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Originally Posted by Arthurgray50@blu
Why is it, people take this out of context, He was a trained American officer, prepared to go to WAR, that is what you train for, whatever his religion, faith, he join the armed forces to defend YOUR country, or look after the vulnerable, YOU don't get scared at the last minute, then go round AND shoot and KILL your countrymen or women do you.
EVEN his family have said, they find it despicable, what he did,  |
He didn't get scared at the last minute, he apparently spent ages trying to keep himself from being deployed, including trying to get medical dismissals.
You'll find a huge amount of medical enlists do so thinking they will never see active service and will live out their commissions in a base in a nice safe country just treating those that return from warzones.
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Originally Posted by Flyboy
Playing Devil's Advocate, it may have improved his ability to help traumatised veterans, to be able understand first hand what they had experienced. Perhaps, I might be being naive; I don't know.
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I'd say that after hearing some horror stories the last thing on your mind will be "wow, I really think if I experienced this first hand, I'll be able to help people more!" rational thinking will have gone out the window and been replaced by "oh god I really don't want to have to experience that".
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Originally Posted by Gary L
if he didn't want to go he could have done a few things. such as shooting himself and not the countries soldiers he joined.
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He did do a few things, reports are saying he had been trying to get out of deployment for a while, but the US army is extremely short on psychiatrists and they are a vital part of troop services at the FOBs so they wouldn't let him resign his commission. I'd say he couldn't face up to the reality of deployment, snapped and lashed out at the very people who wouldn't let him get out of his deployment.
His choice of targets speaks volumes, there are plenty of places on an army base he could have found huge groups of people to take down, but he chose the readiness centre, the place you go to finalise your deployment that has the power to keep you on base or force you to deploy. Obviously he saw those people as the ones that were forcing him to deploy, and therefore the enemy.
I'm not saying there's any justification in what he did, just that it's not as simple as "I don't want to deploy... lets shoot some people!", there are a ton of steps inbetween that will have caused him to be broken enough to even consider doing something like this. People are all too quick to try to rationalise things, but these were not the actions of a rational person.
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Originally Posted by sollp
DON'T SIT THERE TRYING TO UNDERSTAND, THE **** NEEDS TO BE EXECUTED, SIMPLE REALLY.
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Yeah, lets just execute him now.
Or how about first we try to understand, so as procedures can be put in place to ensure that no one ends up doing this again, and THEN we execute him (or otherwise incarcerate him).
You cannot prevent tragedies like this without first realising why they occur, and you can't do that when the guy that did it is lying on a slab infront of you.