Marine veteran says Trump admin 'no different' than terrorists

The Trump Pentagon's grisly new plan to livestream an execution by firing squad has generated no shortage of controversy, and as a Marine Corps veteran argued for The Hill, the mere idea behind this plan would make the U.S. "no different than the terrorists we hate."

The Department of Defense announced last week that it planned to livestream the forthcoming execution of Nidal Malik Hasan, the man who opened fire at Fort Hood in 2009, killing 13 people. Hasan is set to be executed via firing squad, in what would mark the first public execution in the U.S. since the 1930s.

Writing for The Hill about his reaction to this news, Joslin Joseph, a reporter and veteran of the Iraq War, shared a story about his time as a Marine recruit in the early 2000s.

"In 2004, when I was a Marine recruit in Parris Island, our drill instructors bought out a laptop and made us sit in a school circle around it on the quarterdeck," he wrote. "They showed us a video of a man in an orange jumpsuit who was kneeling in front of hooded men wearing black. One of them read out a statement and then proceeded to cut the head off of the prisoner. The prisoner’s name was Nick Berg, and his executioner was terrorist Abu Musab Zarqawi. It was horrific to watch."

He added: "I wondered why in God’s name would they show us this. Our senior drill instructor told us it was revenge for the Abu Ghraib prison scandal, and that we should expect more such videos. He also said that this is what separates us from them. We are in the business of killing, but we would never be so barbaric."

Looking back now, Joseph argued, his instructor "was wrong," adding that "Since 9/11 and because of 9/11 we have regressed our society because of a fear of terrorism — a fear that our politicians really want us to feel at all times... The end result? We have seen terrorism flourish around the world. The Taliban rules Afghanistan, Iran has proxies surrounding Israel, Syria and Iraq had to deal with (and still deal with the Islamic State organization), and terror cells exist in North Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Here in the U.S., we see disaffected youths embrace extremism, which leads to acts of terror."

Joseph further argued that the decision to livestream Hasan's execution is "yet another way we have caved in and given up our values because of our fears," adding that "We have 'othered' Muslims so badly and vilified them to the point that we are now acting the way we accuse them of acting." He also dismissed the justification given by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth that this plan was needed to "send a message."

"Hegseth’s fantasy of public revenge is no different than Abu Musab Zarqawi’s heinous acts and the Islamic State organization‘s executions that followed," Joseph argued. "Just this week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio gave a tremendous speech about Western Civilization. How insane that the administration he works for thinks public executions go hand in hand with what Western Civilization or Christianity represent."