Dr. Peter Breggin
The Huffington Post
Nov. 8, 2009
Before I begin to look at his role as a psychiatrist, I want to confirm that Major Nidal Malik Hasan was driven by religious ideology. For years he openly claimed that the War on Terror is a war on Muslims. He announced on the Internet and to his fellow soldiers in a course on public health that a Muslim suicide bomber should be praised for killing a hundred soldiers. It’s reported that fellow soldiers warned his superiors that he was a ticking time bomb.
One wonders how and why the army failed to relieve him from active duty. One ridiculous explanation is that they had a lot invested him–his complete medical and psychiatric training. Much more likely, the army was hamstrung by the political correctness that’s been imposed upon it.
Let’s also see through yet another media smoke screen–that Hasan was more a crazy person than a terrorist. During the American revolution Samuel Adams pointed out that he’d never seen a man commit treason without first losing his moral footing in his personal life. As for being a victim of prejudice, Hasan was instead a provocateur whom the army tried to ignore. Hasan is not only a terrorist, he’s a traitor–a man who turned on his nation; on the army that nurtured, educated and paid him; and on his comrades in arms.
Not Surprised He’s a Psychiatrist
Some in the media have expressed surprise that a man whose profession is about caring would turn to violence. According to one theory, poor Dr. Hasan was driven to the breaking point by the stress of counseling returning soldiers and having to listen to their horrific stories. Totally false. Psychiatrists are no longer trained to listen to or to counsel their patients. Nor do they care to.
I’ve given seminars to the staff at both hospitals where Hasan was trained, Walter Reed in DC and the national military medical center in Bethesda, Maryland. The psychiatrists had no interest in anything except medicating their patients.
Modern psychiatry is not about counseling and empowering people. It’s about controlling and suppressing them, and that’s a dismal affair for patients and doctors alike. The armed forces have been taken in by the false claims of modern psychiatry.
Read entire article: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/dr-peter-breggin/the-fort-hood-shooter-a-d_b_349651.html