The mass murders pass by like the images of a surrealistic dream that are suppressed with the coming of the dawn. This time it was Major Nidal Malik Hasan who killed 13 and wounded 28 at the Soldier Readiness Center at the largest military base in the U.S., Fort Hood, Texas.

In Texas, the bizarre and ironic nature of this latest mass U.S shooting were too strange to be able to easily comprehend: Hasan is an Army psychiatrist who was slated for deployment to Afghanistan, and who had listened to the trauma of returning soldiers from Iraq and Afghanistan at the fort’s mental health center. He had a bachelor’s degree from Virginia Tech, the site of the heinous mass killings of April 2007; he carried two personally owned handguns to the scene of the massacre.

I learned about the slaughter while watching local news on Thursday afternoon. Though I instinctively mistrust national television news outlets, I turned to CNN to get some of the factual outline of the murders, and then to The New York Times to fill in the blanks left by the incessant spin of the major television networks. The spin on CNN was unmistakable!

First, a spokesperson for The Heritage Foundation demurred from commenting about the statements by a relative that Major Hasan had been subjected to harassment because of his Islamic background. Dr. Hasan’s cousin, Nader Hasan, reports that the doctor “was mortified by the idea of having to deploy” (James Dao, “Suspect Was ‘Mortified’ About Deployment,” The New York Times, November 5, 2009). Further, the cousin recounts, “He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there.” Dr. Hasan had unsuccessfully attempted to sever himself from the military. Brought into the discussion about Dr. Hasan was the allegation that he had posted disturbing and violent messages on a website. The latter remained unclear as of this writing.

Another CNN commentator on the massacre, a former deputy commander at Fort Hood, said that the issue of harassment ought to have been dealt with effectively on a personal level by someone of Dr. Hasan’s rank. As if the spin of this grotesque tragedy had no end, Larry King had the psychologist Dr. Phil on his show following the regular news coverage of the massacre. Rather than listen to someone who felt he could instantly transform himself into a specialist on violence at a military base, I turned the television off. Readers who are familiar with Dr. Phil know that he specializes in castigating “clients” publically for their private relational and psychological torments.

Many, many questions remain about Dr. Hasan’s motivation in allegedly carrying out these heinous acts. Why should a psychiatrist be immune from the effects of the suffering of soldiers returning from immoral and vicious wars of conquest in which civilians are those who are killed in far greater numbers than members of the military? Perhaps the greatest area for dread, in terms of military authorities, is that Dr. Hasan will get his day in military court where he will recount the details of what led him to commit this horror, and his state of mind as he planned mass murder.

As the events unfolded in the media, I flashed back to the Vietnam War era and my final days of basic training at Fort Gordon, Georgia, in December 1969. The members of the basic training company of which I was a part were standing at ease in front of the mess hall in the morning cold. Most were thinking about going home for the holidays when the news about one of the draftees in the unit reached us on that cold Georgia morning. He had shot his foot off rather than face deployment to Vietnam, where he was slated for duty following individual advanced training that would take place during the winter and early spring of 1970. Such stories of self-mutilation were not uncommon during the Vietnam era.

Remaining again in the Vietnam era, I stood in the medical clinic at Fort Dix, New Jersey. I had been ordered to undergo a psychiatric evaluation to assess my fitness prior to being discharged from the military. I had already given a social history to a military “social worker,” and had provided a psychiatric evaluation through my civilian attorney during my battle to fight being ordered to active duty status in the regular Army from the Reserves. I was attempting to have the psychiatric evaluation moved up by several weeks, wanting to get back to my family and civilian life and work. The psychiatrist who was scheduled to evaluate me came out into the waiting area of the medical clinic and began screaming at me: “If you don’t leave here immediately, I’m going to keep you on this base forever and write a negative evaluation about you.” Perhaps military psychiatry is to psychiatry, as military music is to music. I had been opposed to the war in Vietnam for many years by this time, but this was not an issue that the military would seriously consider. For readers wishing to read the details of these interactions, the official documents of my case are available in the Swarthmore Peace Collection at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania. They make for interesting reading all of these years later.

It seems that Black Panther H. Rap Brown’s observation from the 1960s that “violence is as American as apple pie” keeps repeating itself in an endless cycle in both civilian and military matters. The massacre at Fort Hood will take its “place” in the long line of senseless killings that echo from Oklahoma City, Columbine High, and Virginia Tech. Will eight years in Afghanistan and six years in Iraq create additional tragedies? Tragedy is routine for the people of both nations and it has come home once again to haunt us just as the senseless violence did on September 11, 2001. “Lesser” reports of killings and deaths are not uncommon among returning soldiers who have seen one or more tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq. The defenders of the proliferation of guns in the U.S. will fall into line in the pantheon of talking heads arguing that more guns are necessary to prevent the next senseless massacre and tragedy. And the next massacre will surely happen.