My gut feeling is that just figuring out why he did it won't be a deterrent. I'd say that the core of his reason is based on "I don't like what the US government is doing." There's always going to be some whack job out there who doesn't like what the US government is doing, regardless of what it's doing.

I am curious, given his military role, to know what he would have been doing were he deployed. My friend that's a military MD (or rather, was a military MD - she's not currently serving) wouldn't have been on the front lines with a gun in her hand had she ever been deployed. She'd have been, at worst, in a MASH-type unit, and at best in a nice hospital-type facility somewhere. Given that this guy was a psychiatrist, I don't think he would have ever been called upon to aggressively shoot the enemy.

I will be interested to hear if his objection was that as a Muslim, he was not 'able' to shoot at other Muslims, or to patch up 'infidels' that fellow Muslims had been trying to kill. That would put a very interesting - and no doubt polarizing - spin on the matter.

Regardless, I am glad he is alive so he will have to face the music. Suicide bombers never have to do that. The potentially scary, scary downside will be if he did it for the reasons I speculated about above, and he becomes a martyr in the eyes of the Islamic world.