What would cause a soldier to open fire on fellow soldiers? We may never know, as among the casualties in the events that unfolded was the gunman himself.
Let’s look at what is known. The shooting happened in a post facility where soldiers were finishing up preparations to deploy to Iraq, and Afghanistan. Mostly to Iraq. The Gunman was a Major, an officer and a doctor, who was 39 or 40 years old, his name was Nadal Malik Hasan M.D. They have “detained” two other soldiers .
It would be easy to jump to conclusions and say it was because he was under so much stress that he cracked, or that maybe he had some mental defect. Just as easy to say it was some ideological thing, after all he has an arabic name, but we also know that having an arabic name doesn’t make you a terrorist and the names and ranks of the two other soldiers have not been released.
If it turns out that the Major had endured such stresses that the felt that they only way to end this stress was to kill people, then we must ask why was he not receiving the help he needed to cope. It easy to blame the military for not offering necessary mental health care to those who need it, and yes there is a general attitude in the military that you just don’t say you need mental help, but as a Veteran of our military, I can tell you that this attitude is no more pervasive than it is in the civilian world. It is also no easier for the members of our armed forces to identify the individual in need of help than it is in the civilian world. Ultimately it comes down to the individual having to seek help. The military does offer the professionals needed to provide that help.
If this is found to be the motive for the shootings, then an answer must be found to try to keep this horrible, tragic event from being repeated. The easy, and in some ways disingenuous, answer would be to not place soldiers in a position to incur such stress. The problem with that answer is the stressor facing a soldier is combat. The soldier’s job is to go to war and fight for his country, so this is not the way to stop this from happening again. It would be easy to say then end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. This is also not an acceptable answer. Granted the war in Iraq was entered into under false pretenses, and is an unjust war, but at this point we have made such a mess out of Iraq that we have a responsibility to stay and try to clean up our mess. As for Afghanistan, we invaded to destroy a threat to the United States, Al Qaeda, and to punish the government that was their ally and protector. This is still an important ongoing mission for our military, and is necessary for the safety for U.S. citizens as well as citizens of other countries. One answer that would make a difference would to be to send more soldiers to Afghanistan, with more soldiers in theater the individual soldier would have a portion of the burden of duty in a combat zone lifted, as a larger troop contingent allows for better rotation of soldiers between forward areas where combat is most likely to occur, and rear areas where they can rest and better release the stress built up while at the forward area.
But what if this were some sort of ideologically motivated attack? Why were the mechanisms in place to keep such a thing from occurring not able to discover the plan to attack fellow soldiers? A very possible reason for failure of the military to uncover such a plot once again comes down to the need for more personnel in our armed forces. Not only are our combat forces stretched far too thin to accomplish their mission, but the support units that make it possible for our combat forces to operate at peak performance are also stretched to the breaking point.
While we may or may not ever know the reason this tragedy has occurred, it would be less likely to occur if we increased the size of the forces in Afghanistan, and in the our armed forces in general.
