President Trump on Thursday canceled the Pentagon’s planned livestream of the execution of the Army officer who was convicted in the 2009 Fort Hood mass shooting.
Pentagon officials said last week that the execution of Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 others at Fort Hood, Texas, would be broadcast via livestream. But Mr. Trump said Thursday that only immediate families of Mr. Hasan’s victims would be able to watch the execution in person.
“Many very good and well meaning people would rather not watch him die, through streaming, or through any other visual device,” he wrote on social media. “He will die, as scheduled, by firing squad, but this event will not be streamed.”
Democrats and Republicans in Congress panned Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the shooting, and even Vice President JD Vance expressed doubt about the plan.
“I’m not going to be watching it,” he said. He added: “I don’t know that that’s actually going to happen.”
The plan to broadcast Mr. Hasan’s execution, which the Pentagon said is scheduled for 1 p.m. on Dec. 3 at the same Army post where the massacre took place, had also drawn widespread condemnation from retired military officials, religious leaders and even some of the wounded soldiers who survived.
Mr. Trump’s decision to change course is likely to fuel questions about Mr. Hegseth’s leadership of the Pentagon, which has drawn heated criticism from Democrats and some Republicans.
“This episode highlights the impulsive and dysfunctional civilian leadership from the White House and U.S. Department of Defense,” said Senator Jack Reed of Rhode Island, the top Democrat on the Armed Services Committee. “Secretary Hegseth deserves to be admonished for his lack of judgment, lack of strategy and poor communication — not just in regard to this one episode but throughout his disastrous tenure as secretary of defense.”
Mr. Hegseth’s plan to livestream the killing of Mr. Hasan prompted dozens of retired admirals, generals and other officers to publish an open letter opposing the plan.
“Livestreaming this execution would clearly violate the basic human dignity of the condemned prisoner,” they wrote on Wednesday. “It turns what should be the solemn and grave punishment of a member of our society for committing the most serious crimes into a carnival for the enjoyment of voyeurs and spectators.”
“This type of exploitative broadcasting — that debases human dignity — will taint the honor of the military that employs it, and a nation that allows it,” they added.
In an interview with Real America’s Voice, Mr. Hegseth said he supported the public execution of Mr. Hasan “because people need to understand that there’s serious consequences for these types of things.”
More than any of his predecessors, Mr. Hegseth has posted video clips online highlighting the lethality of American forces. These videos are part of what Mr. Hegseth has described as an effort to restore the military’s “warrior ethos” and intimidate U.S. enemies.
The clips, posted by the Pentagon as well as the White House, have celebrated U.S. military aircraft blowing up boats in the Caribbean and destroying Iranian forces. In one video shared by the White House, battlefield explosions in Iran are interspersed with footage of Mr. Hegseth giving a press briefing, set to Metallica’s “Enter Sandman.”
Another video shows U.S. fighter jets hitting targets to “Here Comes the Boom,” a song by Nelly.
In the grainy videos released by the Pentagon, the enemy fighters’ faces are not visible. The carnage is obscured by plumes of fire and smoke. Still, the videos’ casting of deadly military actions as entertainment have left some senior military officials uneasy.
One concern, expressed by current and former officials, is that such gleeful celebrations of battlefield bloodshed gloss over the horrors of war and undermine support for the military campaign at home and overseas.
In an essay to be published in the November/December issue of Foreign Affairs, William H. McRaven, a retired admiral who oversaw the raid that killed Osama bin Laden, described the importance of articulating clear moral objectives. “Although the moral high ground does not guarantee military victory, it is a foundation on which success rests,” he wrote.
In the case of Mr. Hasan, the outpouring of moral outrage over the intended livestream may have swayed Mr. Trump.
In his post on social media, the president contended that streaming the execution “might have been a strong deterrent” to show how “America deals with Terrorists and SCUM like Hasan,” but he said it would not go forward.
- Credits: The New York Times
- Author: Tyler Pager, John Ismay and Greg Jaffe
- Image: Doug Mills
