Washington - The shooting rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, illuminated the growing toll two wars have taken on the US military, as President Barack Obama nears a key decision in his young presidency about what to do in Afghanistan. The suspected gunman, Army psychiatrist Major Nidal Malik Hasan, was said to be distraught about his pending deployment to Afghanistan by years of treating soldiers who have suffered from psychological problems after returning from fighting there and in Iraq.
Hasan, a devout Muslim, had reportedly told colleagues and family that he opposed the wars. A cousin told The New York Times that Hasan was "mortified" about going to Afghanistan after hearing "people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there."
The Army has been trying to cope with an alarmingly high suicide rate among soldiers returning from battle, usually attributed to post-traumatic stress syndrome. The Army has taken vast steps to improve treatment and institute methods for detecting symptoms. But those efforts failed at Fort Hood.
On Thursday, Hasan, armed with two handguns, allegedly entered a facility at Fort Hood, the largest US base in the world and a key staging facility for troops on their way to the combat zones, and opened fire, killing 12 soldiers and one police officer before being shot and hospitalized.
The Hasan case will do little to help Obama as he plots out a new strategy for a war in Afghanistan that has grown increasingly unpopular at home. Recent polls in the United States show the highest level of public opposition to the war in Afghanistan since it began in October 2001.
As of Friday, the Pentagon reports that 907 US soldiers have died in Afghanistan since the beginning of the war. The pace of US deaths in Afghanistan has surpassed those in Iraq. In October, 55 soldiers died in Afghanistan, the highest monthly toll since the war began.
Obama noted the tragedy of soldiers dying on their own soil after so many sacrifices have been made abroad, when he addressed the Fort Hood slaying for the first time Thursday.
"It's difficult enough when we lose these brave Americans in battles overseas," he said. "It is horrifying that they should come under fire on an Army base in the United States."
All of this comes as Obama has been holding weeks of meetings with his top advisers and generals to plot out a new strategy for Afghanistan, and whether to oblige the request of his top officer there, General Stanley McChrystal, for an additional 40,000 troops.
Afghanistan could be a pivotal issue in Obama's young presidency with congressional elections less than a year away and three years out fr
