The White House declined yesterday to release a photo of Osama bin La den’s corpse — a controversial but quite correct choice.
“There is no doubt that Osama bin Laden is dead,” President Obama told CBS News. “So we don’t think that a photograph in and of itself is going to make any difference.”
That’s for sure. The conspiracy theorists will never be satisfied, and the downside of such a release looms large.
And not just because, as Obama put it, the photo could be used as an “incitement to additional violence or as a propaganda tool.”
What it boils down to is a matter of simple human decency.
As House Intelligence Committee Chairman Mike Rogers said yesterday: “Imagine how the American people would react if al Qaeda killed one of our troops or military leaders and put photos of the body on the Internet.”
His point was clear: Americans have been treated like trophies of war before — when US troops were killed in Mogadishu in 1993, their bodies stripped naked and dragged on ropes through the streets, and when military contractors were mutilated, burned and hanged from a bridge in Fallujah in 2004.
This is not to suggest for an instant that bin Laden’s fate was in any way comparable to what happened in Mogadishu and Fallujah. He deserved exactly what he got, and probably more.
And, again, let’s be clear on this: We could not possibly care less about offending the tender sensibilities of radical Islam.
But neither should the United States be following the Islamists’ example.
“We don’t trot out this stuff as trophies,” Obama said.
That’s exactly right.
What would be the upside? Would it “prove” bin Laden’s death? The image won’t convince Islamists who now are alternately protesting his killing and denying his death.
Nor will it cure the pathological madness of conspiracy theorists, who dismiss any evidence as a doctored fake.
The photo may soon be leaked or be made public, thanks to Freedom of Information Act requests.
But for now, bin Laden has been denied his last moment of limelight — killed in the dark of night, interred in the North Arabian Sea.
Obliterated. As he should be.