May they rest in peace. May God help us all.

What can I say that has not already been said? Here is the news of the shootings at Fort Hood yesterday afternoon. I will not say anything about this horrible tragedy other than it is obvious now that we all need to step back and reevaluate the entire situation relative to the wars in Western Asia from top to bottom. It is clear that our basis for what so many of us believed about America, her armed forces and our commonly shared value system as a people and a nation was incorrect.

We are not the one-size-fits-all culture that we so fervently believed we were. We must recognize that now. Dozens of people are dead or seriously injured because of our insistence that all Americans agreed with these wars. Most do not.

Right or wrong, justified or not, we made a mistake in judgment in so many areas concerning how far we could tear at the fabric of our common culture without it shredding. This will be discussed for a hundred years or more. Questions are many, answers are few. But one thing is certain, we must all quietly retire to inside ourselves and question everything about our culture. Things will never be the same again here. Here is the story from the Associated Press.

Here is a news line from AOL News concerning the shooter Major. Nidal Malik Hassan, U.S. Army who is a psychiatrist. Although originally reported as dead, he is alive with four bullet wounds and is on a respirator. He is from here in Virginia. The story is here.

Here is the story from the Washington Post concerning the major. He was 39, a devout Muslim who prayed often at the Muslim Community Center in Silver Spring, MD who wanted an Army discharge and was being deployed overseas to Iraq soon.

Here is another string on that story from other Post writers.

Here is a related story from the Post relative to the strain of constant deployments from units at Fort Hood and the suicides that this has induced among the troopers. That story is here.

May they rest in peace.  May God help us find our way in this most difficult time as a nation.

CWO3 Tom Barnes, USCG (Ret.)