Major Nidal Hasan and The Fort Hood Tragedy Discussion Responses Discussion Questions: Nidal Hasan on the exterior was a successful man who was a serving m

Major Nidal Hasan and The Fort Hood Tragedy Discussion Responses Discussion Questions: Nidal Hasan on the exterior was a successful man who was a serving mid-grade U.S. Army Officer and an educated professional psychiatrist. What was really going on with Nidal Hasan on the inside, and what were the factors that contributed to his turning on fellow soldiers and gunning down 13 of them when they were unarmed in an office building? The Tsarnaev brothers were off-spring of Central Asian immigrants who greatly benefited from American society by leveraging the social welfare system and taking advantage of educational assistance. They were far better off than their close relatives still living in former Soviet Republics, so what were the factors which inspired them to kill innocent Boston Marathon spectators, including women and young children whom they mingled with only minutes before setting off their bombs?

Required Readings:

The Road to Boston: Counterterrorism Challenges and Lessons from the Marathon Bombings, pp. 8-16

The Radicalization of Tamerlan Tsarnaev

A ticking time bomb: Counterterrorism lessons from the U.S. government’s failure to prevent the Fort Hood attack, pp. 27-34

Major Nidal Hasan and The Fort Hood Tragedy

Instructions: Fully utilize the materials that have been provided to you in order to support your response. Your initial post should be at least 350 words. Please respond to at least two other students. Responses should be a minimum of 150 words and include direct questions. You may challenge, support or supplement another student’s answer using the terms, concepts and theories from the required readings. Also, do not be afraid to respectfully disagree where you feel appropriate; as this should be part of your analysis process at this academic level.

Student Responses:

Student #1 Derrell

Hasan was an Army officer that in my opinion, based on the assigned reading, should have never made it as far as he did. There were several flags that indicated he was not thinking in the best interest of the country. Especially when according to his classmates, he felt that his religion overrode the U.S. Constitution (Collins and Lieberman, 2011). The factors that drove Hasan toward radicalization were three-fold. First there was the death if his mother followed by a gravitation toward a conservative brand of Islam and last the stories that he heard in his office from the soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan (Watts, 2011). On top of all of that, he had issues finding a wife which shattered his idea of the American dream. Combine all this together and you got the ideal recipe for a radicalist. The final factor was that he was communicating with Anwar al-Awlaki which was a known al-Qaeda terrorist Watts, 2011).

Now, with regards to the Tsarnaev brothers, their story is not much different. Tamerlan Tsarnaev had his idea of the American dream destroyed when he could not get a US passport. This resulted in his inability to become a boxer for the U.S. Olympic team (AMU, N.D.) Other issues that could took the Tsarnaev brothers down their path to radicalization was the divorce of their parents and absence of their father. My understanding from the reading is that these events caused Tamerlan to pursue a violent strain of Islam and an interest in the mujahedeen and Anwar al Awlaki. It was reported that leading up to the bombings, Tamerlan had been watching jihad videos, had a subscription to Inspire online magazine, and had blue prints for different types of bombs. His brother Dzhokhar was drug into all of this by Tamerlan because they felt as they were the only family they had other than the Al Qaeda family. This sense of family brought about the idea that they needed to support their fellow Muslims and perform jihad within their own country.

As you can see, both of these situations were brought about because the people involved, Nidal Hasan and Tamerlan Tsarnaev followed a path, much like others, that led them to radicalization.

References:

Collins S, and Lieberman, J. (2011). A TICKING TIME BOMB COUNTERTERRORISM LESSONS FROM THE U.S. GOVERNMENT’S FAILURE TO PREVENT THE FORT HOOD ATTACK. Retrieved from:
https://www.hsgac.senate.gov//imo/media/doc/Fort_Hood/FortHoodReport.pdf?attempt=2

Watts, C. (2011). MAJOR NIDAL HASAN AND THE FT. HOOD TRAGEDY: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE U.S.
ARMED FORCES. Retrieved from: http://www.fpri.org/docs/media/201106.watts_.forthood.pdf

Student#2 Alexis

Good Afternoon Class & Professor,

Nidal Hasan, on the exterior, was a successful man who was a serving mid-grade U.S. Army Officer and an educated professional psychiatrist. What was going on with Nidal Hasan on the inside, and what were the factors that contributed to his turning on fellow soldiers and gunning down 13 of them when they were unarmed in an office building?

The tragedy that took place in Ft. Hood, Texas on November 5, 2009 was maybe the worst that the Army has seen. It was an extremely shocking to many because it happen to be one of their own and he just happened to be an officer. Officers are held to the highest standard in the United States Army and the United States Military so for an Army officer to gun down his own troops was extremely disturbing. The biggest question is exactly what would make a professional psychiatrist flip like that. The radicalization process for Nidal Hasan was not a very easy one in his adult life. When he was a child he seemed that his life was on track “immediately following his high school graduation in 1988, Hasan enlisted in the U.S. Army serving for eight years and simultaneously completed his undergraduate degree from Virginia Tech (Watts, 2011).” He seem to have everything well thought out especially after he finished his degree and transitioned into the Medical field. He was on track for a very successful military career. The main factors that contributed to his turning would be first the death of his mother. The death of his mother in May 2001 affected him tremendously. She was the source behind all of his success to the point where he began to date and match woman he reminded him of her but he was not successful. The same year that Hasan’s mother died is also the same year the attacks on 9/11 happen also. During 2001 and 2002 he began to grow an interest into Islam and he attended church at the Dar al-Hijrah in Virginia which all known to have the attendance of two of 9/11 hijackers. That should have been a red flag for the military but that was ignored. I also think that another contribution is that he was psychiatrist. Many Soldiers that come back from deployment immediately go to a counselor because they need someone to talk to about the horrors they have seen. I think he may have heard what was going on over in Iraq and Afghanistan and seen how the Soldiers were treating them may have raised some anger and probably raised some questions. There were so many red flags that the military ignored and the fact that he donated “$20,000 to $30,000 a year to Islamic charities (Ross and Schwartz, 2009).” I believe that this could have been stopped a lot sooner and those 13 people would have not died.

What were the factors which inspired them to kill innocent Boston Marathon spectators, including women and young children whom they mingled with only minutes before setting off their bombs?

The Tsarnaev brothers were responsible for killing and injuring people in Boston during the famous Boston Marathon in 2013. It’s no secret the Tasarnaev brothers were lone wolf terrorists acting out on their own and not for any particular group. Tamerlan had trouble fitting into society where as Dzhokhar was able to get into the University of Massachusetts. Dzhokhar had the better success because he was able to fit in with society. Since Tamerlan was not able to fit in he went back to where he was fro, Dagestan, and that is when he started to follow underground terrorists groups. Tamerlan’s hatred towards America is what I think may have inspired him to kill innocent lives that day in Boston. It really seem like his brother was just dragged into it because of him looking up to his big brother.

Sargent, H. (2015, April 28). The Radicalization of Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Retrieved from https://www.boston.com/news/local-news/2015/04/28/…

Watts, C. (2011). Foreign Policy Research Institute. Foreign Policy Research Institute. Retrieved from http://www.fpri.org/docs/media/201106.watts_.forth…