Aunt Nancy USA - Support The Troops

10/12/2026

I listened to a retired general speaking about the homecoming of the USS Abraham Lincoln, and he related how his wife once told him there are three things every American should witness: a military deployment, a homecoming, and a memorial service.

One is heartbreaking. One is joyous. And one is a reminder that some families will never get their homecoming.

He was visibly emotional, thinking about sailors finally returning to their families after months at sea, some meeting their newborn children for the first time. These are solemn and beautiful occasions because they belong to the people who serve and the families who sacrifice alongside them.

Pete Hegseth wants to add a fourth occasion: a livestreamed ex*****on by firing squad.

I can practically picture him with the ring light out, hair and makeup finished, camera angles mapped, and somebody selecting the soundtrack. Maybe a dramatic countdown.

Nidal Hasan murdered 13 people at Fort Hood. His crimes were monstrous. But he is now paralyzed, and the proposal is to have American soldiers shoot him while the world watches. Trump says he’ll decide whether the livestream proceeds, but Hegseth has already made his enthusiasm for the broadcast clear. If no one volunteers for the duty, I wouldn’t be surprised to see Hegseth step up, after a makeup touchup, to do the “honors.”

According to reporting in The Washington Sun, at least six soldiers have sought advice about possible religious exemptions from the firing squad. One said he didn’t want his children or family watching him pull a trigger.

Now there is a man whose understanding of strength I can respect.

Years ago, a psychologist told me that most human beings have a deep aversion to killing another member of their own species. The precise percentages are debatable, but the tiny percentage that don’t recoil, she suggested, may be psychopaths. We are supposed to hesitate before taking a human life. Hesitation is part of our humanity.

This isn’t combat. Hasan isn’t advancing on anyone with a weapon. He’s a paralyzed man in a wheelchair, convicted of monstrous crimes, awaiting ex*****on. His victims deserve justice, and their families deserve compassion. None of that requires pretending he has ceased to be human.

I suspect there will be plenty of rhetoric designed to make that distinction disappear. Call him a monster often enough, and perhaps it becomes easier to ask someone else to pull the trigger. The person holding the r***e still has to live with what follows.

Hegseth can deliver his lines for the cameras, extol the warrior ethos, and move on to his next television appearance. The soldier assigned to that firing squad doesn’t get to leave the experience behind when the broadcast ends.

If that soldier doesn’t want his children to watch him kill a defenseless man, I would suggest he understands something about courage and responsibility that no amount of televised swagger can teach.

Perhaps my idea of patriotism is old-fashioned. I see it in the sailor holding his baby for the first time; the spouse waiting on the pier; the family standing beside a flag-draped coffin. I see it in people who accept terrible responsibilities without mistaking them for opportunities to perform toughness.

There is more manliness in a soldier’s reluctance to take a life than in all the swaggering, chest-thumping warrior cosplay Washington can produce.

The general’s three ceremonies are about honoring sacrifice. The proposed fourth would turn an act of killing into something the public can consume. Turn our true warriors into props for Hegseth’s reality TV version of defending the country. We can do without the ring light, thank you.

10/10/2026

10/10/2026

10/10/2026

Honoring Navy Hospital Corpsman Edwin Gonzalez who selflessly sacrificed his life sixteen years ago today in Afghanistan for our great Country. Please help me honor him so that he is not forgotten.

10/09/2026

On the morning of August 3, 1965, CBS News correspondent Morley Safer was having coffee with Marine officers in Da Nang, looking for a story. A lieutenant mentioned that his unit was heading out on an operation and invited him along. Their destination was Cam Ne, a cluster of villages south of the city known as a Viet Cong stronghold, with tunnels and b***y traps. Safer brought his camera crew and went.

What he found when they arrived was not a battle, but a village filled with women, children, and elderly men.

The Marines had orders to level the hamlets. After a burst of sniper fire earlier that day, they began carrying out those orders. Moving through Cam Ne, soldiers used cigarette lighters and flamethrowers to set the thatched roofs ablaze. Elderly women pleaded for time to save their belongings, but their pleas were ignored. Rice stores burned. Homes burned. By the end, around 150 houses had been destroyed, three women were wounded, and a baby was dead. The only prisoners taken were four elderly men who spoke no English.

Safer kept his cameras rolling throughout it all.

That evening, he sent the film and his narration to New York, where CBS News president Fred Friendly and anchor Walter Cronkite watched it together. Both were stunned. Both agreed it was too important not to air.

On August 5, 1965, the report aired on the CBS Evening News — and it caused an enormous reaction. At a time when most Americans still strongly supported the war, footage of U.S. Marines burning a village of civilians was something the country had rarely seen on television. CBS was soon flooded with angry calls and letters.

Then came the call no network executive wanted. Early the next morning, CBS president Frank Stanton was awakened by his phone. The voice on the other end was President Lyndon Johnson, furious over the broadcast. Johnson reportedly accused the network of damaging the American image and ordered a background investigation into Safer. It found nothing suspicious. Safer was Canadian. Johnson then suspected that Safer might have paid Marines to stage the burning and ordered that possibility investigated as well. Again, nothing was found.

The Pentagon demanded that CBS remove Safer from Vietnam. The network refused and stood behind its correspondent. Safer received death threats in the aftermath — one of the prices he paid for telling the story.

The military also responded. Following the Cam Ne controversy, new guidelines were introduced restricting the burning of villages and requiring greater care around civilians. A single television report had helped bring greater scrutiny to how the war was being conducted.

Years later, New York University's journalism department named the Cam Ne broadcast among the 100 greatest works of American journalism of the 20th century.

Morley Safer went on to join 60 Minutes in 1970, where he became the program's longest-serving correspondent, remaining there for 46 years. He won numerous Emmy and Peabody awards and became one of the most recognizable faces in American journalism. He died on May 19, 2016, at age 84, just days after announcing his retirement.

But the moment that demonstrated both the power and the cost of journalism came in a burning village on a Tuesday morning in 1965, when a 33-year-old reporter decided to keep the camera rolling and show America what was happening.

He wasn't trying to end a war or embarrass a president. He was only documenting what he saw. And sometimes, that is enough to change history.

What do you think of what Safer did? Tell us below.