ArcaMax

VANCOUVER, British Columbia – Another banner week for human rights in the Trump administration. The U.S. p resident took a break from the war with Iran that he started to complain about not getting the Nobel Peace Prize, and sanctioned the winner's former employer: the International Criminal Court that investigates and prosecutes war crimes and genocide.

To top it all off, a public execution was announced.

The war secretary formerly known as defense secretary and Fox and Friends’ talker, Pete Hegseth, indicated that the public will be able to grab some snacks and settle in with their loved ones to watch the state execute a baddie on livestream. And they’re going to do it by firing squad, he says.

Seems they don’t want to mess it up like they somehow managed to do a few days earlier when the state of Tennessee failed to kill convicted murderer Christa Pike, despite having her strapped to a gurney.

Guess they don’t want this guy around to complain afterward.

As if that’s the only way that they could foul this up. Hegseth says that these things should be transparent, and explained how he came to the decision: “No brainer.” That’s comforting.

Serving as the bull's eye in this production will be the villain otherwise known as the Fort Hood Shooter, Nidal Malik Hasan – a US Army major serving in the medical corps who shot up the Texas army base in 2009, killing 13 and injuring 32 more amid the U.S.-led Global War on Terror.

This public spectacle would be the kind of thing that hasn’t happened since WWII, Hegseth said, adding that he “liked the mentality” back then – “which is win … understand that when the enemy attacks you, you stand your ground.”

This seems like a good place for a quick reminder that Hasan wasn’t some foreigner who slipped in through the gift shop. He was one of America’s own, serving as a shrink counseling other soldiers with psychiatric injuries from war, and was less than a month away from being deployed to Afghanistan himself.

That’s your “enemy.” And when he gets propped up in front of Hegseth’s firing squad and the entire world, he’ll also be a 56-year-old paraplegic in a wheelchair, having already been disabled in the crossfire.

Will that be the deterrent that Hegseth thinks? It’ll more likely end up being spliced into a bunch of recruitment videos for anti-American movements – as in, “Look at these psychos, shooting this old guy in a wheelchair because they drove him crazy with war.” That’ll be the pitch. Not that America’s foes should be super scared because Hegseth is getting his guys tested for adequate testosterone, making them do burpees and put any dresses back in their sisters’ closets, and having them shoot their own disabled colleagues up against a wall at work.

The U.S. government wasn’t technically on trial in the Hasan case, but does it bear any responsibility for that outcome as a result of ignoring all the warning signs that this guy was on the verge of losing it, and that his job literally involved engaging all day with others who also were? If the answer is yes, then we’re not talking here about perfect justice, but a systemic mess-up with a convenient scapegoat.

No one’s defending a terrorist act, but the state doesn’t seem to have learned much about minimizing the impact of its chosen wars on the guys they then send to fight them, either. Most recently, soldiers had been floating around on the USS Lincoln in the Middle East for so long that at least eight of them had attempted suicide.

The French went down that same road of highly public executions, before reversing course. French society gradually got turned off from capital punishment, moving it behind prison walls in 1939, before abolishing it altogether in 1981 under President François Mitterrand, because the guillotine’s optics came to be seen as a bit much, particularly after it had been applied controversially in 1972 to a defendant in a case of complicity for a prison murder despite him not having directly taken anyone’s life. The abolition debate came in the wake of Western civil rights and feminist movements questioning the legitimacy of state control of the body, notably a woman’s right to choose or racialized movements challenging oppressive policing.

Today, there’s still a segment of French society on the hard right that overwhelmingly backs head-chopping. But many of those same folks wouldn’t trust the state as far as they could throw it. The two positions aren’t compatible. And for the state to have the moral authority to kill someone, it should have to earn that trust.

Yet they act like it’s all just business as usual. Speaking of which … Will there be a bidding war for the broadcast rights? Will sponsors clamor to outfit the Dead Man Rolling? I mean, Trump’s ambassador to Greece – my former Fox News colleague Kim Guilfoyle – has just been publicly accused of trying to get a Trump donor to pay her $100,000 credit card bill in an alleged quid pro quo for access. The grift seems to be nonstop.

Will Trump sell exclusive merch and international licensing through his son-in-law and dealmaker, Jared Kushner?

Who gets the Middle East streaming rights? Is there a premium tier with multi-camera angles? Will sponsors get product placement, or will the firing squad have to wear the branding like Formula One drivers do? Will they cut to a pillow commercial right before the bullets fly?

Trump presents, "Death Row Live: A Pentagon Original." Available internationally, with exclusive behind-the-scenes content for premium subscribers, and a limited-edition commemorative Trump coin. No refunds. All sales extremely final.