Word: afghanistanism
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...Army psychiatrist treating soldiers who had returned from Iraq and Afghanistan, Major Nidal Malik Hasan had a front-row seat for the brutal toll of war. It is too early to know what may have triggered his murderous shooting rampage on Nov. 5 at Fort Hood in Texas - Hasan is accused of killing 12 people and wounding 32 others before he was wounded by a police officer - but it is not uncommon for therapists treating soldiers with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to be swept up in patients' displays of war-related paranoia, helplessness and fury. (See pictures of suicide...
...entirely possible that other factors may have acted as a trigger for Hasan's alleged killing spree. The Army major was a devout Muslim who reportedly had been harassed because of his religion and had developed strong objections to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. But he was also due to be shipped out to Afghanistan, drawing him closer to the terrible scenes described in detail by his patients. At Army hospitals dealing with PTSD patients, staff members are required to periodically fill out a "resiliency" questionnaire that is supposed to gauge how well they are coping with the burden...
...hardened Army psychiatrist, counseling PTSD sufferers with terrible wartime stories can be a grueling assignment. Fort Hood has the highest suicide rate of any Army base in the country, largely because so many service men and women stationed there have undergone severe trauma while being deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan. At Fort Hood, in other words, there was no shortage of horrific tales that could have set loose the demons in Hasan's mind...
...sight. The Army had ordered Hasan, wrestling with the conflicting demands of being a soldier, a psychiatrist and a Muslim, to the post with the highest toll of Army suicides. Fort Hood is one of the Army's most stressed posts because of its units' revolving-door deployments to Afghanistan and Iraq. Finally, the Army made clear that Hasan couldn't escape his own pending deployment to Afghanistan, where he'd have to salve the mental wounds of fellow soldiers killing members of his own faith. (See pictures of the Fort Hood shooting...
...partners to move forward. In three weeks, he will announce his cabinet choices and begin work on important security, economic and governance issues that had been put on hold during the election. And that will also provide an opportunity for the Obama Administration to use the leverage offered by Afghanistan's security and economic dependency to press Karzai to do better. "If we can start pressuring him to start cracking down on high-profile criminals and drug traffickers to show that he actually cares about rule of law, then he starts gaining legitimacy," says Dempsey. "Afghanistan is still going...