Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s ghoulish plans for a public firing squad execution of a convicted terrorist murderer violates the seriousness and solemnity of the sentence and would hand a propaganda victory to the criminal and must not happen.
There’s almost nothing this administration won’t tarnish, and that now extends to justice for service members killed or wounded by then-Maj. Nidal Hasan during the Fort Hood shooting in Texas in 2009. After a full-fledged legal process, Hasan, an Army medical doctor, was rightly sentenced to death and put on military death row more than a decade ago, though it is not unusual for such weighty sentences to be pending for long periods of time.
What is unusual — in fact, unprecedented — is for such an execution to be not just public but live-streamed, as Hegseth says Hasan’s December firing squad will be. The United States has not had a public execution since WWII, and even then, “public” meant anyone physically present, not anyone in the world with access to an internet connection. After the Nuremberg tribunal, the top Nazi leadership were rightly hanged for their crimes, yet even these were not open for public viewing, because that is savagery.
This should not come as any surprise in the context of a defense secretary because he thinks his job is to kill people instead of safeguarding the United States — who’s relished making a bloody spectacle of our military. Hegseth has kept up his campaign of strikes on alleged drug trafficking boats, which have now killed at least 235 people accused of civilian crimes, with no charges, no judge, no jury. We know the victims posed no threat to the military because the DOD has gleefully released footage (in another era we would just call them snuff films), which show boats being blown up from above and desperate survivors trying to stay afloat.
This is who Hegseth is: a barbarian whose idea of a military is bloodlust. He would put heads on spikes in Washington if he thought he could. There is no dignity in this, not just for the enemy — and let’s be clear that Hasan, by his own open admission, is an enemy of the U.S. — but for us, who would denigrate our values with such an act. If anything, this is handing a final victory to Hasan and his extremist movement, who crave notoriety and have based their arguments on the idea that the U.S. is gruesome and brutal. We will be handing them a perfect recruitment video, the “martyrization” of a fighter who struck U.S. troops in their own fort.
Survivors of the shooting and the families of some of the victims understand this, which is why some are already joining the chorus of voices against this grisly spectacle, now including even MAGA warriors like Vice President JD Vance and House Speaker Mike Johnson. Hegseth should drop the idea, though we’re skeptical that the man understands the word “no.”
In that case, the courts should step in. Hasan’s lawyers have avenues to challenge the public nature of the execution, though he probably wouldn’t have it any other way. That leaves other legal arguments, including an Army regulation that prohibits minors witnessing a military execution, something that would inevitably happen if it was available for live viewing. Lawmakers could also step in and clarify that this is not an acceptable way to conduct the serious business of an execution in this country. We will all, collectively, be degraded by it.