OPINION:
Early in the afternoon of Nov. 5, 2009, Nidal Hasan, an Army major and psychiatrist at the time, unleashed hell on Fort Hood, Texas.
When Hasan entered the Soldier Readiness Processing Center, he was armed with a FN Five-Seven pistol and an enormous cache of ammunition. He began a shooting rampage that lasted nearly 10 minutes. When all was said and done, Hasan had killed 13 people and an unborn baby, while injuring more than 30 others. It was the deadliest ever non-combat attack on a U.S. military base.
Hasan himself was shot that day and has been in a wheelchair ever since. He was found guilty at his 2013 court-martial on 13 counts of premeditated murder and 32 counts of attempted murder. He was sentenced to death.
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Fast forward 13 years to today and the time has come for Hasan to pay his debt to society. His execution has been scheduled for Dec. 3 and will be carried out by a firing squad comprised of U.S. soldiers. That alone is enough to stir controversy. It is a little-used form of execution in the United States, though far less likely to be botched than the lethal-injection method favored by Tennessee and most U.S. states.
The real protest surrounding Hasan’s scheduled death, however, is that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced it would be carried out via livestream and available for anyone in the public to watch. Mr. Hegseth believes letting the public watch Hasan die via firing squad will help deter future would-be killers.
Sadly, that intent doesn’t seem aligned with reality. In April 1999, two high school students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, entered Columbine High School in Colorado. They shot and killed twelve students and one teacher before they turned the guns on themselves. The horror and shock of the incident, along with the coward’s exit each of the shooters chose, should have acted as a deterrent for such a thing ever happening again. Instead, the attention the Columbine murders received has spawned more than 70 copycat attempts at school violence.
Showcasing violence, including state-sanctioned violence, breeds more of it. Allowing the death of Hasan to be witnessed by millions of people doesn’t elevate it nor make the sentence more effective. To the contrary, it cheapens the action, turning what should be the most somber of penalties into a carnival-like act. It degrades the dignity of life.
It’s also likely to light the fuse of borderline-crazy people out there, some of whom will want to avenge Hasan’s death and find innocent victims. They will use his death to justify more of it.
I consider myself conservative, but I am not a supporter of the death penalty. A civil society taking dangerous people off the street and locking them up? Be my guest. Society taking people off the planet based on their current belief system? Not so fast. As a conservative, I believe nothing is more sacred than the gift of life given to us by God. It is only the arrogance of mankind that leads any society to believe it should determine who gets to keep that God-given gift.
Set aside that personal opinion, however. The law of that land says the death penalty is an option for the most egregious violations of law. Clearly, taking human lives falls in that category. While some will quibble about the use of a firing squad, the method to deliver the end doesn’t matter so much as the result — a quick death.
What does matter is handling every life, even that of an evil killer, with dignity. Conservatives love to proclaim that America should promote a culture of life, and yet somehow some of those same conservatives find acceptable the idea of millions of people tuning in to watch the planned death of a fellow human - many likely cheering the event like a Sunday football game.
There is nothing about public execution that builds a culture of life. It trivializes life. It plants the seed in every mind that life or death can and should be determined by the current whims of a society.
Countries that carry out public executions, places like Iran or Afghanistan, are often considered by Americans to be barbaric because of it. Is modern-day America now going to emulate them? If the U.S. truly wants a culture of life, if America genuinely wants to de-escalate the violence so prevalent throughout the country today, the federal government cannot join in the violence, broadcast it for all to see and then expect peace and tranquility. That isn’t just illogical. It is absurd.
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