The real issue behind Fort Hood

This past Thursday, Americans bore witness to the gruesome events that occurred at the Fort Hood Army Base in Texas. The news surrounded a soldier, Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 and wounded another 29 people.

Mass shootings like this and the ones at Virginia Tech and Columbine High School usually involve a perpetrator with a history of social isolation, violence and a desire for vengeance. But the Fort Hood case is different in one extremely significant aspect: Hasan was an Army psychiatrist who aided soldiers with post-traumatic stress disorder. According to sources, it was the news of his upcoming deployment that caused him to commit this horrific act.

The media is currently dissecting every alternative theory of the killings, including a proposal that the shooting had al-Qaida or 9/11 links. But no TV personality is asking the simple question: Why would a non-combative psychiatrist be nervous about deployment to the point that he would go on a shooting spree on his own military base? The media has refused to acknowledge the underlying issue, which, in this case, is the mental effect that Iraq and Afghanistan is having on our nation's brave men and women.

Post-traumatic stress disorder, according to Erica Goode of The New York Times, is the "second, psychological war at home." Hasan dealt with soldiers who had this disorder on a daily basis; he must have heard terrible stories from mothers, fathers, sons and daughters who were on the verge of mental breakdown. Another New York Times columnist, Bob Herbert, wrote about the destructive effects of the widespread disorder: "The caseloads are off the charts" of instances where PTSD has led to "substance abuse, problems with anger management, domestic violence and family breakdown."

We've now had soldiers on the ground in Iraq for six years and in Afghanistan for eight. With a vague mission in mind and a military force full of soldiers made to fight on their second, third and fourth tours of duty, it is no surprise that the Army recorded the highest tally of soldier suicides last summer since record keeping began. According to recent estimates, 35 percent of returning soldiers from Iraq will suffer from PTSD, and there is a similar percentage in Afghanistan. With a force of 1.7 million Americans serving in these wars, more than 600,000 soldiers could be affected by the disorder.

I was significantly depressed when I was scanning news on The Daily Beast the other day. One article about Afghanistan was headlined "Obama to Add 34,000 Troops" and an article directly below it was titled "Is There a 9/11 Link to Fort Hood?" The blatant catch-22 seemed to jump off the computer screen, for the latter's true subject directly correlated with the former's decision.

The inhumanity of war's relation to soldiers' PTSD cannot be more perfectly portrayed than the massacres of Fort Hood, and for President Obama to add an additional 34,000 troops to the quagmire known as Afghanistan is nonsensical. The welfare of a constituency of citizens who put their lives on the line every day and deserve, at the very least, the best possible treatment our country could possibly give them should be on the president's mind instead.