Relatives Describe Hasan As Deeply Upset Over Plight Of His Patients
By Susie Madrak Sunday Nov 08, 2009 6:00pmSince we're already seen so much innuendo and the "how do we know whether this guy was a terrorist?" routine from the "get it quickly if not accurately" television news, I thought readers would be interested in a more human slant on the Ft. Hood tragedy:
Reporting from Al Birah, West Bank - When Rafik Ismail Hamad last traveled from the West Bank to visit relatives in America, he was struck by the pressures one of his nephews was facing.
The younger man, an American-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, spoke to his uncle of ethnic taunts by army colleagues. He was haunted by the wartime disabilities of soldiers he treated as an army psychiatrist, Hamad recalled, and was overwhelmed by a growing caseload he felt unable to manage.
On top of that, the uncle said, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan had drifted apart from his family; he was a sensitive, solitary man bearing his burdens alone.
Late Thursday, Hamad was home in the West Bank town of Al Birah when he heard the news on television: A shooting spree at Fort Hood, Texas, had left 13 people dead, and Maj. Hasan, wounded and in a coma, was being accused of the killings.
"The whole family is in a state of denial," Hamad said today. "We don't believe he is capable of doing something like that. I was amazed and shocked, because it's not him. He's very quiet, gentle."
"Maybe it built up together -- the harassment, too many patients, the workload, the tragedies his patients brought to him," said the 65-year-old retired real estate broker. "Whatever it was, it must have been big pressure, something terrible he couldn't handle."
[...] Hamad described his nephew as a gentle soul who once, as a young adult, mourned for three months after rolling over during a nap and crushing his pet parakeet. During medical school, the uncle said, Hasan switched his major to psychiatry after fainting at the sight of blood while delivering a baby.
The young man became more religious after the death of his parents, who were Muslims but not observant, Hamad said. He noticed the change during the visit last year, when his nephew urged him to accompany him to pray at a mosque.
His turn to religion had nothing to do with political identity, Hamad and other West Bank relatives said. He never traveled outside America except for two brief visits to the West Bank, the last one more than a decade ago, they said.
"He never knew anything about politics," Hamad said. "He didn't know who is the president or the king of any Arab country. He's American. He once told me, 'The chances I have in the United States I couldn't have in any other country in the world, so I appreciate what this country has done for me.'"
Hamad said that although his nephew complained last year about ethnic slurs, he appeared to be handling them well. Fellow soldiers once handed him a diaper and told him to wear it around his head, the uncle said; another time they sketched a camel on a piece of paper and left it on his car with a note that said "Here's your ride."
"He told me, 'They're ignorant. I'm more American than they are. I help my country more than they do. And I don't care what they say.' He felt sorry for them. He didn't feel grudges; he felt sympathy."
Hamad said that during their time together last year the major seemed more afflicted by his case load of physically disabled and traumatized war veterans.
"He didn't have time even to breathe," Hamad said. "Too much pressure, too many patients, not enough staff. He would say, 'I don't know how to treat them or what to tell them' because he didn't have enough time. They just kept coming one after the other. Sometimes he cried because of what happened to them. How young they are, what's going to happen to the rest of their lives. They're going to be handicapped; they're going to be crazy. He was very, very sensitive."
Mohammed Munif Hasan, a 24-year-old cousin of the major, said he heard the same story from relatives in America. Major Hasan brought his case load home, he said, seeing patients at his house when the clinic was not open.
"He was a good doctor, and he liked working with soldiers and helping them," Mohammed Hasan said as he absorbed the news of the shooting. "We're the first to wonder how he could have done something like this. It's baffling."
The uncle said: "I think he snapped. Something big happened and he snapped."
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The world is not black and white is it, and like it or not,society tends to make its own "enemies".
Dick Cheney, see your handiwork?
The military really does not give a .... about their soldiers , but are just trying to get and keep numbers to send to the kill zones.
Now matter how real or true this story is, it will fall on the deaf ears of people who have already convicted him in the court of public opinion. Instead of using this as a warning sign that intolerance and hate is at the root of this, and then using it as a tool to teach tolerance, this will be a call to "real Americans" to fight the enemy from within. The sad part is that this "enemy from within" are probably the people that pushed this hapless soul over the edge to begin with.
...both sides of this argument have already made up their mind on evidence that neither side knows to be fact.
thats the obvious
I hope he survives his injuries, goes on trial and tells his own story.
He's a murderer plain and simple. Seems to me it was a pre-meditated act when he bought the weapon he used. He didn't just snap that day and pickup a weapon nearby, he brought 2 with him with the intent of killing innocent people. I'm not dismissing the fact that he had demons in his head but he could've went about it a lot different.
You get the Captain obvious award. You won't find anyone here that thinks this mans actions were justified. His actions were quit horrible, its the cause of these actions that have me a bit disturbed.
This man spent his life trying to help people with great emotional trauma, but all this effort seemed to of backfired. His actions weren't logical, but since when is someone suppose to act logical when they snap? Moreover, if one does snap who says that one can't use reason and logic to achieve a warped outcome?
Either way you roll it, this story is tragic.
... that he had two handguns? I don't see that confirmed anywhere in more recent accounts.
You know for a fact that he shouted "allah hu akbar?" I also don't see that in any recent accounts.
exactly, I'm sure all deranged mass murderers have a story
Sorry, but I'm not going to give a pass to this mass murderer. If he was so concerned with his patients, he wouldn't have murdered a bunch of them, while screaming praise of his version of the sky-zombie.
While I don't consider this a 'terrorist attack', in the dictionary usage of the term, I do consider it just one more religious murderer, like the guy that shot the abortion doctor, or the guy that shot up the holocaust museum.
No one is giving anyone a pass. He obviously suffered a psychotic episode...a break from reality. Something made him freak out.
He was damaged by this war just a surely as a soldier in wheel chair.
No excuse, no "pass" just another reason to promote PEACE AND JUSTICE!
Apparently he cured himself of fainting at the sight of blood. Unfortunately.
but this a perfect reason to not have wars , i dont know , 8 yrs of killing people ( as in a million + ) what is the term , oh yea BLOWBACK .
Anyone who is a profiteer from wars should be hung and left in public till they rot .
you get it
of cases of blowback. Of soldiers killing fellow soldiers, family members, friends and strangers. This is only the latest case. Hundreds more are to come. The only thing making this case so big is the number killed, the location, and that he happened to be Muslim. I can't remember off the top of my head the number of cases but there have been a lot in just the last year or 2 at Ft. Carson. Some were killings of fellow military, some were family members, and some were strangers in the local community. Bush and co brought their wars HERE when they first launched them.
I am always amazed at the secret lives people can be living (both internal and external). Men seem especially prone. This man, a psychiatrist ought to have known enough to seek counseling for himself and yet he was probably repressing everything. Men, particularly in the military, are expected to just "suck it up".
I really think his being single was a significant element of his breaking. I wonder what we will discover as to why he was such a loner?
It does appear though that he was indeed told to "suck it up" when he requested a change of orders.
And being single doesn't add at all to the chances of breaking. It depends on the individual. Many attached men(and women) break simply from the stress of the relationship. Which is why a great number of the killings by military members that we have seen the past couple of years have been the killings of spouses or girlfriends.
make some people homicidal/suicidal. As army psychiatrist, he had access to psyche meds.
and if he wasnt in counseling, something is really wrong
its pretty much a part of every therapists life to have your own therapist
sometimes you are such a POS joe , your attempt at masked racism is all to obvious .
yup
mention Israel and see what happens!
i know what would happen , to easy like fishing in a pond .
no soul joe whatcha got , you and droopy dog are both POS .
joe shoot your fingers off again , let me catch it and i will put the spurs to ya , go for it ! .
The story is a sad one any way you look at it . Under the circumstances I think he should have been given the discharge he requested , besides being the right thing to do it "may have" prevented this from happening . The guy's circuits were overloaded and he cracked . That's what it looks like to me / my opinion .
this man should have been given a discharge. We, as people who aren't involved in war or with trying to heal those that are, simply could never understand the trauma that they endure.
As you said, he 'cracked'.
It is incredibly scary how quickly some people will pounce, purely based on religion or name. Much easier than to seek out facts & to analyze...and to realize that not everything is simple.
...and in fact, I said something to that effect on another thread here at C&L on the same topic. This much is certain...the known facts about Hasan don't fit the image of the cold-blooded terrorist which some people on the right seem determined to depict him as being. Some stories report that the Army found indications of potential sympathy to radical Islam on Hasan's part -- but was this actually true, or was this simply overinflated suspicion resulting from unconscious anti-Arab or anti-Moslem prejudice? Even if it is true and Hasan was beginning to sympathize with radical Islam, is it so impossible that the ethnic and religious slurs of his colleagues created a hostile environment which encouraged him to feel attacked by his own comrades-in-arms -- people whom he should have been able to trust? If the Army had evidence for some time beforehand that Hasan truly felt this way, why did they apparently take no action? Why didn't they hold a disciplinary hearing, or court-martial him? There are simply too many questions which need answers before a firm conclusion can legitimately be made.
Even a dishonorable discharge would probably have been better for all concerned, despite the stain that it would have inevitably left on Hasan's reputation -- especially since it sounds as if the only other possible options available to him were either desertion or death by suicide, since it was apparently not possible for him to resign his commission voluntarily as he wanted to do. This is a tragedy for everyone concerned on so many levels -- for the people whom Hasan gunned down, for Hasan himself, and for other American Muslims in uniform who are that much more likely to be regarded with suspicion and become the target of harassment simply on the basis of their religion.
...but this should fix it.
The point is that no body is denying the fact that this man is as guilty as you can get. The point is that there are most likely thousands of more seething souls out there that are on the brink of insanity that are very capable of doing the same thing. In this case however, the man was surrounded by people that should have seen the signs and was part of an institution, that trains men and woman to kill, but does not teach them the tools that are needed to be tolerant of others.
If it is true that there was anti-muslim sentiment running rampant at this base, then what are these soldiers going to do when they face Muslims in Iraq or in Afghanistan. If they go in hating these people then what help are they? They become more a part of the problem then the solution. Tolerance should be a part of the training that these soldiers receive.
In the military I worked as a radiology tech. For some reason I had the notion I'd never see blood & guts. My first assignment was at Ft. Campbell, KY for 4 months. Mostly routine stuff, but still plenty of blood & guts. So I hashed it over about Major Hasan. He's an M.D., and regardless of being a psychiatrist, he may - as an M.D. - be required to treat the wounded and even, if absolutely necessary under certain conditions, operate (stitch up, etc.). He's heard the horror stories. I think more than anything it was about fear, and perhaps - even the very futility of these two fronts in a war he'd had come to despise. G*d knows I have.
First of all, he didn't know who the president was? You mean the Commander In Chief? The guy in the framed picture in almost every barracks, every CO's office above or next to the leading Generals of the Army?
Why even give these people any credibility?
This is worse than giving those Sudanese pirates a pass....
Slow down and re-read it. You're having a failure of reading comprehension. He was talking about Arab countries...
Sure... he was upset over the plight of his war-addled, wounded patients... and his decision tree suggested that adding forty more people to that list was the way forward.
ugh.
You don't know what his decision tree was anymore then I do. But it is within the realm of possibility that he did see this as a way towards ending the wars by showing Americans what it was like for the Iraqis and Afghans.
Just saying.
of course this is an act of terrorism. But I hate how people are already spinning this as a conspiracy of the "islamofascist terrorism" before they hear any facts about the tragedy. Love how the GOP/Lieberman/FOX are jumping on the fear campaign. May discrimination prosper in the US of A!
... terrorism has an actual definition. People who go postal or Columbine aren't terrorists.
im just saying...Bush and Co were able to make us think islamic extremists when we say terrorist. Unabomber was a terrorist. Terrorist is a general term for anyone who commits an act of terror. Its to this islamofascist terrorist label people are throwing on Hasan even before they do an investigation that i am against.
Sorry if this is too cold of a way of putting it, but for an illegal, immoral, evil and mismanaged war, this is the price we as Americans pay for our idiocy.
How about if some of the people shot were returning to war and had already committed murder or war crimes over there? Life is never as black and white as you yourself believe.
The latest reports indicate he chose his victims, including pursuing one outside which is where he was shot by the cop.
Neither I nor anyone else here is justifying his actions, but understanding them could keep similar incidents from happening in the future.
Now in addition to no gays there will be the predictable cries of no Muslims in the military. And while they're at it, no non-Christians, no blacks and no poor people ... oh wait ...
...because C&L can't handle the truth.
It is really surprising to hear that the experienced specialist and MD suddenly broke up and began shooting his patients only because of their problems - if he had been so sensitive he would have given up his job (or even college) years ago. So this version seems really unrealistic.
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