The Fort Hood shooting by Major Hasan is profoundly shocking on many levels.

Hasan, who I will refer to by his last name only beyond this point, because he does not deserve the honor of being called by his rank, killed 13 fellow soldiers on November 5. The fact that it was Fort Hood, a place I spent some time at is one thing. Having been enlisted myself, and a non-commissioned officer, it is even more shocking that the shooter was a major. Officers of his rank are viewed as leaders, not killers of fellow soldiers.

In my years of active duty and active reserve in the Army, the last person you would expect to “snap” would be a senior officer. However, having heard enough about Hasan, it doesn’t surprise me.

Here’s a fellow that was basically handed a medical career by the Army. Folks like Hasan gain rank quickly and sometimes never assimilate properly as military officers.

Anyone who has spent time in the service just assumes that someone of Hasan’s rank, a major, probably has had some command time, went through significant leadership training and all that good stuff that military officers go through. Unfortunately, that may indeed not have been the case for Hasan. He was in a highly specialized field, where those around him have roughly the same rank, skill sets, and zero leadership skills training.

My take on Hasan was that he acted more like a disgruntled private that had been drafted into the Army. For those not old enough to remember, it was not uncommon to encounter herds of draftees with bad attitudes during the Vietnam War. They didn’t want to be in the army and couldn’t wait to get out. A lot of draftees served with honor and distinction, and a lot of them died in action, and they deserve to be honored with respect. But, the Army was also infected with a percentage of troops that were nothing but trouble. They had a profoundly negative effect on the army as a whole by the time the Vietnam War ended some 35 years ago. Hasan sounds like one of these people. This is a guy that has a good job in the military, a non-combat position, an education provided by the military and a career that some could only dream about compliments of the U.S. taxpayer. Yet, when it was time to serve in a non-combat position in the Middle East, he balked. There were a lot of things we didn’t like to do in the military. But shirking responsibilities is not something a commissioned officer does. Hasan has all the earmarks of a self-absorbed soldier. It was all about him, not the Army, not his fellow soldiers, not his duty as an officer, or his duty to the country.

Whether he was like that because he never assimilated into the Army system and was never provided the opportunity to be in a leadership position that distinguishes Army officers from enlisted or non-commissioned officers, or whether he had elevated his religious beliefs above that of his career and lives of fellow soldiers, is difficult to discern. Maybe it was a little of both. But, one thing is for certain. Whatever was going through Hasan’s head, it was not to ‘take care of his soldiers,’ which every Army officer who has been in a leadership position understands is a primary duty. Hasan was not of this mind-set, which I believe the Army needs to take a very hard look at. It’s one thing to train personnel in highly specialized fields, but to give them the rank and privileges of officers who command units consisting of hundreds of men in combat, has always been a sore spot with commissioned and non-commissioned officers alike.

Everyone knows that the highly specialized officer of the rank of captain (O-3) or major (O-4) earned his or her rank based on their technical merits, not their leadership skills. But, to the average enlisted man or woman or non-commissioned officer, they are an officer first, just as much as the hardened combat infantry officer.

No doubt this incident has placed some doubt in the minds of enlisted personnel. That’s not a good thing. Leadership is a fragile skill that can be lost in very short order in the military. The Army takes great pain to hone leadership skills of its officers. It is important that men in combat trust commissioned officers. It is important officers have the trust of their men. It’s a two-way street. It’s how the Army works. Hasan, with his rank and his dispicable act, broke that trust.

But, the story doesn’t end here. It gets even more insidious as information slowly comes out about those who lost their lives in this senseless tragedy.

It was announced last evening on November 6, one day after the tragedy, that one of the 13 killed was an army reservist from San Diego.

Major John Gaffaney, U.S. Army Reserves, left for Fort Hood on November 1. Major Gaffaney was a psychiatric counselor assigned to the 1908th Medical Detachment, a unit that specializes in combat stress counseling, with its headquarters based in the Midwest. Major Gaffaney, 56 years of age, had joined the Army Reserves in 2006 after retiring in 1999 from the National Guard. By all accounts, Major Gaffaney was a true citizen soldier, after originally spending his first enlistment on active duty in the U.S. Navy and eventually obtaining civilian credentials in psychiatric care, joined the Army National Guard in 1985. He obtained his commission after attending Army Officers Candidate School. He is the true definition of a citizen soldier. You can read about Major Gaffaney in the North County Times.

Major Gaffaney was not the only mental health officer killed at Fort Hood this week. It seems other members of the 1908th Combat Stress Detachment were processing through the building in preparation for deployment to the Middle East. Other experts in the field of mental health were present and a number of them were killed or wounded. Initial reports suggest as many as 5 or 6 of those killed were from the same command as Major Gaffaney.

It has been reported that Hasan had been notified of his pending deployment to Afghanistan or Iraq. Hasan spent time at Walter Reed Army Hospital as a psychiatrist and recently transferred to Fort Hood. According to various reports he did not want to go to the Middle East. It seems more than coincidental that Hasan was present in the building, the very day members of the 1908th were processing for deployment. Could it be that Hasan had been assigned to the 1908th to augment their deployment? It is not uncommon for highly specialized units like the 1908th to receive additional headcount from the active duty ranks prior to deployment to fill out vacant positions and bring the unit to full strength. If that is so, this makes the tragedy of this event even more compelling. If Hasan timed his killings to intentionally kill reserve members of the 1908th that he himself had been assigned to, and maybe ordered to deploy with, it takes this story to a new level.

Highly skilled units like the 1908th are few and far between. Based on my research, there appear to be only two combat stress units in the Army Reserve, making this type of capability rare to draw from. Could Hasan have timed his killings with the intent of specifically inflicting the most damage he could to the this unit's mission of providing mental health services to personnel in the Middle East?

We may never know answers to these questions, but I fear there is more to this than we have heard, and that Hasan’s appearance at the deployment facility at that date and time is more than coincidence. He may have indeed planned to take out his fellow psychiatric medical officers.

I hope Hasan recovers from his wounds and lives. I hope he is incarcerated in a military prison for the rest of his life. He will have to be isolated from the general population for obvious reasons, which means he will lead a lonely life in which he can fear for his own every single day. Military prisoners may not be the most savory bunch of people, but there is a code, even among military prisoners, that what he did was unforgiveable. If they ever get their hands on him it is not a matter of if he will live, it will be for how long.

May God be with Major Gaffaney and his family and the officers and enlisted who died so tragically at Fort Hood. They were only doing their job.