To the editor: As a 1960 graduate of the Air Pressure Academy and as a United States Air Pressure officer, I’ve loyally served this nation, believing that we’re civilized and morally upright. However I have to vehemently object to the choice to livestream the execution of convicted Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan (“Pentagon says the firing squad execution of Ft. Hood shooter Nidal Malik Hasan will be livestreamed,” Oct. 8). It’s an appalling abandonment of dignity, civilized requirements of justice and the ethical code of the residents of the nation.
The enormity of Hasan’s crimes is past dispute. However what potential public good is served by broadcasting the deliberate killing of a human being?
The secretary of Protection ought to perceive that america army represents the values of our nation. Turning an execution right into a public spectacle demeans these values, dishonors the solemnity of army justice and dangers lowering state-sanctioned killing to leisure.
Transparency in authorities doesn’t require turning dying right into a televised occasion.
We’re a nation that claims to uphold human dignity and the rule of legislation. Publicly broadcasting an execution shouldn’t be an illustration of energy or justice. It’s a disturbing regression towards the barbaric spectacles of centuries previous.
The choice ought to be reversed. The president and “secretary of warfare” ought to be sanctioned if not impeached on this gross thought.
Ben Furuta, Alhambra
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To the editor: Disgust, shock, despair — no phrases can describe my emotions upon studying of the deliberate public execution of Nidal Malik Hasan by firing squad, as introduced by Protection Secretary Pete Hegseth. The depth of ethical depravity this illustrates is past creativeness.
How have the individuals of america allowed our leaders to sink to this stage? What comes subsequent? We could comply with 18th century France and twentieth century Nazi Germany and restore the guillotine, or just return to our seventeenth century colonial previous and burn individuals on the stake? Or lets take a lesson from medieval instances and draw and quarter our enemies?
This deliberate public execution can also be extremely silly. Blinded by his personal fury and lust for revenge, Hegseth could have granted Hasan what could also be his best want: being remembered as a martyr. Moderately than being practically forgotten as simply one among many mass murderers the U.S. has spawned, he can be recognized in historical past as the primary particular person in practically a century to be executed on this method. The execution can be remembered as a turning level in U.S. historical past, marking an ethical and political decline that may definitively finish the period of U.S. world management.
We can’t enable such barbarism to happen. We can’t enable our nation to sink to the extent of North Korea or Iran. It’s time for all of us who’re dedicated to our nation to face up and communicate out in opposition to this reprehensible plan. No to firing squads, no to public executions and no to Hegseth.
Genevieve Giuliano, Huntington Seaside
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To the editor: I’m disgusted and outraged at our authorities’s intention to livestream an execution. Are we no higher than the terrorists livestreaming their beheadings and executions? I all the time thought our nation was higher than this.
I’m a brand new grandmother of a 10-month-old, and I worry for his future. I don’t need him to develop up in a rustic that celebrates this sort of hate.
What’s the level of this sensationalism? What is going to we achieve except for extra condemnation from our world companions? Is there any option to cease this grotesque and regressive act?
Anna Born, Los Angeles
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To the editor: It’s exhausting to argue that Hasan, who killed 13 individuals, deserves any type of mercy. Nonetheless, Hegseth’s proposed livestreaming of an execution is an ominous prospect — one that might later be utilized to political dissidents underneath the cost of treason.
If they’re exhibiting us movies of executions, they need to present us the unedited Sept. 2, 2025, execution of two males who had been hanging on to a burning, sinking boat. Justification for the killing was offered underneath the pretext that the 2 males might proceed to make use of the boat to ship medication. Hegseth maintains this video can’t be proven to most people as its content material is top-secret. This prime secret could also be that the U.S. army ignored the legal guidelines of warfare to realize expediency.
Ken Hense, Los Angeles
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To the editor: Vice President J.D. Vance thinks that he has the ethical standing to rebuke the pope on issues of theology, however in the case of a barbaric public execution, all he can say is that he received’t watch it (“U.S. plan to livestream execution by firing squad draws bipartisan, international outrage,” Oct. 9). Profile in cowardice.
Paul Hunt, Sierra Madre
