The Bin Laden Photos by Scott Horton

[Jefferson23]

snip* Obama’s decision to withhold the photographs of bin Laden’s corpse on these grounds is not required by the laws of war, but it is reasonable.

snip* There is no reason why they need to be made public today, this month, or even this year. But the materials should be preserved carefully and passed to an archive.


President Barack Obama’s decision not to release photographs of Osama bin Laden’s corpse has been justified in practical terms, as well as in terms of military honor. “It is very important for us to make sure that very graphic photos of somebody who was shot in the head are not floating around as an incitement to additional violence as a propaganda tool,” the president stated. “That’s not who we are. You know, we don’t trot out this stuff as trophies.” According to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the decision was made in consultation with allies in the Middle East.

Arguments raised in favor of release have covered a broad political spectrum. Sarah Palin, apparently nostalgic for the days when the heads of fallen adversaries were put up on pikes, tweeted: “Show photo as warning to others seeking America’s destruction.” Others have argued that in a democracy the presumption should be in favor of public access to records, even those involving blood and gore. Comedian Jon Stewart argued that images that show the horrors of war should not be censored, because that leads to a sanitization of warfare–an argument widely made by pacifists like Erich Maria Remarque at the end of World War I.

While the discussion has focused on the morgue-style photographs of bin Laden’s body, probably taken in conjunction with the pathological examination in Bagram, there is a considerably larger quantity of materials pertaining to the raid. The White House in fact released an amazing still of the president’s national security team watching a projection screen as the raid went down. Some tabloids quickly claimed that the president was watching bin Laden’s death in real time. CIA Director Leon Panetta discouraged this take, telling PBS that “Once those teams went into the compound, I can tell you that there was a time period of almost 20 or 25 minutes that we really didn’t know just exactly what was going on.” Whatever images were captured and transmitted, it’s clear that the raid team was outfitted with equipment that allowed what Counter-Terrorism Advisor John Brennan called “real-time visibility into the progress of the operation.”

This is not a unique occurrence. Recordings from special forces missions are apparently used for training purposes after the fact, allowing trainers to review and critique performances against established protocols. But military commanders are anxious that such recordings can be used to second-guess the performance of the SEALs on the mission and potentially to argue that lethal force was improperly used (an argument now made most aggressively by Berkeley law professor and torture memo writer John Yoo). This has led to a strong desire not to acknowledge the existence of such recordings, or not to give them up. These concerns are reasonable, but the audio and video of the Abbottabad raid are unique and extremely important historical records. They should be treated as such.

in full: http://www.harpers.org/archive/2011/05/hbc-90008090

BIO: Scott Horton is a Contributing Editor of Harper's Magazine and writes No Comment for this website.

A New York attorney known for his work in emerging markets and international law, especially human rights law and the law of armed conflict, Horton lectures at Columbia Law School. A life-long human rights advocate, Horton served as counsel to Andrei Sakharov and Elena Bonner, among other activists in the former Soviet Union. He is a co-founder of the American University in Central Asia, and has been involved in some of the most significant foreign investment projects in the Central Eurasian region. Horton recently led a number of studies of abuse issues associated with the conduct of the war on terror for the New York City Bar Association, where he has chaired several committees, including, most recently, the Committee on International Law. He is also a member of the board of the National Institute of Military Justice, the Andrei Sakharov Foundation, the EurasiaGroup and the American Branch of the International Law Association.