gulfwarvet: blog 
gulfwarvet's blog
sledge hammer for brain surgery
Published Nov. 7, 2009Views: 227
In reflection of the events that played out at Ft Hood, I, as a veteran would submit that the government is just as faulty as the person who committed these acts.
Proposterous you may say on face value.
Here's my line of thinking. But lets change the values in the equation that led up to the tragic events that so recently unfolded.
Hypothetical: Lets take a devout Christian, put him in a role where he will give guidance to non-Christians on how to deal with killing Christians in a foreign country. Let's let those non-Christians chastise and ridicule this devout Christian over his beliefs and the likes, and not give any support to the individual entrusted to the mental care of others.
Each and every person is different.
That being said, one cannot predict the adverse behavioral events that might present from any such person put in a capacity as that. However, convictions are strong, and there is a fine line between acting out through devotion to a cause and just going plain bonkers due to stress.
I can assure you that should I ever be asked to deploy in the military again, I would NOT want to be counseled by anyone who has STRONG personal/religious feelings against the actions that my government has required me to fulfill by oath. I am sure that Hasan had every credential to work in the capacity he did. But, when one brings a sledge hammer to do brain surgery, the expected prognosis can be certainly diluted to one. You cannot expect anyone devout to any religion/conviction to be unbiased in their daily operations when presented the same challenges as Hasan. The tragedy is in the numbers of the fallen, and the first to have fallen was Hasan. Where are the protections.
Soldiers are NOT mindless machines that can be used again and again without the expectation that some will not be able to process their emotions/experiences without behavioral mal-adaptations.
At a bare minimum, there should be legislation that requires routine psyche evaluations of our service members, and ESPECIALLY before they are provided access to personal firearms. For military personnel are trained to be desensitized to the act of killing others. Where the average Joe on the street would most probably think twice before locking and loading and walking down the closest crowded area, the failsafes are overridden for military members, and especially when unchecked mental illnesses are not fully realized or downplayed to ensure force readiness.
(for those civilians out there who many not follow me on that last point, if too many individual soldiers in a unit are termed as "down" the entire unit is considered not battle-ready. Military commanders try to limit these reported "deficiencies" to appear semper paratus... always ready. There's obviously controls in place to police this... but, there's always business management decisions that must be made, and sometimes there are sacrifices to individual morale that must be paid)
I worry that directly proportional to the number of repeat deployments will be the rise in such attacks as these we hear about in the news.
Filed under: Health
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Don't you know that Obama is NOT a Muslim? Instead he'd a member of a church led by a bile spewing , anti-american foul mouthed, toad named Jeremiah Wright.
GOLO member since July 12, 2007
November 7, 2009 9:01 p.m.
GOLO member since January 20, 2008
November 7, 2009 6:05 p.m.
GOLO member since July 12, 2007
November 7, 2009 3:33 p.m.
I agree.
GOLO member since July 2, 2007
November 7, 2009 3:32 p.m.
'One' would be too many...
GOLO member since May 15, 2009
November 7, 2009 2:57 p.m.
GOLO member since October 4, 2007
November 7, 2009 2:40 p.m.
Some very interesting information about the Ft. Hood jihadist...
GOLO member since May 15, 2009
November 7, 2009 2:38 p.m.
GOLO member since May 15, 2009
November 7, 2009 2:36 p.m.
GOLO member since July 15, 2007
November 7, 2009 2:34 p.m.
From our perspective and Im sure that of those at Ft Hood whose lives were altered/cut short by Hasan, we know in retrospect he was NOT.
GOLO member since July 15, 2007
November 7, 2009 2:25 p.m.
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