Live Streaming Executions: America Just Volunteered to Join the Worst Club on Earth

Congratulations, We Just Applied for Membership in a Terrible Club

Nidal Hasan is a monster. Full stop. What he did at Fort Hood was evil, and nobody on this show is shedding a single tear for him. Let’s be absolutely clear about that before I say what I am about to say.

The Pentagon’s decision to live stream a firing squad execution is wrong. Not complicated. Not nuanced. Wrong.

Here is the list of countries that currently conduct public executions: Iran. Afghanistan. Saudi Arabia. Somalia. North Korea.

We just volunteered to be added to that list. Let that sink in.

Even If You Love the Death Penalty, This Should Bother You

I will be honest. I have a personal and religious conviction against the death penalty. I know many of you disagree, and I respect that. The arguments on the other side are legitimate. This is not a simple issue.

But here is the thing. You do not have to share my views on capital punishment to see that live streaming an execution is spectacle, not justice.

Consider what this actually accomplishes:

• It does not bring back the soldiers Hasan murdered.
• It does not serve as a meaningful deterrent to anyone planning violence.
• It gives hostile foreign governments ready-made propaganda showing America as a barbaric state.
• It tells the world that we have confused vengeance with justice.
• It drags grieving military families through a media circus they did not ask for.

The Last Public Execution Was in 1937

Almost 90 years ago, this country looked at public executions and said, we are done with this. That was not soft. That was not weak. That was a civilization deciding it had standards.

Now we are reversing that with a live stream, as if putting it on the internet makes it somehow more acceptable than gathering a crowd in a town square.

It does not. If anything, it is worse. It is a crowd of millions watching death as content.

What This Says About Where We Are

I have spent my career watching powerful institutions make decisions that serve optics over substance. This fits that pattern perfectly.

This is not strength. Countries with genuine strength and confidence in their justice systems do not need to broadcast executions to prove a point. The ones that do are the ones on that list above.

Hasan deserves punishment. Severe, lasting, inescapable punishment. But we do not have to humiliate ourselves to deliver it. I am calling on the people in charge to reverse this decision before we permanently damage something that cannot easily be repaired: our standing as a nation that holds itself to a higher standard than its worst actors.