terrorist planning to suicide bomb a military base.
Moreover, the timing of his shooting, the day before he was to be sent off, shows that his desperation had reached the limit. What this suggests is that the massacre could have been avoided if Hasan’s objections were taken into account.
