I Was at the 2009 Fort Hood Shooting. Here’s What I Saw

Seventeen years after the Fort Hood shooting, two recent pieces examine the attack through memory, justice, and national interest. In his eyewitness account, retired Col. Scott Gerber recounts the chaos that engulfed the installation, the courage of the responders, and the lasting pain carried by the military community. Col. Gerber acknowledges the emotional demand for Nidal Hasan’s execution while warning that the United States cannot defeat hatred through hatred. In Denying the Martyr: Why Executing Nidal Hasan Is Not in the United States’ Strategic Interest, Joshua Forester (pseudonym) and Col. (Ret.) David Maxwell carry that tension into the strategic domain. They argue that execution could grant Hasan renewed relevance, extremist propaganda value, and a martyrdom narrative. Permanent confinement would deny him freedom, spectacle, and control over the meaning of his punishment. These perspectives keep the victims, survivors, families, first responders, and Fort Hood community at the center of the discussion, but they also confront a difficult problem.

How should the United States deliver justice when an act of retribution could provide an ideologically motivated murderer with renewed attention and symbolic value?

Justice must hold Hasan accountable for the lives he destroyed while denying him the power to turn his punishment into propaganda, martyrdom, or a final act of political violence.