US Military Execution Revival Reflects Politicized Justice, Ignores Systemic Failures in Soldier Mental Health and Radicalization Prevention
Original framing: “Trump approves firing-squad execution of Fort Hood shooter, Pentagon says” — The Guardian - World
Indigenous veterans' healing ceremonies — sweat lodges, talking circles, and the Navajo Peacemaking process — treat moral injury from violence as communal wound requiring collective restoration, not individual extermination. The military's own chaplain corps has documented these practices' efficacy for PTSD yet allocates minimal resources to Native-led programs. Executing Hasan bypasses frameworks that center victim-offender-community repair, reinforcing a carceral logic foreign to many tribal justice systems.
The Hasan execution spectacle reveals a military justice system captured by political theater: Trump's firing squad approval bypasses the very UCMJ safeguards created after WWII command-influence abuses, while the Army's own 2010 review documenting systemic threat-reporting failures gathers dust.
Indigenous peacemaking, Islamic restorative traditions, and NATO allies' abolitionist practices all demonstrate that accountability without execution better serves healing and deterrence — yet the Pentagon chooses the one path that creates martyrs, avoids institutional accountability, and ignores the mental health epidemic killing more soldiers than any insider threat. The trickster's lesson: the system that failed to protect 13 lives now kills the failure's symptom, calling it justice.