People across the world were shocked at the news that a US Army psychiatrist went on a shooting rampage on November 5 at Fort Hood army base in Texas, killing 13 people and injuring dozens.
But as the details about the background of 39-year-old Major Nidal Malik Hasan trickled out, commentary about the horrific event settled into two wrong explanations.
On the one hand, news of Hasan's Muslim faith and Palestinian heritage led right-wing commentators to pass judgment about what motivated not just Hasan, but all Muslims.
Debbie Schlussel, a frequent columnist for the New York Post and Jerusalem Post, urged readers on her website of the day of the shootings to think of Hasan "whenever you hear about how Muslims serve their country in the US military".
She said: "Well, actually, they do serve 'their country' in the US military. And their country is Dar Al-Islam and greater Koranistan.
"It's Islamic terrorism, stupid. Wait, that's repetitive. It's Islam, stupid."
The real problem, syndicated columnist Michelle Malkin said on her website on November 6, is "the whitewashing of jihad by the MSM [mainstream media]. I've said it many times over the years, and it bears repeating again as cable TV talking heads ask in bewilderment how all the red flags Hasan raised could have been ignored:
"Political correctness is the handmaiden of terror."
The other way the Fort Hood events were seen in the media was less vile, but still not very illuminating.
The shooting was seen as the act of a deranged individual, caused by the mental breakdown of a medical professional who himself needed the counseling he was supposed to provide to others.
It is an advance on the hate-filled tirades but it ultimately leaves the most important cause of the Fort Hood tragedy unexamined — the US-led wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the military's callous disregard for troops it sends abroad to kill and be killed.
Racist abuse
Friends and relatives said Hasan joined the military after college out of a sense of patriotism, describing him as calm and gentle. Hasan's parents are from Palestine, and he was born in the US and raised in Virginia.
But after the September 11, 2001 attacks, Hasan experienced racist harassment within the military and outside it that left him feeling isolated and under siege.
Despite this abuse, Hasan seemed to be coping. Hasan's uncle Hamad said his nephew told him: "They're ignorant. I'm more American than they are.
"I help my country more than they do. And I don't care what they say."
Hamad told the November 8 Los Angeles Times: "He felt sorry for them. He didn't feel grudges. He felt sympathy."
But at a certain point, the stress must have begun taking a toll on Hasan.
Hasan's cousin, Mohammad Munif Abdallah Hasan, who lives in Ramallah, told CNN that this was one of the reasons Hasan had sought to leave the military: "There was racism towards him because he's a Muslim, because he's an Arab, because he prays. They used to see him dress in traditional Muslim clothing, so he was a bit irritated because of this.
"Also, the fact that they wanted to send him to Iraq. He decided to leave the Army for good and hire a lawyer because of this matter.
"They wouldn't treat him as if he is one of them. He was a major in the Army, and other majors wouldn't treat him equally as a major should be treated. Yes, you are a major in the US Army, but you are still an Arab, a Muslim …
"He was bothered by that a lot."
Battlefield horrors
On top of the racist abuse, Hasan's job as an Army psychiatrist brought him face to face with countless soldiers haunted by memories of battlefield horrors — a seemingly endless line of young men and women scarred by their experiences of war.
A report in the November 7 New York Times said: "Many of the patients who fill the day are bereft, angry, broken. Their stories are gruesome, their distress lasting, and the process of recovery exhausting. In time, the repeated stories of battle and loss can leave even the most professional therapist numb or angry.
"And hanging over it all, for psychiatrists and psychologists in today's military, is the prospect of their own deployment — of working under fire with combat units in Iraq and Afghanistan …
"Major Hasan was one of a thin line of military therapists trying to hold off a rising tide of need. So far this year, 117 soldiers on active duty were reported to have committed suicide."
The crushing caseload — there are 408 psychiatrists for 553,000 active-duty troops around the world — leads to burnout and despair among those charged with treating the mental health trauma of a generation of soldiers.
"It's a pretty damn stressful place to be", said Dr. Stephen Stahl of the conditions for psychiatrists at Fort Hood. "I think it's a horrible place to practise psychiatry."
The NYT report said: "In studies of therapists working to soothe mental distress in victims of violence, whether criminal, sexual or combat-related, researchers have documented what is called secondary trauma: contact distress, of a kind."
Hamad said Hasan told him that his caseload of physically disabled and mentally troubled war veterans was weighing heavily on him: "He didn't have time even to breathe. Too much pressure, too many patients, not enough staff.
"He would say, 'I don't know how to treat them or what to tell them', because he didn't have enough time. They just kept coming one after the other.
"Sometimes he cried because of what happened to them. How young they are, what's going to happen to the rest of their lives. They're going to be handicapped; they're going to be crazy."
Cindy Thomas runs the Under the Hood Cafe, an anti-war, pro-troop hangout for soldiers at Fort Hood.
She said: "In general, those with mental health issues are treated so horribly it's a wonder that more don't snap. It's [got to the point] where even officers have issues with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, feeling depression and pressure.
"It's harder for those who deploy — they're not stable. With pressure, they are snapping harder and quicker."
Anti-war
In recent years, Hasan became more vocal about his opposition to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
That hardly distinguished him from many tens of thousands of soldiers who witnessed first-hand the futility and brutality of the US war on those countries.
Nevertheless, mainstream media outlets reported on Hasan's opposition as if it were somehow inappropriate or misguided to have such thoughts.
Dr Val Finnell, a former medical school classmate of Hasan's, described Hasan as "a very outspoken opponent of the war" in the classroom and in public settings.
"He equated the war against terror with a war against Islam", said Finnell.
But how far-fetched is it to believe that the US "war on terror" is at least partly a "war on Islam"?
Consider the words of General William Boykin, who said in 2003 of the US pursuit of Somali warlord Osman Atto: "He went on CNN, and he laughed at us, and he said, 'They'll never get me because Allah will protect me. Allah will protect me.'
"Well, you know what? I knew that my God was bigger than his. I knew that my God was a real God, and his was an idol."
In September this year, Boykin declared: "There is no greater threat to America than Islam."
It's impossible to know how many times Hasan counseled soldiers who had just told him stories of killing innocent women and children in the streets of Baghdad or the mountains of Afghanistan.
But it's certainly plausible that hearing such stories — told to him by young men and women practically young enough to be his children — could have produced a confusing tangle of emotions: feeling himself to be a US patriot, while empathising as a Muslim and a man of Palestinian descent with the Iraqi and Afghan victims of the US military.
It could also have left Hasan with an unbearable mix of anger and desperation.
The grief at Fort Hood over the carnage Hasan left is very real. But it's important to remember that for millions of people throughout the world, there is grief at the carnage that the US military causes day in, day out.
Grief at the bombing of Afghan wedding parties that leave dozens dead on what should have been one of the happiest days for their families. Grief at the gunning down of whole families at checkpoints in Falluja and Baghdad and Basra.
Hasan may have pulled the trigger, but it was the US military that loaded the gun — with its killing fields around the world, its callous disregard for the troops it sends into battle and its neglect of the mental health professionals who are supposed to help soldiers survive their mental scars.
The bigoted conclusions of the likes of Malkins — that the "violent teachings" of Islam caused this tragedy — must be rejected.
When Sergeant John Russell shot and killed five fellow soldiers at the Camp Liberty combat stress clinic in Baghdad in May, his religion wasn't used to explain why he went on a shooting spree.
Hasan's shouldn't be used as an explanation for what happened at Fort Hood.
The real solution to the horror that took place at Fort Hood is to build a social movement large enough to bring the senseless and ultimately futile wars in Iraq and Afghanistan — with their trail of civilian and military casualties — to an end.
[Abridged from . Eric Ruder is a writer for Socialistworker.org and Trey Kindlinger is a member of Iraq Veterans Against the War.]