Since 9/11, U.S. intelligence personnel—from analysts and law enforcement agents to interrogators and case officers—have often endured a grisly task: studying execution videos filmed by al-Qaeda or the Islamic State to positively identify the executioners.
I was one such intelligence official. In 2006, I downloaded a photograph of a man killed with a headshot by a naval Special Mission Unit and showed it to every source of mine in Iraq. I needed to determine if the deceased was al-Qaeda’s emir for western al-Anbar, a terrorist who killed a young Marine lieutenant friend of mine.
Such responsibilities were unpleasant, but they were necessary. Often, they were an important way to secure justice. Detained senior al-Qaeda member Khalid Sheikh Muhammad, for example, was confirmed through forensic analysis of similar images as part of the group who murdered Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl in 2002.
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Nobody despises al-Qaeda more than the Americans who fought them. And no one is more reprehensible than Nidal Hasan, the man who betrayed our country, our armed forces, and his medical profession by murdering 13 and wounding 32 at Fort Hood, Texas in 2009. Last week, it was announced that Hasan will be executed in December. Hasan deserves the death penalty—if asked, I myself would join the firing squad.
Yet there is nothing necessary or justified about Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s proposal to livestream Hasan’s execution. As I know from experience, no healthy, sane person enjoys looking at an execution, or at another human’s dead body. To do so for the crass purpose of entertainment is even worse.
The United States ought to be more civilized than to do such a gruesome thing in 2026. No U.S. government has conducted a public judicial execution in 90 years, since the hanging of Rainey Bethea for rape and murder by the state of Kentucky in 1936. Since then, things have changed for the better. In five deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Yemen, I observed American service members treat enemy dead with respect. This norm held to the extent that Osama bin Laden was buried privately at sea after receiving Muslim funeral rites. Meanwhile, old soldiers recall videos of the dead bodies of slain Task Force Rangers in Somalia in 1993 being dragged through Mogadishu’s streets. “That’s them, not us,” we said at the time.
At least, that’s what we thought.
Aside from the ethics of making the execution public, what Secretary Hegseth proposes is illegal. Army Regulation 190-55, “Procedures for Military Executions,” sets out a limited list of categories of people permitted to witness an execution, which certainly does not include thousands or millions of people at home—potentially including children, who are among those barred from witnessing an execution. As such, any subordinate of Hegseth’s, from leaders of the Department of the Army down to the sergeants and enlisted men tasked with conducting the execution, would be right to refuse to obey the order. What’s more, public executions would almost certainly be interpreted by federal courts as violating contemporary understandings of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on the infliction of cruel and unusual punishments.
Livestreaming the execution would also serve to strengthen America’s enemies rather than diminish them. Terror groups use graphic images of death as propaganda for fundraising and recruitment, celebrating their victims’ murders or glorifying their members’ supposed martyrdom. Al-Qaeda will certainly use any video of Hasan’s death for this purpose.
Of course, reasonable people can disagree about the moral legitimacy of capital punishment. As a struggling and imperfect Catholic, I believe Saint Thomas Aquinas still had the better argument when he wrote in favor of it in 1265. But I can think of no Judeo-Christian argument for livestreaming executions—and plenty against. God forbid unhealthy men watch a “snuff film” such as that and discover that they like what they see.
Part of the problem is that Secretary Hegseth served honorably in the army, but he is not really of or from the army in a cultural sense. He never attended Airborne or Ranger School, yet he wears the distinctive unit insignia of the 187th Airborne Infantry Regiment in his lapel, above an American flag disrespectfully used as a pocket handkerchief. He resigned his officer’s commission in 2021 and went on to bloviate on Fox & Friends as a faux combat stud. He published a book downplaying and even bragging about war crimes. His warrior rhetoric is a stick-on hairy chest and his proposed public execution is more like an adolescent’s effort to épater le bourgeois than a sober decision by a mature and sane defense secretary.
Hegseth should take inspiration from General Douglas MacArthur, who deplored the fact that photographs of Nazi war criminals who were hanged at Nuremberg (or who committed suicide to avoid that fate) were made public. No such photos are easily available of the Japanese officials he hanged after the Tokyo war crimes tribunal. There’s little doubt what MacArthur would say from behind his pipe and aviator glasses about Hegseth’s proposal.
I once had to watch a streamed video of a source I recruited who was, years later, executed by al-Qaeda. A proud man, he died with uncommon dignity under awful circumstances. I remember feeling not just hatred towards an evil enemy for his murder, and grief at a good man’s death, but revulsion at terrorists publicly broadcasting such an act. There’s no moral equivalence between my source and Hasan, of course—but it’s unbelievable to me that my country now sophomorically proposes to do just what al-Qaeda did.
It’s too easy to say that Hegseth’s idea is “not who we are” as Americans. Unfortunately, the evidence points in another direction. A plurality of voters reelected President Trump, even after he mused about jailing his opponents and executing former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley for treason. Now, like immature College Republicans, senior officials like Hegseth are seeking to livestream military executions in a spirit of juvenile chest-thumping in order to “troll the libs.”
Perhaps it’s more accurate to say: “this is not who we ought to be.”
Colonel (ret.) Kevin Carroll, a national security lawyer, served as an army and reserve military intelligence officer.
All statements of fact, opinion, or analysis expressed are those of the author and do not reflect the official positions or views of the U.S. Government. Nothing in the contents should be construed as asserting or implying U.S. Government authentication of information or endorsement of the author’s views.
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