The Fort Hood Shooting and the Soldier’s Burden

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Most U.S. citizens have been largely insulated from the daily impact of our country’s wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Now, as the nation grapples with the Fort Hood tragedy, we may find we can no longer ignore the psychic burdens that our soldiers must bear.

Major Nidal Malik Hasan, believed to have killed 13 people and wounded more than 30, is a psychiatrist who earned his medical degree from the Uniformed Services University in Bethesda, the Washington Post reports. Over the past six years, he interned and served as a resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, where he was a liaison between wounded soldiers and psychiatry staff. He was also a fellow at the Center of Traumatic Stress Study at Bethesda military school.

It’s “a hazy and contradictory picture,” a team of Washington Post writers observe. Major Hasan enlisted out of high school, “received his medical training from the military, and spent his career in the Army, yet allegedly turned so violently against his uniformed colleagues.” But it may not be as contradictory as it seems.

“Our troops do not enlist because they want to destroy or kill,” Ed Tick writes in “Sharing War’s Burden,” excerpted from Yes! in the Sept.-Oct. 2008 Utne Reader. Tick is a psychotherapist and the director of Soldier’s Heart, a return and healing project for veterans. Utne Reader named him a visionary in 2008. “No matter the political climate, most troops seek to serve traditional warrior values: to protect the country they love, its ideals, and especially their families, communities, and each other.”

He continues: “In my work counseling veterans of several wars, I’ve seen that PTSD is, in part, the tortured conscience of good people who did their best under conditions that would dehumanize anyone.”

According to the New York Times, Major Hasan was “mortified” by the idea of having to deploy. “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there,” cousin Nader Hasan tells Times writer James Dao. To put this burden in context, here’s a passage from our March-April 2009 story “The Life and Lonely Death of Noah Pierce,” excerpted from Virginia Quarterly Review. It chronicles an Iraq veteran’s suicide:

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