Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth just ordered the first Army firing squad execution since World War II — and he's making sure Americans can watch. The message is simple: if you slaughter 13 U.S. soldiers, consequences find you, and they don't happen behind a curtain.
Nidal Hasan, the former Army psychiatrist who opened fire on fellow service members at Fort Hood on November 5, 2009, has been sitting on military death row since his 2013 conviction. Thirteen counts of premeditated murder. Thirty-two counts of attempted murder. He told his court-martial panel he targeted soldiers preparing to deploy to Afghanistan because they were "going to engage in an illegal war." He shot troops at a medical processing center, then chased them out the back door before police put him down.
That was over 13 years ago. Thirteen years of appeals, procedures, and bureaucratic inertia while the families of the dead waited for the system to do its one job.
Now the wait is over. The Pentagon announced Monday that Hasan will be executed by firing squad on December 3 at 1 p.m. CT — the same time of day he carried out his massacre — at Fort Hood, the very base where he killed those soldiers. President Trump approved the recommendation from Hegseth. Acting Secretary of the Army Adam Telle set the date.
Hegseth laid it out plainly in an interview with Jack Posobeic aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln: "We'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that there's serious consequences for these types of things."
He added: "We're going to do it on a Thursday. We're going to do it at one o'clock, which is when he did it. And it's going to be soldiers with rifles executing the firing squad."
CNN, which labeled Posobeic a "far-right podcaster" in its coverage, made sure to note that no details have been provided about how the execution would be publicized — as though logistics are the real scandal here. The New York Post, by contrast, reported Hegseth's rationale without the hand-wringing: "Army major betrays his country, radical Islamist kills a bunch of Americans at Fort Hood. Of course we're doing it at Fort Hood."
The usual voices will predictably feign horror at the notion of a public execution. These are the same people who spent decades hollowing out the justice system, letting violent predators walk, and treating victims as an afterthought. When consequences disappear, so does deterrence. When a mass murderer sits on death row for 13 years while the Pentagon shuffles paperwork, the only message sent is that the system is more afraid of being called cruel than of being called useless.
Hegseth invoked the World War II mentality: "Understand when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground." That's not barbarism. That's a functioning republic.
The real question isn't whether Hasan's execution should be public. The real question is what took so long — and how many other killers are still waiting for a system that has the nerve to finish what a court started.
