OPINION

Gene Smith

Nov. 7, 2009 (McClatchy-Tribune Regional News delivered by Newstex) -- Thursday night was going to be One of Those Nights. There were squiggles in the story line, but they got those out of the way early.

The Fort Hood shootist, Nidal Malik Hasan, was an officer -- a psychiatrist, no less.

Hasan had acted alone. The two soldiers grabbed running from the scene were no longer suspects.

He was still alive, as of the time of the official briefing, and might live to tell his story.

Finally, the person who stopped the Bad Guy, taking a bullet in the process, was a Good Gal.

Otherwise, it was business as usual.

Endless replays of the shooting scene and the briefing.

Endless interviews with people who knew no more than the rest of us had learned from the three-star who'd done the talking.

Quickie video interviews with head doctors talking in generalities and speculating about a patient none of them had ever seen.

How-does-it-feel type questions put to stricken loved ones, with long pauses as the cameraman waited for someone's composure to rupture and nourish the emotional vampires huddled around their screens.

Endless questions. My answers.

Q. Had there been a previous deployment that might account for this?

A. Would dread of an impending first deployment somehow "not count"?

Q. Was Hasan merely deranged, or was this an act of terrorism, like a suicide bombing?

A. In what way is murdering and wounding dozens of unarmed strangers not an act of terrorism? In what way is a suicide bomber not deranged?

Q. Were there (you can almost hear the eagerness) security lapses?

A. What constitutes a security lapse in that particular location?

The gun-control debate (memo: we should stop calling it a "debate"; it doesn't qualify) never found a launch pad. There were questions -- Why two guns? Why those guns? -- but where do you take it from there, in a place where people must have guns?

I had sat plopped down in the room with the blaring TV because (1) that's where my wife was and (2) my foot hurt and I wasn't sure it would get me to the other end of the house. But I lasted only a minute or so before hauling myself up and hobbling away.

Seems terribly jaded, doesn't it? Try a better word: frustrated. We go through things like this several times a year, always beginning with a choral, "Why? Why?" Then, if the perpetrator is still alive to give us the answer, we recoil as if to say, "But that doesn't make any sense!" (We thought he was going to provide a reasonable explanation and we'd all coo, "Ohhhh, NOW I get it"?) Eventually, we tire of this unsatisfying routine and lose interest until it's time for the trial, or the debate over whether or not there's to be a trial.

That's as close as most people come to trying to understand mental illness. It isn't close, it isn't helpful -- and it's no accident. We don't want to understand, except from the safe distance that delineates research from infotainment.

No, we can't make the problem go away by immersing ourselves in thick medical texts. But we can do a much better job of learning what the major illnesses are, what their telltale symptoms are and what behavior might indicate an impending explosion. We'd achieve a better record of success if we did that.

If we'd also learn a bit about the economics of preventive medicine, we'd find it a lot less costly, in dollars as well as lives. Viewing Hasan as a potential terrorist of the al-Qaida stripe was necessary. Failing also to view him as a patient was a mistake. Mindless violence doesn't care what names we give it.

Gene Smith is the Observer's senior editorial writer. He can be reached at smithg@fayobserver.com or 486-3581. You can discuss this column online by going to fayobserver.com/opinion and clicking on today's column.

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