For the families of military men and women just returned from Iraq last week, the worst was over. In their various homes, over meals and daily chores, spouses, parents, and children collectively exhaled for the first time in nearly a year. They planned parties and drew “welcome home” banners; phones rang frequently as relatives and friends called congratulations. But for the family of six-weeks pregnant Private Francheska Velez, just returned to Fort Hood from Iraq, joy was cut short with a knock on the door of their Chicago home. Outside, military officers with spotless uniforms and somber eyes waited on the stoop, bearing terrible news.
While the experts and doctors and pundits search for words to describe Major Nidal Malik Hasan’s actions at Fort Hood last Thursday, they will miss one critical diagnosis: cowardice. It is no good pointing out that Hasan worked with traumatized soldiers, or that he faced a personal religious crisis. In fact, it now appears that he attempted to contact leaders in al Qaeda. Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is not catching like flu or measles, and he had never been to war. Nor was Hasan cruelly drafted into the military against personal conviction; he voluntarily joined and swore loyalty to an organization whose sole purpose for existing is warfare, and whose sole war is in the Middle East. And when Hasan, despite his choice, despite his oath, despite his lawyers and his protests, could not escape the consequences of his own decisions, he murdered the unarmed soldiers who were his brothers and sisters in arms and fellow citizens. A coward if there ever was one.
November 5 was a dishonest day, but there was some justice too. Hasan, whose cries of “Allahu Akbar” and attempted suicide would have theoretically won him 72 women in paradise, was instead gunned down by one. There will be no martyr’s death for him, no poster of his smiling face adorning zealot walls. Instead, early medical reports indicate that he is possibly crippled, perhaps paralyzed. He may spend his remaining days in a bed or a wheelchair – just as the soldier whose leg was ripped away by a roadside bomb, or the Marine whose spine was shredded by an IED. Ironically, if Hasan’s motivation was simply fear, simply panic (a prolonged, thoughtful panic, a panic that involved giving away all of his possessions, and making sure his apartment was clean) he is now facing physical and psychological wounds as horrible as any he could have suffered on a foreign battlefield.
Sadder still is the fact that doctors with Hasan’s training are desperately needed. His deployment to Afghanistan was one among many hopeful signs that, however slowly, the military is attempting to take PTSD seriously. But a psychotic psychologist, a counselor who needs counseling himself, will only contribute to the impression among battle-hardened troops that “shrinks” are no good. Yet troops need just as much training to reenter civilian life as they received to leave it. The war on terrorism is a war without foxholes, without forts, without boundaries. It is a war men and women take home with them, portable and pocket-sized. Americans used to sing “Over There,” but there really isn’t any over there any more; our soldiers fight terrorism on a rural road in Anbar province, in a crowded terminal in L.A., or on an army base in central Texas.
The murders at Fort Hood were not a tragedy, but a conflagration of tragedies. Hasan killed soldiers, yes, but for many families, he killed hope: the hope of a young immigrant to serve his new country, the hope of a pregnant mother to raise her child, and the hope that American soil was safe. Military families live on their own private battlefield, a deceivingly normal world where at any average moment – feeding the dog, getting the paper – mortality may come crashing in. For 13 families this November, it came when they were least prepared. Those rejoicing in homecomings, or planning precious pre-deployment moments that will never be, now face an agonizing future. This Thanksgiving their loved one will be absent from the family table, and with them, all hope of safe return.
******
Skyla Freeman (skylafreeman.com) is a former writer for President George W. Bush.
Loading ...