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We are a country divided between ‘Hell yes, let’s all see the photos,’ and ‘Really, we’re better than that, it’s ghoulish.’ Only yesterday Lawrence O’Donnell came down firmly for the latter, now he has done a complete about-face within 24 hours.
Perhaps Jon Stewart is right in saying that for ten years, the fallen were grieved privately, and the wounded were not the topic of headlines. Comparatively few film clips or photos of the gruesome side of war were allowed to dampen our patriotic certainty, if certainty was felt. For doubters, little evidence was allowed to make it real.
Will showing the photos of Osama bin Laden change all of the mistakes of the past ten years? Perhaps it can’t change them, but will start an era of more disclosure from our government, I don’t know. Jon Stewart and Lawrence O’Donnell think so, I’m interested in what you think.
RJ: I am against the release as the photo. It panders to our gun crazy bullet hole in the face society which is already the most violent in the civilized world. Though there is a minority of several thousand family members of the victims who thirst for it, I do not believe we should be deciding issues and foriegn policy on placating the revenge of a few knowing full well it will spill the blood of several thousand more victims and their families. I keep looking to the most active execution chamber in the world (other than China) just a few miles North of here and the joy so many take in too anti-Christian even for me. The argument for release is to give the families their due. There are many more thousands of such victims who come one at a time we do not do the same for. Also remember Jon Stewart is Jewish and from New York! A double whammy of vengeance.