The massacre at Ft. Hood two years ago stunned the nation in its cold-blooded calculation. The high body
count was just as shocking as the fact soldiers were killed not in combat, but on the grounds of a military
installation. Before the slain soldiers were buried, many in the media speculated on a link between
combat stress and the shooting, the correlation being that war trauma had driven a soldier to commit
those crimes.
When news reports finally explained that Nidal Hasan hadn’t deployed during his Army career, the
narrative shifted to secondary PTSD. The thought was that his work as a psychiatrist could have caused
it. The reality, however, was that Hasan’s personal beliefs about the United States and the military were
among the chief motivations behind the killings. Taken together, the prevailing narrative from those
early reports—intentional or not—was this: Post-traumatic stress is a strong factor in violent crimes, and
anyone who has deployed to a combat zone is capable of the same.
That narrative—fairly common since John Rambo hit movie screens in 1982—bubbled to the surface
once again with the killing of Park Ranger Margaret Anderson on January 1st by Benjamin Colton Barnes,
a 24 year-old Iraq Veteran. Within hours of the Rainier shooting, journalists and writers clamored to
mention Barnes’ war record, combat stress, and even his duty station in a dizzying effort to find a
connection:
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