Yesterday an army major Nidal Malik Hasan opened fired on his follow soldiers at Fort Hood Texas. This resulted in 13 dead and 31 wounded and Hasan himself was shot four times. Hasan was presumed dead but is still alive but is said to be paralyzed at this time. A civilian female police officer pumped four bullets into him but he is still alive to face the charges of his mass murders.
Hasan at a store hours before he went on a Killing Spree
Why in one of the largest and you would think secure army bases where up to 100,000 men are at the base awaiting deployment to Iraq could this have happened? As unpleasant as it is the reasons must be studied and learned before assuming his culture was the reason. Hasan was a Muslim and some are saying he was a traitor but there have been other mass killings at Killeen when in 1991 George Hennard drove his truck into a cafeteria opened fire and shot 23 people dead. Hennard was an unemployed brooding navy soldier and hated women in the ranks. Hennard yelled “all women of Killeen and Belton are vipers. See what you have done to me and my family”. Killeen is a small town in Texas with a population of approximately 68,000 people that have been terrorized many years ago.
Major Malik Hasan after all was a army major and a psychiatrist who was supposedly helping other soldiers de-compress from the stresses of war while he himself was being sent to Iraq. It was a combination of his own deployment and a few other factors.
Hasan was born in the United States and is of middle eastern descent who was opposed to the two wars and his cousin Nader Hasan told others That Nidal was being harassed and degraded by other military officers. What could have triggered Hasan mad rampage against his fellow soldiers? It could have been the fact that Hasan was bullied and called racists names for one. It could have been that this could have triggered his increased opposition to the war and invasions of his homeland by Americans.
A man who was made a Major in the military is of high rank and in his position of an army phsyciatrist he may have felt negatively towards being deployed to Iraq. Hasan became increasingly hostile under the surface and that was due to his job of being a psychiatrist to veterans returning from the gulf wars.
Previous to the shootings Hasan hired a lawyer to make a case about his wish to leave the service and this was a signal that he may have been cracking under the pressures of his job. The massacres of people are becoming increasingly high in numbers and perhaps society is still in shock at these slayings when they happen to make the headlines in your own country. It appears Hasan wanted out and the army would not let him go so he cracked and shot people.
Or the racial bullying, his deployment and the fact that he was going back to his homeland which was still invaded by the US was just too much for this man to reconcile in his mind.
Fort Hood has some dark deep secrets of over 75 soldiers committing suicide of which two returning soldiers from Iraq killed themselves. This is a glaring example of the stresses these wars have had on US Soldiers in all ranks. In 2008 another soldier Jody Wirawan only 21 years old shot his lieuteant and then killed himself. Early in 2009 a civilian policeman shot and killed a soldier after the cop with a history of violence claimed the soldier dragged him under his SUV.
A memorial is planned for the persons who were slain and an investigation is underway at Hassan’s apartment and his computer. The hero of the story is a female police officer Sgt. Kimberley Munley who took down the Major by firing four shots into him and suffered a bullet herself. Munley is known to be one tough cop and she is credited for saving lives by stopping Hasan with her grace under pressure. Kimberly is no longer an army officer, married with two daughters and has become a hero through this terrible ordeal.
Sgt Kimberly Munley Took a Bullet and Shot Four Times at Hasan saving Dozens of LIves by her Act of Bravery
TAGS: Fort Hood killings, Hasan Killer at Fort Hood, Fort Hood killer, Sgt Kimberley Munley, Fort Hood Soldiers, 13 dead at Fort Hood shootings, Fort Hood, politics of war.
