The time for justice has arrived for Nidal Hasan. The soldier-turned-jihadist committed an act of terror at Fort Hood, Texas, 17 years ago, killing 13 and wounding dozens before being shot and paralyzed. Hasan got a death sentence in 2013 after telling a court-martial that he went on his mass shooting spree to keep U.S. forces from fighting other terrorists.
And then ... nothing much happened. Hasan's sentence never got carried out, and he took up space for fourteen years. Yesterday, however, the Department of War offered a surprise announcement:
Secretary of War Pete Hegseth has recommended — and President Donald J. Trump has approved — death by U.S. Army firing squad for convicted terrorist Nidal Malik Hasan, the jihadist who opened fire on unarmed American soldiers at Fort Hood in 2009. He killed 13 people and wounded 32 others while shouting “Allahu Akbar” during the attack. The Secretary of the Army will set the time and place of the execution. Judgement day for Hasan has finally come.
— Sean Parnell (@SeanParnellASW) October 5, 2026
With that presidential approval, the clock is ticking. WFAA explains that the order must be carried out in the next 150 days, but it may come sooner than that. And note that the Pentagon has eschewed the lethal injection process for a more reliable – and in this case, more relevant – form of execution:
CBS News explains that Hasan's appeals finally ran out of runway:
Hasan's case could mark the military's first execution of an American service member since 1961, when a soldier was hanged for raping and attempting to murder an 11-year-old girl. ...
The decision by Hegseth comes after a lengthy appeals process for Hasan. He chose to represent himself at trial, and in an unusual course of events, he clashed with his own court-appointed standby attorneys, who worried that Hasan was intentionally seeking the death penalty.
Hasan asked the Supreme Court to review his case in 2024, arguing the judge violated his right to a public trial by clearing the public from the courtroom before discussing some of his issues with the attorneys. The high court declined to take up the issue last year.
Hasan has not sought the death penalty as much as he has sought attention. That is what terrorists want most, and the irony has been that Hasan has largely been forgotten since his trial. Until yesterday, most people would likely have struggled to recall Hasan's name, or perhaps even the attack itself, although it still is one of the worst jihadist terror attacks in the US since 9/11. Beege mentioned Hasan in April in relation to another Pete Hegseth change on military bases that allow service members to carry their own arms, countering a policy that made Fort Hood soldiers sitting ducks for Hasan. "Had just a few of the soldiers attacked at Fort Hood in 2009 had a lawful weapon secured in their vehicles," Beege wrote, "the ghastly, staggering death toll amassed by Nidal Hasan could have been drastically reduced."
Now that Hegseth has an execution order in hand, though, Hasan will again get the attention he craves ... for a while. This time, however, he won't be around to enjoy it, at least not unless courts get involved again. We can expect a flurry of lawsuits up front and perhaps a federal judge willing to throw some sand in the gears at this point, but it won't stop this execution. Hasan ran out of options in 2024 at the Supreme Court, and now all that's left is the will to carry out his sentence. The previous Secretary of Defense lacked it; this Secretary of War does not.
This will also get plenty of blowback in the media, particularly because of the recent botched execution in Tennessee. That won't amount to much, either. Christa Pike garners too much sympathy as a "teen killer," especially when one reviews the ghastly details of that murder, but Hasan is in another category altogether. This is not a case of criminal murder; it is a case of perfidy on behalf of an enemy of the United States by a member of the armed forces. The death penalty's appropriateness in this case of terrorism is beyond dispute, or should be.
Still, one does have to wonder whether this gives Hasan what he wants, at least momentarily. Would it have been better to just allow him to live in obscurity as a paraplegic that no one remembers, wasting away until he could be buried in an unmarked grave without notice? Perhaps that might have provided a more drawn-out sense of real justice for a murderous traitor, but no one will lose sleep over taking a pass on that option, either.
Editor's Note: Thanks to President Trump and War Secretary Pete Hegseth's leadership, the warrior ethos is coming back to America's military.
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