Nidal Hasan Firing Squad To Be Livestreamed

Several days ago, according to the UK Guardian:

Donald Trump has approved the execution by US army firing squad of Nidal Hasan, who was sentenced to death for killing 13 people at Fort Hood in 2009, the chief Pentagon spokesperson, Sean Parnell, said in a social media post.

. . . Hasan, a US-born Muslim of Palestinian descent, opened fire on 5 November 2009 at a medical facility in the sprawling military base, which served as a staging point for soldiers to deploy to combat zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Twelve of the dead and 30 of the wounded were soldiers. Hasan was shot and partially paralyzed by a civilian police officer who responded to the attack.

The court that convicted Hasan was told that he was opposed to the US military’s occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan, and that Hasan had spoken online with the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, an al-Qaida propagandist and American citizen subsequently killed in a US drone strike in Yemen.

This AP article appears to be generally incorrect in what it claims about the Army's execution protocols:

In a post on social media Tuesday, acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle said he scheduled the execution for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at Fort Hood — the site where Hasan opened fire killing 13 people and wounding more than 30 others.

Telle confirmed in his post on X that Trump had approved the execution on Oct. 2, starting the clock in Army regulations that requires an execution date to be set no sooner than 60 days and no later than 150 days after that approval.

Telle also noted that the execution would be carried out by firing squad, but did not offer details of where on base the execution would take place, what personnel would be a part of that squad or what procedure they would follow.

. . . The procedures for execution in Army regulations do not contain specific protocols for particular methods of execution. Experts said in previous iterations of the firing squad — nearly 80 years ago — one shooter would be given a blank so they all could plausibly believe they had not fired the fatal shot.

. . . Before Hasan’s execution was set for Fort Hood, there was speculation the Army might reach out to one of the handful of states that have recently reinstated the firing squad for use in executions — particularly South Carolina or Utah, where they’ve renovated facilities and established protocols.

. . . It’s unclear if the Army will borrow from the state’s protocol, but it sets out for three volunteer shooters to stand 15 feet (4.6 meters) from the condemned prisoner, who is strapped to a chair. A medical professional uses an X-ray to find the prisoner’s heart and place a target over it. A hood is placed over the prisoner’s head after his final words, and a shade is lifted so the shooters can see their target.

At 3:53 in the YouTube video embedded above, Ryan McBeth discusses the most recent Army protocol for execution by firing squad, which dates from 1944. The firing squad has 12 members and a sergeant. From one to four of the 12 rifles are loaded with blanks. If the initial volley doesn't kill the condemned, the sergeant administers a coup de grâce to the head with a sidearm. The condemned is normally tied to a post, but since Hasan was paralyzed by gunsbhots during his capture and uses a wheelchair, exactly what will be done in his case is unclear. Via CNN, the execution will be livestreamed:

The Pentagon said Thursday it will livestream the military’s first firing squad execution in decades, allowing the public to watch as the man who killed 13 people in a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood is put to death.

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth vowed in an interview this week to let the public watch a firing squad execute Nidal Hasan at the same base in Texas where he carried out the massacre.

“We’ll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it’s public, because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things,” Hegseth told far-right podcaster Jack Posobiec in an interview aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Wednesday, drawing swift backlash from both sides of the aisle.

. . . A public livestream of Hasan’s execution could potentially violate the Army regulations governing military capital punishment. Army Regulation 190-55 specifies the types of people permitted to witness a military execution, and it also bars minors from watching the punishment. But the Army’s provost marshal general — a general who oversees military law enforcement — is permitted to waive provisions of the regulation so long as the waiver doesn’t violate the law or a higher binding regulation.

The President of the USCCB reacted predictably:

“It is with shock and great sorrow that I have learned of the Department of War’s decision to publicly livestream the execution of Nidal Hassan. Our God is the God of life. In no way can Hassan’s actions be condoned but this decision is a barbaric promotion of a culture of death and must be reconsidered,” Archbishop Paul Coakley said in a statement released Friday.

The problem I see is that it's increasingly plain that the enemy is Islam, which is seeking to override Western cultural history, much of which has been influenced by Catholics and Jews. Often it operates via grandly violent massacres, as it did on 9/11, or indeed as Hasan himself undertook. I think one counter to this strategy is equally vivid imagery; this was certainly done in the elimination of Osama bin Laden, and I think it's entirely appropriate in this case.