SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
The scheduled execution of Nidal Hasan, the man who carried out a 2009 mass shooting at Fort Hood, will no longer be livestreamed. President Trump made the announcement today. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth had previously said the Pentagon would make the firing-squad shooting public, setting off a wave of condemnations from the Vatican to fellow Republicans.
(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)
PETE HEGSETH: It was a radical Islamist attack in uniform inside the ranks, and so he's going to get a firing squad of soldiers, as it should be. And we'll make sure that people are able to watch it, that it's public, because people need to understand that this is a - there's serious consequences for these types of things.
DETROW: Hasan killed 13 people and injured 32 at Fort Hood and was subsequently sentenced to death. Dexter Filkins is a staff writer at The New Yorker, and he wrote this week about witnessing a public execution in Afghanistan in 1998. He joins us now. Hi, Dexter.
DEXTER FILKINS: Hi there.
DETROW: Let's start with the latest news today. In terms of the message that the U.S. government is sending the rest of the world, how much of a difference do you think it makes that this is now called off?
FILKINS: Well, I - you know, they look a little silly, having advertised the thing and now pulled it back. But I do wonder how many people are going to be disappointed they can't see it. (Laughter) Probably not too many.
DETROW: Yeah. I mean, what did it mean to you that the Trump administration was seriously thinking about and making plans to take this step that, you know, we see in countries like Iran and Afghanistan?
FILKINS: Well, I - as you mentioned, I saw a public execution in the Kabul sports stadium under the Taliban. And an amputation of a second person.
DETROW: Yeah.
FILKINS: That's not something that I've ever forgotten. I mean, it was - it felt like I'd gone back in time, for sure.
DETROW: Yeah.
FILKINS: It felt medieval.
DETROW: You wrote about it vividly, first in that opening scene of your famous book, "The Forever War," and then in this recent article. Tell me what you remember about the crowd, the way the crowd reacted before it happened, to the speeches from the officials, from the Taliban, to the shooting itself.
FILKINS: Well, it's interesting. I - 'cause remember, the - this was a traumatized place and a traumatized society. It still is. But it had - the Soviet Union had withdrawn eight or nine years before and with 2 million people dead. So it was a broken place, and there was no electricity, and there was just nothing of the modern world there. So they were pretty numb. And it was - attendance was mandatory. I mean, they basically called in everybody from the mosques on Friday. So the reaction was just - it was muted. It was - they were - people were not cheering. They just kind of watched and then shuffled out.
DETROW: Yeah.
FILKINS: So it wasn't what you would expect. I mean, it wasn't the Roman Colosseum.
DETROW: Yeah. You know, we've covered, as a lot of outlets have spent a lot of time covering, the way that Pete Hegseth talks about religion, talks about theology and kind of the mix between his religious views and how he talks and thinks about war. I'm curious if you see any parallels between the Taliban's embrace of theologically justified violence and the types of things that Hegseth says.
FILKINS: Well, the - during the execution or in the run up to it, like, in the minutes before, they - one of the clerics was reading from the Quran into a loudspeaker. And I still remember what he said. He said, in revenge there is life. And, you know, and everything we're doing here is in the Quran. It's all mandated by the Quran. But I have to say it was - they used the Quran to justify what they were doing, but they weren't - there wasn't a kind of bloodlust about it in the type of which you can detect in Hegseth's voice.
There was no enthusiasm. I mean, it was much more this is a country that has gone through anarchy, and we put that anarchy to an end, the anarchy of civil war, and we are doing this because we have to do it. Because if we don't do it, the anarchy will return. And that was the mood. And so, you know, yes, they used religion, but it was much more subdued...
DETROW: Yeah.
FILKINS: ...And serious than you would imagine.
DETROW: About 30 seconds left for this last question, but we are reporting that one reason the president canceled this livestream was concern from the Pentagon the footage would end up on Jihadi websites and endanger U.S. forces in the Middle East. Curious, does that make sense to you as someone who covered the war on terror for so long?
FILKINS: Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. It'd be everywhere.
DETROW: Yeah. That is Dexter Filkins, a writer at The New Yorker and the author of "The Forever War," about the rise of the Taliban and the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. Thanks so much.
FILKINS: Thank you, sir. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This text may not be in its final form and may be updated or revised in the future. Accuracy and availability may vary. The authoritative record of NPR’s programming is the audio record.
