Informative Speech About the Crime of Nidal Malik Hasan
I hope everyone is having an awesome week so far. Nidal Malik Hasan was accused of murdering 13 people and wounding more than 30 others in a mass shooting at Fort Hood on 5 November 2009. Hasan was a psychiatrist in the United States Armed Forces. And confessed at his court martial that he had indeed been the shooter. In this incident Hassan was armed with a semi automatic pistol and right before he commenced the shooting spree hollered out Allah Akbar which means in (Arabic God Is Great) (Soltis, A. 2009) inside Fort Hood processing center which were military soldiers who were deploying overseas or were just returning from medical screenings with the incident lasting about 10 minutes before being shot by civilian police and brought into custody and was paralyzed from the waist down do to the police shooting him(Soltis, A. 2009) .
Nevertheless, throughout the six years, Hasan was a medical intern and resident at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, and associates and superiors were concerned about his job performance and his remarks. Hasan was not married at the time, and he was reported to have been socially withdrawn, stressed by his job with troops, and offended by their reports of the war abroad, and shared his opinion with his colleagues as they saw them as anti-American. In addition, the supervisors felt at that time that Hasan was maybe violent and an Islamic radical(Mueller, J. 2011).
As I research this story more, some concerns really hit home with me and contributing factors and the red flags admittedly seen by his superiors and others around him.
1)Moms death was a big factor
2) Colonel Terry Lee that Hasan stated “ Maybe Muslims need to make a stand against the aggressors” However, this could be taken in a different way as Muslims against the terrorist(Fox news 4th paragraph 1st sentence 2009)
3)E-Mail Exchanges with Anwar Al-Awlaki Hasan reportedly having deep respect for al-Awlaki's teachings. Six months prior to the shooting, in December of 2008, federal intelligence authorities captured a series of e-mail exchanges between Al-Awlaki and Hasan. Al-Awlaki stated Hasan initially e-mailed him on December 17, 2008. According to Al-Awlaki, Hasan stated he was Muslim around the time the Imam was preaching at Dar al-Hijrah in 2001 and 2002. Al-Awlaki stated, "Maybe Nidal was affected by one of my lectures." He added: "It was clear, from his e-mails, Nidal trusted me. Nidal informed me: 'I talk with you about problems I never ever speak with anyone.(A.J. Weberman, 11th sub 1st paragraph 2009)'.
4)In October 2008, Charles Allen, United States Undersecretary of Homeland Security for Intelligence and Analysis, warned al-Awlaki "targets US Muslims with radical online lectures encouraging terrorist attacks from his new home in Yemen"Rick Nelson,Ben Bodurian. pg 11 first paragraph2010) .
5)I find it very disturbing that after 9/11 that his superiors and colleagues didn't bring to anyone's attention or the intelligence community that intercepted his emails didn't intervene and talk to Hasan on his true intentions with an Islamic extremist like Anwar al-Awlaki that preaches a direct message to wage violence (or jihad) against the US.
Nevertheless, In my opinion, the straw that breaks the camel's back for Hasan lies in the kind of frustration he had expressed toward the struggle against the US war on terror and of his own religion. Hassan saw this as a US vs them mentality and the only option in Hasan's mind when facing this situation was justified violence.
I believe we should take some inferences from this tragic event. One is that when servicemen and women are under immense burden due to their mobilization to (unintelligible) operations or any operations for that matter and places of conflict intervention there should always be a strengthened commitment to provide additional counseling and psychological support during this transition along with having counseling for the families to help them understand the issues especially with PTSD. In addition, warning signs that were clearly seen several times with Hasan should have been taken seriously regardless of one's position in the military, government or as a civilian or otherwise.
The last and final thing I find really disturbing is not only the red flags that were indicated over and over again, but also the years of seeing this from his colleagues in which they had plenty of time to stop this tragedy.
Would these threats be looked at differently if the perp was an NCO instead of an officer?
Why was it not addressed? In a situation like this Army CID should have been notified immediately the first time an anti-American remark was made by Hasan and the fact that his colleagues saw it as an anti-American remark and didn't report it they to share some of the responsibility in this tragedy . In addition a person in this leadership position shouldn't be expressing those types of views openly or otherwise, especially after 9/11 that should have been the first clue to report based on the fact this was unbecoming of an officer.
The Tsarnae Brothers
The main issue in the why of the Boston marathon bombing with the brothers I believe lie in the fact that in 2012 the brothers went back to Dagestan for six months and joined a group called The Union of the Just(Speckhard, A. 2013). This was a Muslim group that taught the Koran and the Muslim religion, but was said to be nonviolent. The brothers became radicalized due to poverty and Tamerlane's boxing dream falling by the wayside along with his family living in poverty. I think than when the brothers came to America they were let down by the idea that living in America is not easy as many immigrants in my opinion look at America as a easy way out and that all their dreams will just come true.In addition I believe the brothers were very lonely in a country they felt let them down.
Moreover, their hearts were still back in Dagestan especially after things were not going as expected in the US and used the Muslim religion and the war on terror along with war in the Middle East to justify their frustration with how their life was going in the US. The reason for my opinion on this is they were not affiliated with any terrorist group. However, what I do find interesting is the same one than influenced Nidal these brothers had also listened to the extremist by the name of Al-Awlaki (Speckhard, A. 2013). I find this case study kinda of difficult to grasp because as you research the different views on this case goes in various directions on the why. One final thing on this case why wasn't the warning about these two by the the Russian FSB not taking serious by the FBI and CIA(Gunaratna, R., & Haynal, C. 2013).Nevertheless, once again another case not looked into and once again another tragedy that could have being prevented. This trend of not looking into warnings is quiet disturbing to say the least and over the years I have seen one right after another that was ignored. So this raises a serious question/red flag and that is why are we not investigating warnings or threats? Is it because of dissemination of intelligence problems.For instance,are we still failing to share all the information with all the agencies?Or is it something as simple as it wont happen to us mentality either way threats or warnings not looked into is unacceptable in my personal opinion.Thoughts?
