Framing the release of OBL's death photos is interesting. Sarah Palin thinks it would be a great way to swing our mighty dicks. President Obama suggests it would be like spiking the football or showing off a trophy. They're both wrong: we already did the former by violating an ally's sovereignty to assassinate somebody; keeping, say…Saddam's pistol to fondle qualifies for the latter, forensic evidence does not.
All that chaff obscures reality. This is at heart an issue of government transparency.
Our government, in our name, killed our #1 enemy. Hiding pictures of the result is the same as hiding pictures of the price when our troops' come home in transfer tubes. While our political rhetoric is oft childish, we are not children and need not be shielded from gruesome reality.
No, we must as ultimate sovereigns have all the reality we can possibly ingest as we make life or death decisions. Certainly we don't do that on a daily basis, but we select the proxies who lay down policy in service to our interests and the impact–costs and benefits–of those decisions has to be felt in a democratic republic such as ours.
Beyond having an informed electorate, this is about our government's default posture. I do not advocate live tweeting details of an operation as it happens, but we should err on the side of openness, particularly after the fact. Otherwise you head down the slippery slope of government justification for hiding information that doesn't threaten our collective security at all, but rather threatens the security of those in power. That is anathema to a government of, by and for the people.
As I've said elsewhere, I appreciate the sensitivies involved and could see waiting a while to allow passions to cool before releasing the photos. That said, I think those who would be incited are already, so keeping pictures from public view accomplishes nothing in the end, and merely erects another barrier between the people and their government and policies executed in their name.
ntodd
[Update: a little more at my blog.]