Major Nidal Malik Hasan was a perfect
storm waiting to happen. And it happened on Thursday, November 5, at Fort Hood,
TX, claiming the lives of 13 people and injuring 30, including the shooter who was
taken down by a quick-thinking officer, Kimberly Munley, also wounded herself. Hasan,
a devout Muslim, had allegedly shouted, “Allahu Akbar!”
Arabic for “God is great!” before opening fire in the crowded processing center,
where military personnel had gone for flu shots and eyesight exams before
deploying to Iraq and Afghanistan.
Just like weather events, this kind of storm
doesn’t just come out of nowhere, and a senior officer admitted there were several missed warnings:
- As a Muslim, Hasan believed the U.S. should not be occupying
Muslim countries.
- At Walter Reed, he frequently went into pro-Muslim religious rants when treating returning soldiers.
- Hasan was the target of much harassment for being Muslim and wanted out of the Army.
- The Army command structure was under strong pressure to put
as many boots on the ground in war zones as possible, regardless of
psychological fitness.
- He dreaded his upcoming deployment on November 28 because he
might have to take the life of other Muslims.
- As a psychologist himself who dealt with soldiers returning
from active duty suffering from post-traumatic stress, he needed close
supervision to ensure his ongoing mental stability.
- His Internet presence included posts about the nobility of
suicide, equating it to throwing yourself on a grenade to save your
colleagues.
I could go on, but as an Old Soul who
can’t walk past an Army recruiting office without cringing, I’ll just register
surprise that incidents such as this aren’t weekly events, and applaud the
fortitude, loyalty and discipline of the men and women in the Armed Forces.
My interest lies in why 13 souls chose
to have their incarnations take an exit point yesterday rather than undergo deployment
to war zones or continue to be employed at the base. What was it about their
lives that caused their souls to say, “Okay, we’re done here,” and pull the
plug? This is puzzling because military service offers unlimited opportunities
to souls for their incarnations to experience physical plane drama, hence
growth – danger and heroism, tragedy and loss, challenge from bodily injury,
etc.
Given this, it’s odd that souls would
choose relatively mundane exit points. Of course, the grief of their loved ones
will be every bit as real, painful and poignant as if the crossing had occurred
on a battlefield.
Often, group crossings such as this are
intended by the souls involved to draw attention to something, so maybe the intent
of those 13 souls is to make a public statement about the impact of war on the
human psyche. After all, President Obama is in the middle of the debate about whether to send more troops into Afghanistan. This incident is critical input to that debate.
Also, this country has just tipped the scale from Young Soul
to Mature Soul – the events of 9/11 took care of that – so the nation feels
very differently about war than in WWII, when the U.S. was a Late Young Soul
country and its enemies were obvious. The U.S. went to war and, of course,
prevailed against them, but today, as an Early Mature Soul country with no
clear enemies, world events are gray rather than black-and-white. And in many cases, we are our own worst enemy, as when the CIA pays Arabic operatives
who are involved in the very drug war the DEA is trying to stamp out. (Many
regard the rush to war led by the trio of Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld made many
people feel that the ‘axis of evil’ actually ran down Pennsylvania Avenue.)
Of course, we’ll never know why those
13 souls left, but it makes one wonder …
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