What goes bang when pointed at your head?
Today 3 army snipers opened fire at a Fort Hood Military base and within a short time were able to inflict heavy casualties that included 12 dead and 31 injured. Press reports have yielded little as to why the gunmen went on a shooting spree, but it is worth noting that the facility happens to be the largest US military base in the world and had been working to rehabilitate many soldiers suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Two things come to mind here: the terms war apparatus (or just simply killing machines) and psychotically challenged individuals.
Could this be a reflection of the increasing burden of madness on troops who are forced to go back to combat over and over or is it just a situation of renegade soldiers flipping out? Whatever the case, it doesn’t bode well, but for a country brought up on violence is it any surprise that this has become the name of the game?
Army spokesman Lieutenant General Robert Cone had this to say: “It’s a terrible tragedy … it’s stunning,”
In the end one of the assailants was shot dead and the other two were arrested (one of them being Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan- an army psychologist)
In the end the war in people’s mind knows no bounds…even the ones paid to understand it.
