The United States Army is about to do something it hasn’t done in 65 years. At 1 p.m. on December 3rd, at Fort Hood, it will execute a former soldier.
Nidal Malik Hasan, former Army major and psychiatrist, will be executed via firing squad for killing 13 and wounding 32 in a mass shooting on that same base on November 5th, 2009. He will die seventeen years later, on the same base, the same day of the week, around the same time as the massacre he committed.
No one debates whether he did it. He admitted it. A jury of his peers convicted him. Cameras and dozens of witnesses saw him. President Trump signed off on the execution, and the Supreme Court denied his final appeal.
That is all settled. But the Pentagon added a new twist: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced it would be livestreamed.
Almost immediately, America said no.
Fox News polling found overwhelming opposition to the broadcast. Vice President JD Vance said, “I’m not going to be watching it.” Speaker Mike Johnson said he wouldn’t either, warning it could become “a recruiting tool for future terrorists.” Senators Thom Tillis, John Curtis, and Rep. Rob Bresnahan have all said it is wrong. Archbishop Timothy Broglio questioned whether Catholic soldiers should even serve on the firing detail.
Even President Trump now appears to be wavering. “We’re looking at it,” he told a reporter in the face of national and international backlash.
That whole debate forces a question we should have asked before we ever talked about cameras:
If we’re too ashamed to watch, should we be doing it?
That question cuts both ways.
If you support this execution, and I do, for a soldier who murdered his fellow soldiers, then you should not be afraid to watch it. A firing squad shooting a man in a wheelchair, because Hasan has been paralyzed from the waist down since officers shot him to stop the attack, is exactly what this sentence is, regardless of the optics.
If we believe the government should have the power to do that, then we should have the stomach to own it plainly, without music, without commentary, without a censorship bar to make it more palatable.
If you can’t stomach it, and your gut tells you that watching five of our own soldiers shoot a paraplegic traitor is something you want to turn away from; something you would not want your children to see, something that feels less like justice and more like something Iran or Afghanistan would do, then you need to ask why we are doing it at all.
That is the test public executions have always failed.
America stopped public hangings in 1936 for a reason. The last one, in Kentucky, had vendors selling hot dogs, and the crowd got drunk and started fighting after 20,000 people came from all over to watch.
The State learned that when you put death on a stage, you don’t reveal the dignity of the law. You reveal the appetite of the crowd.
In America, our media already reveals our insatiable hunger for sex and bloodlust on the daily in our fictional entertainment. Now we get access to the real thing, on stage.
Hasan is also getting exactly what he wants. He told the court he wanted to be a martyr.
This livestream would become the most popular terrorist recruitment video of the century. Is justice actually being served if the punishment is the same as the original goal?
Meanwhile, 13 families have waited 17 years for finality. The families of Maj. Libardo Caraveo, Capt. John Gaffaney, Capt. Russell Seager, Staff Sgt. Justin DeCrow, Sgt. Amy Krueger, Spc. Jason Dean Hunt, Spc. Frederick Greene, Pfc. Aaron Nemelka, Pfc. Michael Pearson, Pfc. Kham Xiong, Lt. Col. Juanita Warman, Pfc. Francheska Velez — who was three months pregnant — and civilian physician assistant Michael Cahill.
They deserve justice that is sober, lawful, and final. Not justice that ends with edgy influencers saying “don’t forget to like, share, and subscribe” on the TikTok this execution will inevitably become.
Pure partisanship wants you to pick a team. If you’re MAGA, you’re supposed to want the stream to show strength and “own the libs.” If you’re progressive, you’re supposed to oppose the sentence entirely to prove your compassion… and because everything Trump does must be bad.
Both positions put the letter behind the name before the people who suffered.
People before labels would say this: A government that can kill its citizens must be restrained enough to do it without joy, without a crowd, and without shame.
If it must be done, do it behind closed doors, with the families present, with a chaplain present, with a record kept, and with the dignity that 13 murdered Americans were denied.
If the cameras stay on, it will become the event everyone said they wouldn’t watch, and at the same time the most-watched online event ever.
What does that say about us?

Collin Duprel is a guest columnist for the Rapid City Post. Opinions expressed may not necessarily represent the views of the Rapid City Post, its affiliates, or advertisers.