Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer's Beliefs Are an Easy Out...

[katty]

more:
http://www.alternet.org/media/143779/focusing_on_ft._hood_killer%27s_beliefs_are_an_easy_out_to_avoid_the_deeper_reasons_for_the_massacre

Focusing on Ft. Hood Killer's Beliefs Are an Easy Out to Avoid the Deeper Reasons for the Massacre

By Mark Ames, AlterNet. Posted November 6, 2009.

That alleged killer Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan is a Muslim is not enough to explain the motive for the attacks.

It’s hard to pinpoint what’s the most shocking thing about Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s shooting rampage in Fort Hood, Texas. I’ll start with this: there’s nothing all that ground-breaking about it. Happens all the time, it’s just that we’re a nation of amnesiacs who forget all the unpleasantries, and refuse to learn the valuable lessons.

For starters, Fort Hood is located in Killeen, Texas -- where one of the deadliest rampage shootings in American history took place in 1991, when an unemployed ex-Navy enlistee, George Hennard Jr., crashed his pickup into a popular cafeteria, pulled out two handguns (Hasan also used two handguns), and murdered 23 people before taking his own life. The day before the massacre, Hennard was eating a hamburger in a local restaurant watching the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings and, according to the manager, “When an interview with Anita Hill came on, he just went off. He started screaming, ‘You dumb bitch! You bastards opened the door for all the women!'”

So yesterday’s Fort Hood shooting isn’t the worst or most deranged mass-killing in Killeen’s history -- not by a longshot. The mainstream media is enabling the screaming about the Muslim traitors in our midst, but Hasan killed far fewer Americans than the white, racist George Hennard. And they were bested by the federal government in nearby Waco Texas, in 1993, when federal forces slaughtered some 75 men, women and children in the Branch Davidian compound.

But in what may seem like a strange coincidence, Maj. Hasan and Killeen are connected to another American shooting rampage. Killeen held the record for America’s worst shooting massacre until 2007, when Virginia Tech student Seung-Hui Cho shot and killed 33 fellow students. And Malik Nadal Hasan graduated from Virginia Tech in 1997. Both Hasan and Cho were bullied and harassed -- Hasan’s cousin told reporters that after 9/11, his military comrades regularly abused him, calling him “camel jockey.” But the cousin insisted that Hasan’s opposition to the war didn’t grow out of the bullying, but rather from the stories he heard while interning as a psychiatric counselor to veterans from the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.

[Bobbieo]

1. He was obviously in the wrong profession. Could not handle the stress.

He's also CRAZY!!!

[katty]

2. yes, he certainly 'got crazy', the military should have monitored

his reactions, anxieties,etal and given him a thorough evaluation and discharged him quite awhile ago.

[stray cat]

3. Jeffrey Dahmer didn't get this much pity - why does Dr. Hasan rate so highly?

[katty]

4. agree, although the writer i.d.'s other mass shootings

and a military system that is clearly in very poor shape and stressed out, that should never, ever give Dr. Hasan (or anyone) a pass on his violent actions.

[emilyg]

5. Good question.

[Igel]

6. Ames is no better.

That's the problem. Those jumping to a conclusion--that since Hasan was Muslim, that must be the real motivation--are parsing the little that's known and picking what they consider to be the most salient.

Ames does the same thing. The difference is that he considers something else to be the most salient.

Now, Hennard apparently snapped and went on a rampage. Hasan apparently planned his rampage. He "snapped" at least a day before his rampage. That makes them dissimilar.

Also note that the stories from relatives and others are a mess. He was concerned because of stories he heard--but his opposition to the wars preceded his becoming a psychiatrist. He was mostly concerned about getting married (to whom?). Or not. He was harrassed and bullied--but he repeatedly shoved his religion in people's faces, and not always in innocuous ways.

I can give you a list of motives and motivations. You can check off those you like and I can substantiate them from media sources--or I can argue that those can't possibly be his real motives and motivations. Whatever.