Posts Tagged ‘Ft. Hood massacre’

Remember the Ft. Hood shootings? Or are they already off the docket of your brain, entirely? Remember how an Army officer, a doctor, was all kinds of unhappy and wanted out of the Army because he didn’t like the war in Iraq? And he was not allowed to break his contract, and he opened fire on his fellow service members and killed thirteen of them. He gave off plenty of signals that things were going very awry. Nobody paid attention.

Well, when an enlisted soldier doesn’t keep his “happy face” on, someone sure pays attention. When a man who already served in Iraq, Marc Hall, was kept in the military with the very unpopular “stop loss” policy and told he was going back to Iraq, he wrote a hip hop song to protest. He wrote about losing control and going on a shooting spree, much like what Maj. Hasan actually DID. And he, unlike Maj. Hasan, has been arrested and is being charged.

Now, mind you, any soldier who has less than 8 to 10 years of service in and who bitches about stop loss, is being a bit of an idiot. Any military contract binds you not only to your immediate four years (which Hall served), but to several more years of reserve time that the military may claim at ANY time. So, his real FULL contract is actually not fullfilled. And protest or not, after Ft. Hood, any troop writing about shooting up the military is just begging to get a UCMJ slap upside the head—-hard.

Do I think Hall intended violence? I don’t know, I think he was likely just an idiot who was pissed off and wanted to make some noise. I think it is rather a pity a song lands him in jail (but it will keep him out of Iraq), while the warning signs of an officer were ignored and he continued to get good efficiency reports. I do think the officers who kept writing good things about Maj. Hasan should be in trouble—protecting the rating of a “brother officer” got 13 people killed.

All in all, it strikes me as a case of shutting the barn door after the horse is gone. Too little too late for 13 men and women. And Marc Hall will bear a heavy price for the military’s wrong handling of a disturbed officer, AND his own stupidity. And I suspect there will be a lot of screaming over Hall’s “freedom of speech”….yeah, and perhaps there should be. After all, nobody arrests civilian rappers for songs about shooting cops, right? But the military has its own code of justice, and every basic trainee is tutored in the differences. Hall should have known better. But the Army should have known better, too: an officer should not be exempt from examination of questionable behaviors.

I never could get into the television series called “Heroes”, largely because I believe if someone has super-powers it is not necessarily heroic to take bigger risks. For me, Hector was the hero in the story of Troy’s war and downfall; not Achilles. Achilles knew he was nigh onto immortal—he risked far less than the humbler hoplites around him!

But heroes do exist, perfectly mortal, red-blooded young Army members like PFCs Marquest Smith and Jeffrey Pearsall. In the confusion and horror that was the Ft. Hood Readiness Center, last week, these two twenty-one year olds acted heroically and at far greater risk to themselves than the legendary Achilles ever endured. They ran back INTO the building most others were fleeing, against self-interest and to save others.

I hope the Army recognizes their inititive and selflessness. And I hope society shows more interest in the struggles and successes of real heroes than television phonies.

I watched the memorial at Ft. Hood today. Just passing thoughts that hit me:

*Is it wrong, after so much gunfire, to wish someone could take a trank rifle to the talking heads, especially Mike Gerson and Wolf Blitzer? So much talk about how solemn it is while never shutting up long enough to give a watcher a chance at solemn thought was cloying, annoying, and downright repetitive. The mute button saved my sanity.

*The very Christian religious milieu was almost overwhelming.

*In spite of White House statements about news of an upcoming troop surge in Afghanistan being premature, upon hearing his speech at Ft. Hood, I believe Obama has decided to commit to a long time American presence there. This bows me with grief even more than the sight of 13 helmets and boots.

*CNN? You suck. You couldn’t even keep sound and picture aligned—this should not have looked like a badly dubbed kung-fu flick.

*Could we get some agreement on the data on the victims? Some have a different hometown listed every other display?!

The list grows, this week, both in Iraq and Afghanistan. And even more shockingly—here in the United States. As always, my list is not complete as name release takes time. I have included the names of the thirteen victims of the Ft. Hood Massacre, for they died due to the war efforts as surely as if they had completed arrival in Iraq and Afghanistan; it is more bitter because it was at the hands of a comrade who broke his oaths of service and killed his comrades.

US Army Spc. Jonathon M. Sylvestre, 21, of Colorado Springs, Colo., died in Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

The following five members of the British armed forces in Afghanistan died of gunshot wounds on Nov 3rd. They were gunned down by a presumed ally—an Afghan policeman who had served with the British for three years. He either shot them down in some unhappiness with a supervisor or because of tribal ties to the Taliban; but the sorrowful result is the same.

Cpl. Nicholas Webster-Smith, 24, Wales
Sgt. Matthew Telford, 37 – England
Guardsman James Major – 18 – England
WO1 Darren Chant, 40 – England
Cpl. Steven Boote, 22 – England

US Army Staff Sgt. Amy C. Tirador, 29, of Albany, N.Y., died in Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident.

US Army Spc. Julian L. Berisford, 25, of Benwood, W.V., died in Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms and rocket-propelled grenade fires.

US Army Spc. Tony Carrasco Jr., 25, of Berino, N.M., died in Iraq, of a gunshot wound suffered when enemy forces attacked his unit.

US Army Spc. Aaron Aamont, 22, of Custer, Wa. died in Afghanistan when his vehicle ran over an IED, which exploded killing him and another soldier:

Spc. Gary L. Gooch Jr., 22, of Ocala, Fla.

(These deaths from the Ft. Lewis Stryker Bde. take their death count over 20 since they deployed this summer.)

And again, for good measure—the list from the Ft. Hood shooting on Nov 5th:
PFC Kham S. Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minnesota

Capt. John Gaffaney, 56, of San Diego, California

PFC Michael Pearson, of Bolignbrook, Illinois
(his age was approximately 20)

Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Kiel, Wisconsin

PFC Aaron T. Nemulka, 19, of West Jordan, Utah

Spc. Jason D. Hunt, 22, Frederick, Oklahoma

Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago, Illinois

Dr. Russell Seager, 51, of Racine, Illinois

SSG Justin M. DeCrow, 32, of Evans, Georgia

LTC Juanita Warman, 51, of Harve de Grace, Maryland

Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Mountain City, Tennessee

Maj. Libardo Caraveo, 52, of Woodbridge, Virginia

Michael G. Cahill, 62, of Cameron, Texas

In Afghanistan, we hope to be known by the good we do. So, we build schools and clinics. The Taliban blows up the schools and clinics, kills teachers, students and others without blinking an eye. Villagers ask our troops to please stay away, they ask the Taliban the same; both ignore these requests. And battles rage on.

This makes me wonder, can’t we just stop now?

Police Sergeant Kim Munley narrowly escaped death on Nov. 5th when she confronted the Ft. Hood shooter—his shots through her legs severed her femoral artery. She and another police officer succeeded in stopping him with four shots.

Munley responded to the gunfire within three minutes; how many would be dead if she had not been on site?

Civilian press stories seem intent on painting the Ft. Hood shooter as a domestic terrorist, like two other small civilian groups who have wanted to kill US soldiers on American soil. While there may be similarities of religion, I do not think being Muslim a terrorist makes. I feel Maj. Hasan needs to be prosecuted as an Army officer who broke his oaths and took the lives of his fellow soldiers.

He is not a terrorist, he is a coward and murderer. And that Quisling Senator Lieberman can just stop wrapping himself in the flag to declare Hasan a terrorist to make himself sound patriotic.

And Maj. Hasan is awake, off the ventilator and able to talk. So at last, he may be able to tell his questioners what guided his gun on that terrible day. I am particularly curious to know why he specifically targeted so many of his fellow mental health care providers, like a local man from our area. Five of the dead were surely his own co-workers.

I don’t discount the idea that he suffered a sort of “contact trauma” from his job, but that does not justify or make me feel sympathetic to his murderous rampage.

And I feel particularly old today. Berlin celebrated the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. I was a child living in Germany when the Wall was built. I served in the Army in Berlin when it was a city divided by that gray, winding death zone. And now, it has been gone longer than most marriages survive?

It brings a tear to my wrinkled eye, I tell you.

On November 5th, 2009, an Army doctor and psychiatrist, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, took two pistols into the post Readiness Center and opened fire on workers there and soldiers preparing for deployment to Iraq or Afghanistan. The Department of Defense will not consider these men and woman casualities of the wars, but I do, and thus I list below what information I have found about them:

PFC Kham S. Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minnesota

Capt. John Gaffaney, 56, of San Diego, California (hometown a guess)

PFC Michael Pearson, of Bolignbrook, Illinois
(his age was approximately 20)

Sgt. Amy Krueger, 29, of Kiel, Wisconsin

PFC Aaron T. Nemulka, 19, of West Jordan, Utah

Spc. Jason D. Hunt, 22, Frederick, Oklahoma

Pvt. Francheska Velez, 21, of Chicago, Illinois

Dr. Russell Seager, 51, of Racine, Illinois

SSG Justin M. DeCrow (no other info found)

LTC Juanita Warman, 51, of Pittsburg, Pennsylvania

Spc. Frederick Greene, 29, of Mountain City, Tennessee

Maj. Libardo Caraveo (no other info found)

Michael G. Cahill, 62, of Cameron, Texas