There Will Be Repercussions

What happened at Fort Hood on Thursday will have repercussions.

The shooter (do I need to say alleged?), Nidal Milak Hasan, was a person who was throwing up red flags as he moved along in life, but the flags didn't seem to get any notice from anyone with authority to do something.

As a psychiatric intern at Walter Reed Army Medical Center, Hasan himself required counseling after having "difficulties" with patients.

Hasan was possibly the author of pro-terrorist internet postings.

Hasan was, by my reckoning, an Islamist, a hater of what America is doing in the war on terror, and he was "very vocal" about his feelings that the war on terror was really a war against Islam. He even got into arguments with other soldiers over his opinions.

How is it that this guy not only got promoted by the Army, but was being sent at Afghanistan to treat soldiers serving there?

One Army colonel described Hasan's work as "excellent." That may have been the case, but he was also apparently a troubled man and he should have been paid closer attention to. Any excuse that there is just isn't the money or the manpower to investigate everybody just isn't going to cut it anymore. There's plenty of tax money being paid by plenty of Americans and we should expect better, better from the military, better from our government.

The future will bring out politicians who will try to exploit this tragedy, but there will also be honest and concerned public servants who will hopefully push to make sure measures are taken so that something like this never happens again, but also to implement some way to investigate factions within our own military who may actually be our enemy.