Is Pete Hegseth, the US Secretary of War, about to grant Nidal Hasan his most fervent last wish? The army doctor who murdered 13 servicemen at Fort Hood, Texas, in 2009, told a panel of mental health experts ahead of his court martial that he wished he had been shot dead rather than wounded so he could die a “martyr”.
Nothing is more sickening and barbaric than Hegseth’s plans to livestream his execution by firing squad on 3 December. Hasan is paralysed, with no sensation in his body from his chest down, and will have to be killed in a wheelchair unless he is dragged to a post and forced to stand. It will be the send-off of his dreams and a bitter wake-up call for Americans who thought their country was better than this.
Oh, the horror. There is a reason why the body of Osama Bin Laden was quietly dumped from an US aircraft carrier into an unknown part of the Arabian Sea in 2011. There is no grave, no shrine, nothing left of the 9/11 perpetrator to mourn. But his pathetic, traitorous mini-me, Hasan, will be immortalised in an officially-sanctioned video for the world to see.
Born in Virginia, Hasan’s parents were Palestinians who settled in the US, adding a contemporary layer of tragedy to his fate. A military psychiatrist who betrayed his Hippocratic oath to do no harm, Hasan had been deservedly forgotten until Hegseth resolved to make him a symbol of the medieval atavism of Trump’s America. Only jihadist groups like Isis and grim dictatorships like Iran, Afghanistan and North Korea publicly execute their foes.
Public executions are banned in America but this doesn’t apply to military courts. There will, nevertheless, be legal attempts to stop Hasan’s killing from going ahead as planned. This makes me suspicious that Hegseth’s pronouncement is timed to throw Maga some red meat ahead of the midterm elections – particularly in the battleground state of Texas, home to Fort Hood, where Hasan is due to be taken from his military prison in Kansas and shot.
The Maga movement should know better than to endorse Hegseth’s cruel gambit. The livestream of Charlie Kirk’s assassination raised the Turning Point USA leader from right-wing controversialist into a revered national martyr. I saw Kirk’s blood-soaked death on social media and immediately wished I hadn’t. But Hegseth, a former Fox News presenter, is truly a creature of his original medium, broadcasting.
Decency has gone out of the window in exchange for entertainment for clicks. Military sources recently told a reporter from that Hegseth wanted an “Instagram-ready” army rather than a warfighting machine and that he “‘produces’ his day-to-day inside the Pentagon like a TV show.” From pumping iron with the troops to touting a “warrior-ethos” while the US flounders in Iran, everything Hegseth does is performative – for show.
The impact is corrosive. Twenty-five years ago, I was standing next to the World Trade Centre in New York on 9/11, witnessed the unfolding tragedy and had to run for my life when the towers collapsed. The attacks were a unifying experience for Americans (and half-Americans, like me). I have never failed to be moved by the roll-call of names of the 2,753 dead – with surnames from countries and communities all over the world.
The spirit of “E pluribus unum” – out of many, one – that defined America was alive that day. Bit by bit, it has been erased until it no longer applies to the dis-United States under Trump. With this latest sick travesty, America has lost all moral high ground, its status as a beacon of democracy characterised by Ronald Reagan as the “shining city on the hill”.
One of the very last public executions in the US was the hanging of a black man, Rainey Bethea, for an alleged rape of a white woman. It took place in 1936 in front of 20,000 people in Kentucky. Most Americans were sickened by the spectacle (imagine if the recent botched execution of Christa Pike in Tennessee had been livestreamed).
In his short period in office, Hegseth has tried his best to turn back the clock on modern America by sacking or blocking the promotion of dozens of senior military leaders for being “woke” or too infested by diversity, equity and inclusion policies.
Some Republicans are speaking out about the plan to livestream Hasan’s death, such as North Carolina Senator Thom Tillis, who called it “beyond disgusting”. But he’s retiring at the midterm elections. Trump’s vice-like grip on his party is tightening with this latest outrage. But it also symbolises America’s dangerous slide into authoritarianism.
The true face of the Trump administration is out in the open. If this public execution goes ahead, all Americans will be implicated.