Just a few words -

[kyburg]

I'm fully aware of what happened at Fort Hood yesterday.

And in the miasma of blame, racism and other asshattery...please keep this tucked away.

This was a healthcare professional who lost it completely after several years of warnings anyone could see, plain as plain.

And just thought it an acceptable risk.

Burnout. Know it, recognize it and give it credibility.

The biggest invisible unacknowledged disability out there.

...

And the worst part is that there was so much warning before it came to this.

Comments

[redqueenofevil.livejournal.com]

Thanks for being one of the only people who sees it as it is. I was so disgusted with the media yesterday with their, "Oh, he has an Islamic name!!!! It's JIHAD!!!!111one..." rather than, "Wow. This guy didn't want to be deployed to Afghanistan, and he looks like he's burning out, according to his records over the last year or so."

Our soldiers are being worked so hard, and I can tell you from the outreach programs I work with, they're not getting the care or recognition they need. More like, they're getting chewed up, and spit out. One doesn't have to go to Iraq to get PTSD, or to burn out.

My heart goes out to everyone who was directly affected by what happened at Ft Hood, but I refuse to villainize the gunman.

[peachtales.livejournal.com]

Same here.

[trillsie.livejournal.com]

AMEN!

I'm so glad to know that I am not the only one who feels like this. This man needs medical help. On a daily basis he heard horrors that people had witnessed and experienced. It doesn't take a medical professional to know how that would wear on someone and start to affect him. It's just a shame that no one wanted to recognize it.

I'm so sick of hearing "oh he was a Muslim so it was bound to happen" or "he must be part of a sleeper cell that joined the Army ten years ago just so he could do this". And the worst "they should pull the plug on him and let him suffer and die". It is just terrible.

Guaranteed if his name was "John Smith" the coverage would be totally different.

[foogod.livejournal.com]

Umm.. what warnings? Are you reading some news I can't find?

The only warning signs I've seen anybody report were his opposition of the Iraq war and confrontations he'd gotten into with others over his religion and politics. Apparently he had some problems at Walter Reed, but what little information I've seen anybody release suggests they were more personality conflicts than anything burnout-related.

So basically, as far as I can tell, he was a guy who didn't get along well with a lot of people, viewed the Army's actions in Iraq as an attack against his own people, may (but may not) have made statements equating suicide bombers to war heroes, and was reportedly in substantial fear of his imminent deployment to Iraq.

Yeah, yeah, must have been burnout. There was clearly no other possible reason for him to attack people like that..

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I *must* be getting more words to read on this than you. Only explanation.

[foogod.livejournal.com]

Well could you perhaps point the source of any of those "more words" out to us poor ignorant folks who can't find them? Or are you having too much fun playing more-informed-than-thou?

Sheesh.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Uh.

Go do your homework. You can put enough words down, you can certainly read a few more.

And if I can find them, ANYONE can.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

Crap. Now I feel sorry for you.

Start here.

http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=383

Not on the guy - but for context, if nothing else.

[lordindra.livejournal.com]

I saw a right wing article where they flat out said that it couldn't possibly be PTSD, and heavily implied it couldn't possibly be any form of mental illness... Not just saying these things couldn't rise to the level of an insanity defense, but it was not possible for them to have had even the slightest role in the events.

Their reason for saying this? He hadn't been in combat.

There may be good arguments that he was not mentally ill, or that he was but it didn't impact these events. I think it's a bit premature to say this, but it's possible that it is true. What bothered me was stating it as proven fact, as if the only thing that can cause mental or emotional trauma to soldiers is combat.

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

Can you imagine dealing with the demons that were haunting so many soldiers every day, the things he heard just kept building, and he was witness to the real horror of war, as seen though the eyes of young men and women who were not able to process this horror. If that didn't give him nightmares, nothing will. As for PTSD, it can come from any traumatic event, not only combat, but sitting there day after day dealing with the trauma of war told to him in the first person. After what he heard, no sane person would want to go to Iraq or Afghanistan. Even one of the Generals said that he has told many in power that the pressure is stressing the troops and the current deployment cycle is not sustainable.

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

I have a friend who has done a tour in Iraq and is about ready to leave for one in Afghanistan. He's an Army engineer, so he has the unenviable task of rebuilding roads and bridges.

You want stress? Right there is your stress.

He's undergone counseling for PTSD. He's also perfectly sane.

And ironically? He's stationed at Ft. Hood and was there during the lockdown.

I find it a bit insulting to assume that "no sane person" wishes to serve in our armed forces.

[n6vfp.livejournal.com]

As a veteran of the Viet Nam era, I enlisted only after getting my preinduction physical. I did my damnedest not to become 'cannon fodder' and did my time either in training (that was the first year and one half of my time) or doing intelligence gathering as part of the Defense Intelligence Agency. I lost many friends in Viet Nam, mostly people who were drafted, and class mates from high school. No, there are those who want to do the best job under the conditions they find themselves, but like Viet Nam, fighting a war in an area where you are keeping some quasi-dictator in power and everyone you see could be your enemy does have a debilitating effect on people. I was anti-war before I enlisted, I did my four years and got out. BTW, back when I served we were paid very little, we didn't have services contracted out, we did guard duty, we worked 'kitchen patrol', we took out the trash. As for PTSD, they didn't treat that then, they just discharged you and either you went crazy or drank yourself to death (I lost friends both ways). Everyone served, you enlisted or got drafted, or took an easier way out by getting married and having a kid. If you were rich you went to college and stayed there hoping the war would end or after ROTC becoming an officer and maybe getting a desk job. No, I think the war in Iraq was a mistake and Afghanistan is another Viet Nam. The re-enlistment rate in my unit was so low that less and 10% stayed after one tour.

As for sanity, yes we had people who enlisted and served because they believed in what we were fighting for but there were not enough of them so we had a draft.

As for stress, we had it even though we were thousands of miles from the front lines. I gathered, filtered, and editted the intelligence during the 'cold war', and made sure that President Nixon got his morning reading, the President's Daily Brief. When the intelligence didn't fit the ongoing policy, we were told to ignore it. War is not pretty but politicians like good numbers, not the truth.

War is hell, and anyone who is in the midst of it is going to be hurt, either physically or mentally. The current structure of tour with little time to recover is not good for any human being. The Army knows that but they can't find enough people to willingly enlist and a draft would end the war so fast a whole lot of arms merchants would go bankrupt.

[cakmpls.livejournal.com]

I'm from that era, too; I was anti-war all the while I sent supportive letters and "care" packages to my brother and friends who were in Vietnam. I lost friends and relatives there, too--some of them then, some of them later. I agree with every word you wrote here. Today's younger generation is going to live with the results of these pointless wars their entire lives, just as we are living with the results of Vietnam.

[thatwordgrrl.livejournal.com]

I'm quite certain that many soldiers about to be deployed are more than a little stressed at the prospect. Yet none of them have yet to shoot at their fellow soldiers.

The man was a fanatic. And at the end of the day, fanaticism doesn't care if the flavor is Muslim or Jewish or Southern Baptist. Fanatic is fanatic.

I've sat enough nights (or actually at that point it was days) up with dedoc afer a bad shift to know what burnout from job stress can do. And it don't get much uglier than ER job stress.

This? Not just burnout. Or second-hand PTSD (and I am dubious that second-hand PTSD would directly correlate to this behavior anyway). This was something more.

Either way, people knew. And he shoula been flagged, tagged and streeted.

[kyburg.livejournal.com]

I think I've had a few more words to look at - I'd have to, because this guy was no more a fanatic than anyone of color poked with privilege sticks most of their lives.

dedoc is lucky to have someone to decompress with - this guy had hired a lawyer to do what the military needed to have done.

Let him go. Seriously.

Story not over. And should is a dangerous word and I use it as rarely as I can.

[forestcats.livejournal.com]

There was an amazing amount of warning that Katrina was coming. The human condition of even elected officials was denial. Magic thinking results in tragedy of all sizes.

[amaryllis.livejournal.com]

I wholeheartedly agree. Coincidentally, we had rented Jarheads just before the shooting occurred(because we hadn't seen it before and we were testing out a new blu-ray player) and I had a hard time watching it, much less imagining myself being able to handle it when I can barely handle my own, reasonably easy life.