There was a time when governments tried to convince the world that civilisation meant something. Apparently, that time was becoming optional, replaced by a political entertainment industry in which the Pentagon could seriously propose livestreaming a man being executed by firing squad, as though death were another sporting event and the American public had purchased season tickets.
Nidal Hasan committed a horrific crime at Fort Hood in 2009, murdering 13 people and injuring 32 others. He was convicted and sentenced to death. The victims and their families deserve justice, remembrance and dignity. None of that, however, explains why the United States government should turn his execution into a public broadcast.
On October 8, the Pentagon announced plans to livestream Hasan's scheduled December 3 execution. Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth presented public visibility as a way of demonstrating the consequences of such crimes. And suddenly America found itself staring into a rather ugly mirror. Because there is a profound difference between administering justice and putting death on display.
The reaction that followed was not merely another predictable political argument. By October 15, the idea had generated international horror and widespread condemnation. What had apparently been conceived as a demonstration of American resolve instead became a demonstration of something much more disturbing: how easily a democratic government can flirt with the language and imagery of authoritarian punishment.
And then Donald Trump cancelled it. Good. That decision matters, because sometimes stopping something terrible before it happens is the only sensible victory available. But cancelling the livestream does not erase the fact that the Pentagon thought broadcasting an execution was an acceptable proposition in the first place.
That is the real scandal. The Taliban has staged public executions and punishments. Iran has used public executions as instruments of state authority and intimidation. ISIS turned murder into propaganda, deliberately producing spectacles of cruelty to terrorise populations and advertise its power. These organisations differ enormously from the United States in their ideology, institutions and political systems. But the imagery of public punishment carries a universal danger: the state deliberately transforms human suffering into a demonstration of power.
America should know better. Nobody needs to pretend that Hasan was innocent or that the Fort Hood massacre was anything other than monstrous. The victims deserved justice. Their families deserved recognition. Hasan's conviction and sentence followed a judicial process.
But a civilised legal system is not measured by how enthusiastically it kills the people it condemns. It is measured by whether it can administer justice without turning punishment into revenge or spectacle.
A courtroom establishes guilt through evidence, law and due process. A livestreamed execution offers something else: an image of the state exercising ultimate power over a helpless prisoner while millions watch.
What exactly was the educational purpose? Would a terrorist suddenly discover morality because he watched a firing squad? Would an extremist contemplating murder be deterred by the knowledge that the government might eventually broadcast his own death? There is little evidence for such fantasies.
There is, however, an obvious danger in normalising violence as political theatre. And what about the soldiers ordered to participate? They serve a military institution whose traditions include discipline, duty and honour. Asking them to become performers in a government broadcast would have dragged a solemn legal responsibility into the swamp of political spectacle.
The victims' families deserved better too. Their loved ones should be remembered for their lives, their service and the futures stolen from them, not used as supporting characters in a televised demonstration of state power. America has spent decades condemning authoritarian governments for using fear, violence and public humiliation to demonstrate authority. It has criticised regimes that turn punishment into propaganda and insisted that democratic institutions must operate according to higher standards.
That is precisely why the proposed livestream was so grotesque. The United States is not the Taliban. It is not ISIS. It is not Iran. Its constitutional system, courts and political freedoms are fundamentally different. But democracy does not receive permanent immunity from barbarism simply because it calls itself democratic.
Democratic erosion rarely arrives carrying a sign announcing its intentions. Sometimes it arrives as a supposedly tough policy. Sometimes as a patriotic spectacle. Sometimes as a government official saying the public needs to see consequences. And sometimes it arrives as a camera pointed at a firing squad.
Trump's cancellation was therefore welcome, not because Hasan's crime should be forgotten, and certainly not because punishment should disappear, but because the state does not need an audience for every exercise of its power. Justice does not require applause. Justice does not require ratings.
And justice certainly does not require a livestream. The world reacted with horror, and the White House eventually stepped back. Perhaps that is the small piece of good news in this ugly episode: the democratic instinct against turning execution into entertainment still exists.
But the question remains. Why did anybody in the American government think it was a good idea in the first place? That question deserves an answer.
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