America Doesn’t Need a Pay-Per-View Execution: Pete Hegseth Is Turning Military Justice Into a Blood Sport
An analysis of military justice, American savagery, and the strategic consequences of turning executions into entertainment.
Justice Doesn't Require an Audience
On December 3, the United States Army is scheduled to execute Nidal Malik Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist convicted of murdering 13 people and wounding 32 others at Fort Hood in 2009.
Hasan received a death sentence through the military justice system. His conviction survived appellate review, and President Donald Trump approved the execution.
That is military justice.
But Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth wants to livestream the firing squad.
That is something entirely different.
Hasan is paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair. Imagine the international spectacle: American soldiers wheel a disabled prisoner into an execution area, restrain him, cover his head,with a black bag, raise their rifles, and kill him before a global audience.
Point to ponder: When the Army wheels a paraplegic before a firing squad for the world's viewing pleasure, will they use the standard hospital wheelchair with the straight vertical wheels, or the high-performance model with the angled wheels?
What message does that send? American strength? Military discipline? Or a powerful nation staging a killing for public consumption?
This isn't about whether Hasan deserves his sentence. It is about whether America needs to turn an execution into bloodlust entertainment.
The execution is scheduled. The livestream remains subject to Trump's final decision.
Military Justice Is Not a Reality Show
The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) operates differently from civilian criminal law.
Civilian courts administer federal and state criminal statutes through civilian judicial systems. Military courts-martial operate under a separate federal framework designed to maintain good order and discipline in the armed forces.
Capital punishment is authorized for certain military offenses, subject to stringent procedural requirements, appellate review, and presidential approval.
Hasan's death sentence arose from that system. A firing squad is among the legally permitted execution methods under applicable military procedures.
But legal authority to execute someone does not create a strategic necessity to televise his death.
Military justice exists to enforce discipline, not satisfy public curiosity.
A court-martial is not a Hollywood production. Soldiers assigned to carry out a lawful sentence are not entertainers. And the Pentagon should not be producing execution footage for worldwide distribution.
There is a difference between administering justice and celebrating violence.
Nidal Hasan and the Ghosts of Lynchings Past
Marion, Indiana — August 7, 1930.
Thousands of white Americans gathered outside a jail, including men, women, and children, demanding the surrender of three young Black prisoners.
A mob broke into the jail, dragged Tom Shipp, Abe Smith, and James Cameron into the streets, and brutally beat them. Shipp and Smith were lynched in the courthouse square.
Cameron, just 16 years old, narrowly escaped the same fate.
And the crowd watched.
The bodies were left hanging as spectators demanded they remain on display. A photographer captured the scene: two murdered Black men suspended above a crowd of ordinary Americans, some staring directly into the camera.
Nobody was ever convicted of their murders.
Before Americans congratulate themselves on the prospect of watching a government execution, perhaps we should revisit one of the ugliest chapters of American history. During Jim Crow, white Americans gathered by the thousands to witness Black people being lynched.
These were not spontaneous acts of mob violence hidden in the darkness.
They were frequently public events.
Newspapers advertised them. Families attended. Vendors sold food. Photographers sold postcards featuring mutilated Black bodies. Spectators collected human remains as souvenirs.
Let's be precise: Hasan's lawful conviction and legal legitimaicy are fundamentally different, but the cultuarl question is hauntingly familiar.
What happens to a society when watching another human being die becomes a communal experience?
White America once gathered beneath hanging bodies for entertainment. Now the technology exists to bring a government execution directly into America's living rooms.
Different legal circumstances. Different historical contexts.
But the dangerous appetite for spectacle deserves examination.
America supposedly evolved beyond making death a public attraction.
So why are we contemplating bringing it back?
An Intelligence Assessment: We're Producing Propaganda for Our Enemies
After the September 11 attacks, photographs of detainees wearing orange jumpsuits at the U.S. detention facility at Guantánamo Bay became globally recognizable. Years later, ISIS used orange jumpsuits in hostage and execution propaganda, invoking the visual association with American detention practices. The visual similarity helped create a narrative of retaliation: ISIS presented its violence as a response to American actions, despite the enormous legal and moral differences between detention and terrorist murder.
From a national intelligence perspective, Hegseth's proposal raises a fundamental question:
What is the desired information effect?
Every military operation and public communication has intended consequences and potential second- and third-order effects.
You don't simply ask what message you intend to send.
You must also ask how adversaries will interpret, manipulate, and exploit it.
Imagine Iranian state media broadcasting images of American soldiers executing a wheelchair-bound Muslim prisoner.
Imagine extremist recruiters removing every reference to Hasan's thirteen victims and circulating only footage of his final moments.
Imagine Russian or Chinese influence operations presenting the footage as evidence of American hypocrisy on human rights.
None of those scenarios requires AI fabricated imagery.
The Pentagon would have supplied the authentic footage itself.
Propaganda does not require complete facts. It requires emotionally powerful imagery capable of being stripped of context.
And images of uniformed Americans killing a restrained, partially paralyzed paraplegic prisoner would provide precisely that opportunity.
There is also the martyrdom problem.
Hasan advanced extremist ideological justifications for his murders. His behavior during the legal proceedings raised concerns that he embraced death as martyrdom.
Why give extremist propagandists the visual material to reinforce that narrative?
A private execution ends with an official announcement.
A livestream creates footage that can circulate indefinitely.
Military intelligence professionals spend entire careers trying to deny adversaries exploitable opportunities. Why would Pentagon leadership voluntarily manufacture one?
That is not strategic communication.
That is strategic risk.
America's Bloodthirsty Entertainment Culture
There is an uncomfortable truth about American culture.
We have become remarkably comfortable consuming violence.
True-crime entertainment. Graphic combat footage. Mass-shooting videos. Police confrontations. Viral recordings of people dying.
Violence generates attention. Attention generates clicks. Clicks generate revenue.
Not every American enjoys graphic violence, but the commercial market for it is undeniable.
And Hegseth's proposal raises the possibility of the federal government entering that marketplace.
This would not be a fictional movie.
A real human being would die.
A fourteen-year-old could potentially watch. So could millions of spectators motivated by curiosity, vengeance, or morbid fascination.
Some would celebrate. Others would recoil. Social media would circulate the footage, detach it from context, and transform the killing into content.
America's last legally sanctioned public execution occurred in 1936. Public executions today are associated with countries such as Iran and Taliban-controlled Afghanistan.
Now the United States is considering becoming the first nation known to livestream a lawful execution.
We criticize public executions abroad while contemplating broadcasting one ourselves.
That contradiction will not be lost on the world.
Deterrence? Show Us the Evidence.
Hegseth argues people should witness the consequences of committing horrific crimes.
Fine. Let's examine that argument.
Hasan was convicted in 2013. His sentence has been public knowledge for thirteen years.
The military justice system has already established the consequences.
What additional deterrence is achieved by broadcasting his death?
A major National Research Council review concluded that existing research could not reliably determine whether capital punishment increases, decreases, or has no effect on homicide rates.
There is even less evidence that livestreaming an execution provides additional deterrence.
And when dealing with ideologically motivated killers who may regard death as martyrdom, the assumption becomes particularly questionable.
Transparency is another argument.
But transparency does not require unlimited public access to the final moments of someone's life. Authorized witnesses, documented procedures, judicial oversight, and public reporting can provide accountability without a worldwide broadcast.
If the objective is justice, administer justice. If the objective is deterrence, demonstrate results. If the objective is entertainment, at least have the courage to admit what you're doing.
What About the Thirteen Victims?
Thirteen Americans were murdered at Fort Hood. Thirty-two others were wounded.
Their families deserve justice, accountability, and remembrance.
But whose story dominates when the entire world watches Hasan die?
The victims?
Or the killer?
Suddenly, the international conversation becomes about his wheelchair, his restraints, his final words, and the moment the rifles fire.
The murderer becomes the main attraction.
Even some survivors have questioned the wisdom of broadcasting his execution while supporting the sentence itself.
That distinction matters.
Honoring the victims does not require turning their killer into the star of an international spectacle.
Military Strength Is Discipline, Not Savagery
Hegseth reportedly called the decision to execute Hasan at Fort Hood at approximately the time of the original murders a "no-brainer."
Asked about Hasan's final requests, he replied, "Don't care."
That language raises serious questions about the tone Pentagon leadership is establishing around the administration of military justice.
American military power isn't defined merely by our ability to kill.
It's defined by the discipline governing when, why, and how we use force.
A restrained prisoner is not a battlefield target.
An execution detail is not a combat unit engaging the enemy.
And a death sentence is not an invitation for public celebration.
The strongest military in the world has nothing to gain from performing executions for an internet audience.
The Final Assessment
Nidal Hasan murdered thirteen people. He was convicted, sentenced, and afforded military appellate review.
If his lawful sentence is carried out, the Army should do so professionally, with appropriate witnesses, documentation, and respect for the victims.
But Hegseth's proposed livestream presents foreseeable strategic risks without an established military necessity.
It could supply adversaries with propaganda, reinforce extremist martyrdom narratives, undermine America's human-rights messaging, and resurrect the disturbing tradition of treating death as public entertainment.
America has already experienced the moral consequences of turning human suffering into spectacle.
Our history of Jim Crow lynchings should have taught us something.
Civilization is not measured by how enthusiastically a society can kill. It is measured, in part, by the restraint it exercises when it possesses the power to do so.
Carry out the law.
Honor the victims.
Respect military professionalism.
But don't turn justice into a blood sport.
America has nothing to prove by making the world watch a restrained prisoner die.
The ultimate demonstration of American military strength should not be how graphically we can kill.
It should be how professionally we exercise the power to do so.
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