Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of today’s video from Daily Signal senior contributor Victor Davis Hanson. Subscribe to our YouTube channel to see more of his videos.
Hello, this is Victor Davis Hanson for the Daily Signal.
The last few days there’s been a major controversy over the fate of one murderer, Major Nidal Hasan. It’s over whether he should be executed, A. B, whether he should be executed by a firing squad conducted by the military. And C, whether this firing squad should be a public event.
In other words, people would have access to it, supposedly by video. It sounds ostensibly backward or medieval, but there’s more to the story.
First of all, remember who he was. He was a second-generation Palestinian. He went into Fort Hood in 2009 as a major in the U.S. Army and a psychiatric worker, and he murdered 13 of his fellow unarmed soldiers, and he wounded 32 of them, many seriously and are still crippled by his wounds that he inflicted.
And most disturbing, he had a long social media history of radical Islamicist posting, anti-American posting, pro-jihadist posting, fierce criticism of our soldiers at that time fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq, and this was known to the U.S. Army.
And number two, he was a total mediocrity. He could barely finish the medical training that the U.S. Army and its diversity program allowed him to be subsidized.
That’s not my interpretation. I’ll show you in a minute where Gen. George Casey shows you that he is a diversity recipient. That is special preference based on his race or ethnicity or his religion. So what happened? Well, there was a trial by a military court-martial tribunal. The problem was that took place in 2013.
Four years happened, transpired before this murderer was even convicted of murder. Was he charged with terrorism? Why not? He had a history of being a radical Islamicist promoting terrorism. As he shot and executed his fellow soldiers, he yelled out, “Allah Akbar.” What was the reaction of the Obama administration?
Their first impulse, their first impulse was to say, “Let’s not prejudge this. It might be workplace violence.” Think of that. You have an Islamicist who has a long trail on social media that was known to the Army itself, who murdered 13 soldiers and wounded 32 and yelled out as he was shooting them, “Allah Akbar,” and the military takes four years to find out whether he’s a terrorist and then concludes he’s not and never charges him with terrorism.
And the administration says that it could have been workplace violence and not to prejudge.
Unfortunately, it gets worse. The Secretary of the Army, George Casey, weighed in. You’re not going to believe, maybe you remember what he said. Now think about it. He’s the head Army officer of the U.S. Army. Thirteen of his soldiers have just been murdered by a crazed Islamicist major, and 32 have been crippled.
And what is his first reaction? I want to quote it. “Our diversity, our diversity, not only in our army, but in our country, is a strength. And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
When he says, quote, “our diversity,” he’s talking about our, meaning the U.S. Army and the U.S. government using a deliberate effort to prejudice some people and reward others on the basis of things other than merit.
Their superficial appearance, their religion, their gender, their sexual orientation. In this case, an American who was of Palestinian descent and was a Muslim. But what he’s really saying is, I am more worried… I shouldn’t say he’s really saying that. He said it. Let me quote it again. “And as horrific as this tragedy was, if our diversity becomes a casualty, I think that’s worse.”
Worse. In other words, it’s worse if you get angry at Major Hasan and say that he’s an Islamic terrorist, and you better clamp down on people like him. That’s worse than the death of 13 soldiers who were innocent and unarmed. Now there’s been a lot of reaction to the final verdict. He’s been convicted in 2013 of murder.
Thirteen years later, he’s appealed, and he’s appealed the appeals, and he’s taken every civilian and military avenue at government expense with legal counsel to get out of this, and now it’s run out and the sentence will be carried out. We should remember two or three contemporary events that are affecting this.
Number one, we’ve had a death sentence where a woman was given a lethal injection and did not die but was suffering. She’s now alive. And we’ve had hangings in the past that didn’t go well. We’ve had electrocutions that didn’t go well. One thing that goes well, as we know, is a firing squad. You get 10 or so people, and they shoot a high-powered rifle at close range, all at the heart, and the person dies instantly.
But we haven’t had a firing squad in the United States in about 90 years, and we haven’t had a public execution in about 80 years. And I don’t think the military has executed anybody by firing squad since 1937, and I’m not even sure they’ve executed anybody since about 2011.
So this is a very rare idea. It’s a very rare idea. Both the idea of shooting somebody by a firing squad, which I think is entirely deserved and is probably the most humane way of executing someone, given the travesties we’ve seen with lethal injections, with hangings, with electrocution.
The second thing is people who are against the death penalty are trying to stop it at the last moment.
I don’t think they’ll be successful given the horrific nature of this terrorist. But the idea that it should be in public generates real controversy, and it’s a legitimate question. Do we want to have a public execution, which I said has not happened, but depending on which one you particularly count, in about 90 to 80 years?
This will be something quite new. Why is the military considering this? Because outrage has been building for years that this major was a traitor, he was a terrorist, he was a murderer, and he had four years before he was even tried, and then he has been in the appeal process since 2013 for another 13 years without any memory of or remorse for the people he slaughtered. So a lot of people have jumped in.
I’m not going to weigh in whether it’s wise or not wise to have a public execution. But the military, again, feels that it’s justified, and they feel it will offer deterrence.
So people will see if you shoot your own soldiers, if you are a traitor to the United States, you will be publicly executed. That’s their point.
I think it might be counterproductive, but I’m not going to weigh in. Somebody else weighed in. You know who that was? Guess. Hillary Clinton. You think that she wouldn’t weigh in on anything given her career as secretary of state? We remember what difference does it make when she poo-pooed how four Americans in the CIA annex and the consulate were butchered in Libya because of lax security that was her responsibility.
Well, she’s weighed in again. And she said, “I think this is a barbaric idea.” “Beneath our dignity as a country.” Okay. “Beneath our dignity as a country and it’s barbaric.”
You know, Hillary Clinton, besides Benghazi, you know what I think is barbaric? When you joined the French under your prompt as secretary of state, you joined the French and the British to go bomb Libya.
You, for all your criticism of Iran, you did not ask, nor did your president, Barack Obama, ask for congressional permission. You bombed Libya for seven months. You bombed the Gaddafi regime, which had been horrific, but it was in a process of handing over power to a second-generation Americanized, Westernized children of Gaddafi.
Nevertheless, you wanted to bomb. And what happened to [Muammar] Gaddafi? Did he deserve death? Yes. But how was he killed? Was he tried before a military tribunal and then shot? No. We basically allowed a mob to go in there, grab him in full video of the world, sodomize him, and then tear him apart like an animal, just like animals.
And what did you say about it, Hillary? Did you say, “This is horrific what happened. This is a barbaric act. This is not who we are. We don’t remove dictators and then let mobs tear them to pieces and torture them by sodomizing”?
No, you didn’t. You said the following, quote. You think you’re a Latin scholar, so I want to warn everybody she was quoting Julius Caesar after he conquered Mithridates in the Pontic War.
He said, “Veni, vidi, vici. I came, I saw, I conquered.” But she wanted to be cute about this horrific tearing apart of a human and having him sodomized in full photographic splendor. So she said, quote, “We came,” ha, and she was laughing. “We came, we saw, he died.”
Yes, you did. You came, you bombed, Hillary, and then Gaddafi was torn apart, sodomized, and that was that. And you’re trying to tell me that you’re complaining that somebody who was tried with lawyers and went through about 18 years of legal proceedings with every benefit given him, who was praised in a sense as a diverse candidate and his horrible record was overlooked.
And then when he slaughtered people, the chief of staff of the army said it would be worse if this Hasan endangered the diversity program.
Once he’s convicted, he will be killed humanely by a firing squad, and you say this is barbaric.
And yet you oversaw the bombing and destruction of Libya, and you were laughing. It would’ve been bad enough if your policies led to just seeing a leader not shot by a firing squad, not electrocuted, not gassed, but torn apart like an animal and sodomized.
But then you had to brag about it and cackle. “We came, we saw, he died. Ha ha.” What a person.
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