Remember, remember the fifth of November. The people of the Fort Hood Army post in Fort Hood, Texas will now always remember Nov. 5, 2009, when Army psychiatrist Maj. Nidal Hasan opened fire, killing 12 soldiers and one civilian worker and wounding 29 others in the worst mass shooting at a military base in the United States.
Mass killings in this country are happening more and more often. The Virginia Tech, Columbine High School and Northern Illinois University shootings are just a few examples of recent mass shootings. And now we add the Fort Hood Army base shooting to the list.
The Fort Hood base is the largest Army base in the US with a population up to 40,000 people. Hasan was a 2003 medical school graduate from the Uniformed Services University and reported for duty at Fort Hood in 2008 after he completed his psychiatry residency at Walter Reed Army Medical Center.
On the day of the shootings, Hasan said goodbye to his neighbors, telling them that he would be deployed on Nov. 6 and thanked them for being good friends.
Reports state that he was shot and wounded during the killings by Sgt. Kimberly Munley and was later taken to a hospital in stable condition.
What is amazing about this situation is the fact that this shooting happened on a military base on American soil. The soldiers who are protecting our country are being killed by their own peers. Hasan was trusted by those brave soldiers and he in turn killed them.
Let’s take a look at Hasan’s past. In June 2007, he gave a presentation to Army medical doctors, which was supposed to discuss a medical topic. According to The Washington Post, “he lectured on Islam, suicide bombers and threats the military could encounter from Muslims conflicted about fighting wars in Muslim countries.” In Hasan’s presentation, he made references to Muslims and their service in the military saying that, “It’s getting harder and harder for Muslims in the service to morally justify being in a military that seems constantly engaged against fellow Muslims.”
After the Sept. 11 attacks, there is a valid justification that it is harder for Muslim and Middle East religions to be accepted in our country. But Hasan has now made it even harder for people of those religions to work and function in the US. How could he throw his own people under the bus like that?
He had also been investigated about a year before the killings by an FBI terrorism task force worker and concluded that he did not need any further evaluations.
If these aren’t red flags, show us one. In our great country, everyone is entitled to their own beliefs and religious practices. Why is that? It’s because of our soldiers who protect our freedoms each and every day.
For someone to take advantage of that freedom and in turn harm those who defend us is preposterous. It’s sad that it takes an act of killing for the country to stop and take a look at things carefully. The FBI is investigating Hasan’s motives toward the killings; what good is that going to do now? He already accomplished his premeditative thoughts.
Our country was founded upon the words “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” As American citizens, we are granted the freedoms to believe as we wish, practice our religions and speak our thoughts. No one expects something like a mass murder to happen, but it is even more complicated to harbor these thoughts of someone who was trusted and supposedly completely mentally evaluated, to kill loved ones and the defenders of our Constitution.
If convicted, Hasan may be spending his time left on earth on death row. Death would be an easy way out for that man. To kill some of our soldiers in the armed forces and use his religion against his own people, he deserves to die in prison. He should not rest easy at night thinking that what he did is something to be proud of. Hasan should be thinking about those proud soldiers every single day of his life and feels shame for the tragedy he brought to their families and this country.
President Obama said it all at the Fort Hood memorial on Nov. 10, “And for what he has done, we know that the killer will be met with justice — in this world, and the next.”