New Delhi: A decades-old, mocking observation about the US army, by a man of West Indian origin at London’s famous Speakers’ Corner, offers a sharp introduction to the enduring contradictions of present-day American military power.The unidentified speaker, whom this writer heard one overcast winter Sunday afternoon in the mid-1970s, offered an acerbic observation on the US army’s conduct during the Wild West era, when European settlers poured into the US in the 18th and 19th centuries. He remarked that when US army cavalrymen, known to Native American tribes as the “Long Knives” after the sabres they wielded, attacked the indigenous population, it was described as a “military campaign”, but when the latter struck back, it was labelled an “ambush”.Cowboy mentalityThis bizarre comparison was not merely a play on words; it captured a familiar double standard: the tendency to justify one’s own use of force while condemning similar actions by an opponent. The speaker went on to candidly and irreverently state that the US has long had a knack for presenting its own use of violence as justified – invariably with disastrous consequences – while describing the same actions by its enemies as criminal or barbaric. Vietnam provided an early and costly example.US involvement stretched there from the mid-1950s until 1973, when Washington eventually left without securing the outcome for which it had fought, and Saigon fell to Communist North Vietnamese forces in April 1975. The war also exposed the darker side of US military operations, like the 1968 My Lai massacre, in which US soldiers killed hundreds of unarmed Vietnamese civilians at My Lai, including women, children and elderly people. The massacre was initially concealed, and its eventual exposure revealed how the military establishment could cynically and effortlessly suppress evidence of grave wrongdoing.Decades later, the 2003 invasion of Iraq was justified by disingenuous claims that Saddam Hussein possessed weapons of mass destruction. Subsequent investigations, however, found that these assertions regarding Iraqi nuclear stockpiles were false and allegations of links between Saddam’s regime and al-Qaeda unfounded. Saddam was overthrown, but the invasion was followed by insurgency, sectarian violence and years of instability and formally ended only last month after 23 yeaThereafter, in Afghanistan, the US military fought for nearly 20 years and successive administrations and military commanders repeatedly spoke of progress, painting a rosier picture than conditions on the ground warranted. The final humiliation, however, came in August 2021, when the Taliban returned to power as US forces once again ignominiously withdrew in a panicky extraction. All these wars differed in their origins, conduct and consequences, but all together exposed the gulf between the ability to deploy overwhelming force and the failure to achieve pre-determined political objectives. But above all, they pointed to the recurrence of the old cowboy mentality that superior force can bend events to Washington’s will, much as the US cavalry helped secure the westward expansion of immigrants in the 19th century. Yet, it seems that the attitudes associated with that cowboy era have not entirely disappeared from US military culture. Enemies are to be crushed, displays of force are treated as proof of resolve, and restraint is dismissed as weakness.A modern champion of the same mentalityThat very frontier mentality appears to have found a modern champion in Pete Hegseth, US President Donald Trump’s war or defence secretary. At a gathering of senior military officers at Quantico on September 30, Hegseth promised to rid the Pentagon of what he derided as its “woke” culture. His vocabulary at the gathering was less that of a defence secretary addressing the complexities of modern warfare than that of a bellowing saloon proprietor from the Wild West.“No fatties, no trannies, no beardos, no weirdos, no wimps, just warriors,” Hegseth ranted, signalling a sharp reversal of efforts to widen US military recruitment and remove barriers to service for gay and transgender personnel. He also doubled down on mandatory annual testosterone screenings for male service members over 30, framing it as a way to keep troops in peak physical shape.Altogether, Hegseth’s policies and public comments make one thing clear: he and the Trump administration are viewing military readiness through a narrow lens of macho posturing and political alignment. Ultimately, they are trying to force their own specific blueprint of how a modern American soldier should look and act. But the obvious reality is that a modern military requires a far wider range of skills, experience and judgement than physical toughness or adherence to a particular brand of Wild West masculinity. Wars, after all, are not won by swagger alone.Remarkably, Hesgeth’s cowboy outlook even extends to death itself. The proposed live streaming of Nidal Hasan’s execution brings the US military’s death penalty into sharp focus. Hasan, a former US Army major and psychiatrist, who killed 13 people and wounded 32 in the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, is scheduled to be executed by firing squad on December 3 at the Texas military base where he carried out the attack. Under Hegseth’s order, his execution would be broadcast online for millions to watch.This has drawn comparisons by US analysts and commentators with public executions staged by ISIS and the Taliban, as well as Iran’s use of capital punishment as public spectacles. In Afghanistan, Taliban authorities have frequently carried out executions by shooting in packed sports stadiums, sometimes with victims’ relatives pulling the trigger.Troubled history with public executionsThe US too has a troubled history with public executions, with the last one taking place in 1936, when Rainey Bethea, a 26-year-old Black civilian convicted of rape, was hanged before a crowd estimated at 20,000 in Owensboro in Kentucky state. Internet research reveals that the chaotic, carnival-like crowds at this event disgusted the public and ultimately helped end public executions.Meanwhile, critics of Hegseth’s proposal – including several Republican politicians – warn that televising Hasan’s execution would simply recreate a dark digital version of a spectacle the US abandoned nearly a century ago. They argue that this kind of public display is something now strictly associated with authoritarian regimes and terrorist groups.Online study has further revealed that the US military’s own record makes the War Secretary’s proposal striking. Though the US armed forces have continued to impose death sentences since 1961 – when Army Private John A. Bennett was hanged at Fort Leavenworth in Kansas for raping an 11-year-old Austrian girl and attempting to murder her – none have taken place since. Besides, the last US military execution by firing squad took place in 1945, when Private Eddie Slovik was shot by a firing squad in France for desertion during WW2. A livestreamed execution would thus revive a practice dormant for 65 years, using a method last employed nine decades ago.There is something unmistakably cowboy-like about the proposed airing of Hasan’s execution, one that rests on a Wild West idea that a tough man – in this instance the US – lets everyone see who is in charge, with little patience for restraint or negotiation. The US under Trump has traded on this image of the ‘hard man’, with Hegseth bringing this swagger into the Pentagon by emphasising macho toughness, ideological conformity and the public display of lethal power. Turning an execution into a broadcast would also take that outlook a step further, making the state’s power to kill not simply an act of punishment, but a spectacle for an audience.A stubborn patternThe previously mentioned Speakers’ Corner anecdote mocked the way the US Army described its own operations as campaigns while branding attacks by its opponents as ambushes. Decades later, someone needs to tell Hegseth-and Trump-that the Wild West is over, the frontier has long been settled, the cattle trails have disappeared and, more importantly, public executions are no way to demonstrate strength or deliver justice.The ubiquitous six-shooter may have given way to remotely operated weaponry of terrifying sophistication, but it appears that the cowboy mentality that treats brute force as an asset and restraint as weakness remains stubbornly alive.Besides, turning an execution into a livestream spectacle leaves the rest of the world wondering if Washington is actually running a modern, 21st-century superpower – or just putting on a testosterone-driven Wild West show centuries after the frontier was settled.