Perhaps releasing the photos of a dead Osama bin Laden is a bad idea. Maybe they would reveal an operational detail that’s better left undiscovered. If this is the case, of course, President Obama (or someone else) could just say so and the controversy mostly would vanish.
What bugs me is the metaphor: Obama says the United States won’t put out the pictures because “we don’t need to spike the football.” By this, he means that America shouldn’t gloat over the death of the world’s most-wanted terrorist. But if a police department releases gruesome photos of a shooting, does it “spike the football”? No, it simply provides evidence. It has nothing to do with gloating–and neither do the calls to release these pictures.
Separately, spiking the football is a great sport-specific ritual. The NCAA may frown upon it, but as end-zone celebrations go, this is about as modest as they come, like slapping the hand of the third-base coach on a home-run trot. I wish the president hadn’t implied there was something unbecoming about it.
Back in '59, when Khruschev made his controversial visit to the US, Bill Buckley memorably declared "There is not a single reason for Mr. Khruschev's visiting this country which is not in fact a reason why Mr. Khruschev should NOT visit this country!"
Similarly, every reason put forward by Obama for not showing the picture(s) is in fact a reason FOR showing it/them.
It might tick off the Jihadis? For God's sakes, were in a war with them -- that means we're SUPPOSED to tick 'em off.....
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseBut many Americans don't want the photo to prop up a period of gloating, they want it for other reasons. Once again, the intentions of the opposition are portrayed in the poorest light.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThere's nothing unbecoming about it in the context of a sporting event (although I can do without end zone dancing myself).
Treating war, justice, geopolitical payback (choose your description) as a sporting event is what I think the president is referring to and I agree. We looked down on those who cheered 9/11 for a reason. Stooping to their level now hands them a partial victory.
Over the past tens years we've all seen horrific images we never imagined seeing: Americans jumping to their deaths from buildings, beheadings, charred torsos swinging from chains, people and animals gassed to death. Much of it courtesy of jihadis.
It's tough to put that toothpaste back in the tube, but maybe this can remind us we once aspired to something better.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseOf course he implies there's something wrong with showing the photos as evidence. Because that makes Americans look bad, and any time he can make Americans look bad, he will. When will he apologize to the world for Americans (and others) wanting to see the visual proof?
I would guess as many Americans were cheering a milestone accomplishment as were cheering for 'the death' of bin laden. Cheering Doolittle's raid over Tokyo was cheering a strike back against an enemy an not "celebrating death," and a similar thing happened here Sunday and Monday.
--Maybe they would reveal an operational detail that’s
--better left undiscovered. If this is the case, of
--course, President Obama (or someone else) could just
--say so and the controversy mostly would vanish.
Instead of doing that, they'll offer different reasons, walk back from some, then offer more reasons, then finally do what they said would be petty to do. This is the BO administration: they can't do anything right... except for harm the American people (obamacare and all its insidious effects that we weren't allowed to find out about before it was voted on).
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThis is just another reminder that this administration is not very good at politics. Either they did not think all of this through and are now floundering to come up with a policy or they are too disorganized to get their story straight.
Of all the ways to handle the aftermath, they somehow managed to come up with the most wrong way to do it. What should be a week long victory lap has become a reminder of all the things we find troubling about these guys.
Fish gotta swim, birds gotta fly and Obama has to turn things into a meditation on his essential goodness.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseMaybe we should have put bin Laden on a *real* spike.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe attempt by the left to morally equate the American's cheering the death of a evil mass murderer to the Muslims who cheered the death of three thousand innocent people (although Islam teaches that non-believers are NOT "innocent") is absurd. People want to see the pictures because they want to see the proof that OBL is dead and we can move on and prosecute the rest of the war against radical Islam.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseReleasing the death photo of OBL is spiking the football, but a gathering, campaign event, celebration or whatever he chooses to call it at Ground Zero is not. And President Obama and others who share his views never opposed the release of disturbing war photos, particularly when they documented wrong doing by American troops.
President Obama hasn't allowed his concern about inciting violence and emboldening the enemy to stifle his torture rhetoric and public denigration of the Bush administration and our intelligence community over the last two years, so it's obvious his concerns about the OBL photo are politically motivated, as is much of what he says and does.
Reply to this commentLinkReport Abuse"Once again, the intentions of the opposition are portrayed in the poorest light."
LOL. Please read Miller's post, the comments on his post, most posts on the Corner, and the comments on most posts on the Corner.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseThe problem is that the president, imo, is a juvenile with juvenile thinking about his own administration. Of course, there are always plenty of juveniles, who in fact really are juveniles, in the streets after just about anything of importance whether they are on the right, the left, the middle. But the problem is that the President thinks that showing the photo to the world would be juvenile gloating on his part as well as the rest of the adults in the country. Because that is the way he thinks. The kids at war are in the White House again, folks.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseObama will be spiking this football from now until election day, as Ann Coulter pointed out. So who is he kidding?
Juvenile indeed.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseHe doesn't want to spike the football……he wants to dance in the end zone at ground zero! We don't want to gloat? HE wants to gloat at fundraisers. When I think about all those photos of street celebrations on VJ Day, all the gloating ticker tape parades of our top generals–and that was our greatest generation– I feel sooo ashamed! No wonder the president has to bow and apologize throughout the world!
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePardon me while I puke.
Obama can't risk the photos taking the spotlight off of his greatness. It is, after all, all about him.
I appreciated the later post noting that the Administration has no problem whatsoever broadcasting photos of coffins of dead American soldiers.
Perhaps as the President is spiking the football up at Ground Zero, he will find some time to keep our brave and honored dead in mind.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseSo sending a highly trained squad of Navy SEALs to find and kill Bin Ladin won't inflame the Muslim world, but releasing a picture of the corpse will inflame the Muslim world?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseI consider the ball to have been spiked the minute Obama announced the Sunday night presser and everthing since then has been the carefully choreographed end-zone dance.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbusePutting aside the merits of the question, the metaphor of spiking the football bothers me. We have principles of sportsmanship in sports because we aren't enemies; at the end of the game, we're going to shake hands and all be friends. Sportsmanship helps us keep our more vicious instincts from getting out of hand, even as we indulge them a bit through ritualized combat.
But Al Qaeda and its allied jihadis are our mortal enemies. They aren't our countrymen who happen to be playing for the other team today; they're not even an honorable foe whom we can view as basically decent but caught up in larger events. They're all in this by choice, in the service of a mad, murderous ideology. We're never going to shake hands with them and go for a beer. Ex-Marines and old terrorists are not going to attend reunions together 50 years from now and swap war stories and memorabilia, like North and South did after the Civil War or Allied and Axis do to this day.
That President Obama thinks such a ridiculous metaphor is apt says a lot about him.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseDid Obama say 'spike' or 'pike'? As an aside, since Obama is so deferential to Muslim sensibilities, I was rather surprised that he did not follow recent Islamist practice: Have OBL on his knees while a SEAL holds his head before removing said head with a scimitar...all the while being filmed so that the decapitation can be broadcast on the web via You Tube. As a bonus, it would be a rather effective way to show the difference between a weak beheaded horse and a strong horse, don't you think?
PS..No, I am not advocating that OBL's head should have been removed by a US soldier...just noting a rather obvious difference between a culture that is of the 21st century and one that is of the 7th century.
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhat Obama wants us to know is that he is not the football-spiking type, but he understands that we (his subjects) are prone to such baseness.
Just one more reminder that he's better than us. Try to remember that, would you?
Reply to this commentLinkReport AbuseWhy is Obama visiting Ground Zero this week? Isn't that visit basically the political equivalent of spiking the football?
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