New Media Spin On Fort Hood: Hasan Was Stressed Because He Heard Troops Talk About Combat
“Secondary trauma” is what they’re calling it, I guess, and it sounds like quite the politically-motivated stretch to me.
But hey, anything to make the story fit into the narrative.
As an army psychiatrist treating soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had a front row seat on the brutal toll of war. It is too early to know exactly what may have triggered his murderous shooting rampage Thursday at Fort Hood – Hasan is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 32 others before he was wounded by a police officer – but it is not uncommon for therapists treating soldiers with Post Trumatic Stress Disorder (P.T.S.D.) to be swept up in a patient’s displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury.
In medical parlance it is known as “secondary trauma”, and it can afflict the families of soldiers suffering from P.T.S.D. along with the health workers who are trying to cure them. Dr. Antonette Zeiss, Deputy Chief of Mental Health Services for Veteran Affairs, while not wishing to talk about the specific case of the Fort Hood slayings, explained to TIME that: “Anyone who works with P.T.S.D. clients and hears their stories will be profoundly affected.”
So, it really is all Bush’s fault. If he hadn’t lied us into war then those soldiers never would have seen combat, Hasan never would have heard about the combat and he never would have been driven to murder a dozen people while screaming “allahu akbar.”
See how that works?
Now, I’m not down-playing PTSD here. I think it’s a very real affliction, and as I’ve mentioned before our troops who are suffering from it should be afforded all the help their nation can give them. But suggesting that Hasan had PTSD by proxy is a pathetic stretch aimed less at informing the public than making this story fit in with the liberal media’s narrative about the military and Islamic terrorism.
