Hegseth's Planned Public Execution of Nidal Hasan Resembles Taliban Spectacle Without Their Restraint or Justification
Source: Dexter Filkins. "What a Public Execution Looks Like | The New Yorker." October 14, 2026. www.newyorker.com
The Gist
The author describes a Taliban public execution he saw in 1998 and says Hegseth's plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan looks a lot like it. He suggests the U.S. would be copying a practice used mainly by the Taliban and Iran's clerical rulers, and that Hegseth seems to enjoy cruelty in a way the Taliban's own justifications did not.
Conclusion
Hegseth's plan to livestream the execution of Nidal Hasan is morally troubling because it closely resembles the public executions of the Taliban, which only Iran and Afghanistan still regularly stage, and it reflects a taste for cruelty and humiliation that even the Taliban's own justifications did not display.
Premises
- Hegseth announced that Hasan would be shot by soldiers with rifles on a live stream so that people see 'serious consequences,' making the execution a deliberate public spectacle.
- The author witnessed a Taliban public execution at Kabul Stadium in 1998 that was structurally similar: a firing-style killing staged before a crowd, framed as a lesson and justified by appeals to God.
- Iran and Afghanistan, both ruled by clerics, are the only countries that still regularly stage public executions, so the U.S. would be joining a very small and unsavory group.
- Hegseth has repeatedly voiced the virtues of cruelty and invoked God to justify violence, such as 'no quarter, no mercy' and his Pentagon prayer for 'overwhelming violence of action'.
- The Taliban framed their executions as a regrettable necessity to restore order after civil war, whereas Hegseth appears to relish the idea of pain being inflicted in his name.
- Even within the administration there is hesitation, as Trump wavered when asked whether the video could serve as a terrorist recruiting tool.
Assumptions
- Resemblance to the practices of the Taliban and Iran's clerical regime is a meaningful reason to condemn a practice.
- Public, livestreamed executions differ in kind from the private, witnessed executions the U.S. normally carries out.
- Hegseth's statements about enemies abroad reveal his motives regarding the Hasan execution.
- The Taliban's rationale, whether or not valid, reflected more restraint than Hegseth's rhetoric.
- Readers will find the Kabul scene disturbing and will transfer that reaction to the U.S. plan.