As the tragic and horrifying news about the shootings at Fort Hood rolled out today, our community’s hearts broke. We do not yet know the identities of the twelve whose deaths have been confirmed, nor those of the thirty-one who were wounded. At a press conference about an hour ago, Army Lt. Gen. Robert Cone spoke of soldiers who were present and confirmed that some had ripped their uniforms off to staunch the bleeding of the wounded.
The alleged shooter is in military custody tonight. We know almost nothing about him, save his name and rank. Other details are trickling out.
President Obama has addressed the nation about this shocking event, which appears to be the largest mass-shooting at an American military base in history. And some of our fellow kossacks, who have family members or friends at Fort Hood have contributed sad diaries.
I am, as I know this community is, both sickened and disheartened by the horrible news today from Fort Hood. Though we do not know why the alleged shooter did what he did, we have, here, read other diaries about the horrors of PTSD ~ including this heartbreaking diary from last night by BentLiberal, which should have been on the Recommended List.
We know that the alleged shooter was a psychiatrist. We can assume that he has treated soldiers who had psychiactric problems resulting from their deployments. We know he was scheduled to be deployed to Iraq later this month. Other than that, we do not know much of anything at all.
Despite this thin knowledge, members of our community (this community) took it upon themselves to post irresponsible (and, in some cases, hateful and bigoted) comments about the shooter and his supposed motives. I’ll not link to these. You can view them in the putrid swamp of Hidden Comments. I will not link to stupidity or bigotry.
There was, of course, the usual hate-mongering at Free Republic today. One post there even incited a bunch of Freepers to post a link (with photos) of a Facebook member who had a name similar to that of the alleged shooter. A Facebook member who also lived in Texas. The thing was, this Facebook member lived in Lubbock, which is 350 miles from Killeen, where the shootings took place. Anyone with a brain (or access to Mapquest, or a basic knowledge of Texas geography) would have been able to figure out that this person could not possibly have been the person who opened his gun today at Fort Hood. But that didn’t stop the Freepers from posting hateful messages about him or speculating about whether his Facebook page would be "scrubbed" to protect the President. And though I will not link to this despicable piece of irresponsible trash either, I did print it all out, in case these lunatics inspire some other lunatic to do something even more irresponsible.
We are better than this. We are a reality-based community. We believe in facts and evidence and the rule of law.
We do not (or should not) post irresponsible "speculations" about who the shooter was or why he did what he did or what is happening tonight at Fort Hood. We certainly do not leap to conclusions about the motivations of someone who may have an ethnicity or religion different from many (though certainly not all) of us who write here.
Those comments I referred to should never have been posted in the first place. We are better than this. And amidst all the horrors of today, we should have been.