Is Ft. Hood Like Columbine? By Columbine's Dave Cullen

[onehandle]

Is Ft. Hood like Columbine? That’s the gist of the question I’ve been asked repeatedly the past 24 hours, in various incarnations. It’s a natural question, which has been running through my own head incessantly. My brain is about to bust with all the apparent parallels to Columbine, Virginia Tech and 9/11, and the startling differences to each as well. But the only responsible answer to that question is I don‘t know yet.

If we have learned anything from these tragedies, is that we won’t get a firm handle on why for weeks, months or even years. At this distance from Oklahoma City, we were convinced it was the work of Arabs or Muslims, and what was the difference between those two anyway? The Columbine killers’ journals--far and away the most revealing evidence--were released in 2006, more than seven years after the murders.

snip...

If we guess now, the myths will be us forever. Ten years after Columbine, most of the public still believes it was about jocks, Goths and the Trench Coat Mafia. No, no and no. It wasn‘t even intended primarily as a school shooting: the failed bombs were supposed to be the main event. Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold were not loners, outcasts or misfits, nor were most of the school shooters. Most shooters do not fit the profile we have come to accept, because no accurate profile exists. Eric and Dylan don’t even fit a profile of each other: they were dramatically different boys in both personality and motive. They set the bombs and pulled the triggers for very different reasons.

With Columbine, speculation turned into accepted fact remarkably quickly. Most of the major myths solidified within the first 24 hours. Since then, journalists have shown great restraint. I was stunned by the coverage following Virginia Tech and most of the shootings: we learned that lesson and treaded lightly about motive. This week, it’s harder for me to assess the coverage, because I’m watching from Helsinki, where I’m attending an academic conference on school shooters. But I have been reading the blogs and the papers and watched video segments from each of the three big cable news networks, and so far, they understand the danger.

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/nurtureshock/archive/2009/11/06/is-ft-hood-like-columbine-guest-blogger-dave-cullen.aspx

[Are_grits_groceries]

1. I don't think so.

IMHO Hasan was affected by a lot of factors. I don't know how to order them in terms of how they affected him. I believe all of them began to put a great deal of stress on him. At some point, I think that stress overrode any moral constructs he had had against committing such an act.

I didn't see the major stressers in the lives of the Columbine killers.

He was like Harris and Klebold in that he also made careful preparations. However, I think that Harris was a pure psychopath, and he carried Klebold with him. They were nihilists, while Hasan may have had a religious edge to his acts.

Harris and Klebold fit in well enough to Columbine. I don't think they were as outwardly cut off as Hasan. However, I think they cut themselves off from people for the most part and went into their own little world. Hasan was alone and made his world in his mind. Harris and Klebold were in a bubble that magnified their feelings.

Klebold and Harris were also not going to fight to the end for any cause because they had no purpose beyond mayhem and 'fame.' Hasan was going to fight until he was stopped while Klebold and Harris committed suicide.

Certain people glimpsed their feelings in each case, but nobody paid attention. There was one exception and that was Brooks Brown. He and his family filed numerous police reports.

The end result is still horrific.

I guess the main thing I feel is that Harris was a psychopath. I believe he was bad to the bone, and would have done something one day that would be horrific.