The Fort Hood Attack Was Terrorism. The Army Should Call It That

Shawn Manning offers a piece on the Fort Hood attack in the Washington Post.

In November 2009, my Army Reserve Medical Detachment reported to Fort Hood, Tex. in preparation for deployment to Afghanistan. As we waited in line at the base’s processing center, Maj. Nidal Hasan entered the building and fired rounds that would kill 13 people and an unborn child and wound 32 others, including me. After many setbacks, Hasan’s trial finally began this week, only to be delayed yet again on Wednesday.

My recovery has been long and agonizing. But the pain that has taken me by surprise has come in the nearly four years since the attack, as my fellow victims and I have been given the runaround by a government more eager to protect itself than the dead and wounded.

On the day of the attack, I was waiting for a medical exam before what would have been my third deployment overseas. I was texting my wife when I heard the shout of “Allahu Akbar!”

I looked up to see a man in Army fatigues firing a pistol. His fourth or fifth shot went into my chest. As screams broke out around me, I collapsed to the ground. The bullet had punctured my lung and I was gasping for breath. As I lay there, he shot me five more times in my back and legs. Eventually soldiers helped me get medical attention.

The bullets had narrowly missed my heart, but one had lodged in my liver. I still have two bullets in my body and deal with near-constant pain in my legs and back.

During my recovery, I learned that the Army had classified the shooting as nonpolitical workplace violence instead of a terrorist attack. The language used to describe the attack may seem meaningless, but it is very meaningful to the victims and their families.

Because the Army decided that our wounds were not “combat-related” a number of benifits are being denied to the victims and their families, including certain health and disability ones. In some instances, the designation even resulted in victims receiving smaller salaries than we would have received during our deployment.

You can read the rest of the piece via the below link:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/the-fort-hood-attack-was-terrorism-the-army-should-call-it-that/2013/08/07/cfe62210-feb1-11e2-bd97-676ec24f1f3f_story.html?wpisrc=nl_opinions