Month: November 2009

Mental Floss rounds up videos of canine welcoming committees. John Cole highlights this one:

Yes, that sounds familiar.

Rich Lowry takes aim at the "obsession with PTSD" in several press reports about Hasan:

[I]t fits the media’s favorite narrative of soldiers as victims. Here was poor Hasan, brought low like so many others by the unbearable burden of Iraq and Afghanistan. Never mind that PTSD usually results in sleeplessness, flashbacks, and — in the extreme — suicide. […]The press keeps mistaking Hasan for Private Ryan, when the closest he’d come to combat was counseling sessions with soldiers.

Lowry later airs an email from an expert who explains that military psychiatrists have indeed been known to suffer "vicarious traumatization" from their PTSD patients. However, the reader insists, Hasan probably wasn't one of them:

First, by all accounts Major Hasan's observed problems were not overcommitment compassion and over identification with traumatized soldiers. There is no suggestion that he identified with his clients, took his job overly seriously or that he habitually advocated for his clients and went beyond expectations to serve them. (There was, in fact, suggestion that he argued with clients, something rarely seen in cases of compassionate care.) As the previously mentioned characteristics are hallmarks of secondary or vicarious traumatization, it calls this 'diagnostic' explanation into question.

Second, there is ample evidence that Major Hasan experienced a long-standing personal religious/moral angst that was fueled by self-defined spiritual dilemmas. The reported chronology pre-dates the clinical work that allegedly produced secondary or vicarious traumatization. Over the course of his training and service with the Armed Forces, there appears to be a clear pattern of thoughts and behaviors that indicate escalating anger and frustration over the self-styled dilemmas created by his choice to be both a committed Muslim and an active member of the US Armed forces.

Given these observations, it is very difficult to characterize Major Hasan's behavior as being the consequence of his clinical experiences. It is more reasonable to conclude that Major Hasan's clinical work did not lead to a state of vicarious or secondary traumitization, although it may have served as the final straw or the catalyst which sent his spiraling rage and frustration into a murderous frenzy.

An analysis.

Conor Friedersdorf points out some cognitive dissonance over at Hot Air:

The author argues that it is folly for David Frum to criticize an article on Sarah Palin when the right should be focusing all its energy on opposing the health care legislation now en route to the Senate… yet the author finds that when it comes to his own writing, rather than focus on health care, it makes sense to write a blog post complaining about the fact that David Frum is complaining about an article on Sarah Palin instead of writing about health care.

The president’s superb speech yesterday had many memorable moments. But I was struck particularly by this passage:

We are a nation that is dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. We live that truth within our military, and see it in the varied backgrounds of those we lay to rest today. We defend that truth at home and abroad, and we know that Americans will always be found on the side of liberty and equality. That is who we are as a people.

It is. Although it has always been a process, always a struggle, and America’s great virtue is in having those struggles right out in the open, and the rawness of the issue placed front and center. Race first, of course. One of the most moving movies I’ve ever seen is “Glory”, Ed Zwick’s remarkable film about the first African-American volunteer company in the Civil War, its battle against prejudice on its own side as well as among the Confederate enemy. The reason it hit home for me is that I realized that this must have been the first time that black Americans actually fought for their own country that included them as citizens. Before then, they had been slaves or somehow marginal to the civic task of national defense. But by fighting for their country, in some ways they finally became full citizens of their own country.

It is not a right, military service. But it is transformative of a citizen’s place in the world. We rightly see servicemembers as special – because they make possible everything else. Without defense, we would have no secure country. And without citizens prepared to risk their lives, we would have no defense. And when a country says that one section of its own citizenry is barred from service simply because of who they are, even though they may be fine soldiers, it is saying a very clear thing to them:

You are not real Americans. This is not your country. Because of who you are, you must take an observer’s role in the defense of your own country. More to the point, if we discover that you are in the ranks, we will expel you. We will do this to you at any time, even if you have served honorably for years. We will strip you of your pension. We will allow anyone to expose you. And even if your skills – like fluent Arabic – are desperately needed, you are so repulsive to the military, and so disruptive to its cohesion, that we will throw you out anyway. There is nothing you can do to avoid this. There is no act heroic enough to overcome this. There is no record good enough to avoid it. You are beneath this ultimate act of citizenship because of who you are.

The sad truth, then, is that the president was wrong yesterday. When he said

We are a nation that is dedicated to the proposition that all men and women are created equal. We live that truth within our military,

He misspoke. We do not live that truth. We betray it.

And there are some Americans whose open, proud chance for glory is yet to come.

David Ignatius has a splendid column on the character and courage and resilience of those tasked to defend us. Humor, perseverance, sacrifice: these appear to be routine even under the extraordinary stress of these two endless, confusing occupations. On this, David is surely right:

In truth, the U.S. military may be the most resilient part of American society right now. The soldiers are clearly in better shape than the political class that sent them to war and the economic leadership that has mismanaged the economy. (I'd give the same high marks to young civilians who are serving and sacrificing in hard places — the Peace Corps and medical volunteers I've met abroad and the teachers in tough inner-city schools.)

James Joyner disapproves of the president calling those killed at Ft. Hood heroes:

The people aboard Flight 93 who took on the hijackers to prevent them from crashing into an unknown target?  Heroes.  The people in the Towers and the Pentagon who responded to crisis by trying to help others?   Heroes.  The firefighters and police officers who rushed into the burning buildings at great personal risk to save others?  Definitely: Heroes.

Similarly, police Sergeant Kim Munley, who shot and captured Major Nidal Malik Hasan, doubtless preventing him from killing more people, was a hero.

Most of those who died, on both 9/11 and that day at Fort Hood, by contrast, had no opportunity for heroism.  They were taken by surprise while going about their daily routine and murdered. They did not “give” their lives; they were robbed of them.

Ultra-Realistic Modern Warfare Game Features Awaiting Orders, Repairing Trucks

A reader writes:

I offer this in response to the reader who wrote in and said that a ultrasound tech wouldn't see abnormalities to suggest Down's Syndrome: I actually had a ultrasound tech mention to me that they can see a thicker neck, an indication of Down's Syndrome, in an ultrasound.

My husband and I got a abnormal diagnoses on our second's son initial ultrasound, and had to go in for a second, longer ultrasound (with an obviously more trained technician than the first one). We were sweating bullets, waiting to hear something about the baby. This technician looked the baby over for a while, did all the measurements, and finally she said, "Why are you guys here?" When we told her, she reassured us that she saw nothing abnormal. And then she went over the things they can see from an ultrasound, and specifically mentioned Down's Syndrome and the thickness of the fetus' neck. I know that she was not a radiologist, because the radiologist came in later, and did her own ultra-sound to reassure all of us that everything was indeed normal.

Now, I'm sure ultrasound techs don't officially "diagnose" Down's Syndrome, but they can see an indication, and they pass the information on so the doctor can urge an amniocentesis to diagnose. Out of the mind-boggling, bizarre details about Trig's gestation and birth, this bit seems accurate and believable. 

A reader who contributed an "It's So Personal" story back in June also touched upon the subject:

About 5 years ago, after a lot of effort, my wife got pregnant with our second child. We did the regular genetic screening (I can't recall the name of the test, but it was just a simple blood test). It came back positive for Down's Syndrome, but only at a slightly higher risk. Our OB/Gyn said the odds for someone my wife's age (27) to have a Down's baby were about 1 in 10,000. The positive test result put the odds closer to 1 in 150. He recommended we go to a doctor who specialized in high-risk pregnancies to confirm there was no problem. She was 5 months along at the time.

During the additional testing, we had an ultrasound done with an amazingly high-tech machine. During the scan we kept asking the tech if she saw anything, but she kept telling us she wasn't legally allowed to say one way or the other. We sat quietly until the end of the test, at which point the tech turned to us and said, "Well, I'm going to be honest with you, because it's the only way I know how to be. I see some problems with the head."

I could hear my wife's breathing quicken, and my hands started to shake uncontrollably. The doctor came in and said he saw holoprosencephaly, which, as we learned, essentially means that the brain did not divide into two hemispheres. In fact, although we were 19 weeks along, the brain had stopped developing at 11 weeks.

Read the rest here.